You have installed your first e-mail address on Outlook Express. We will now go about setting up outlook express by customizing it so that it much easier to use and control your e-mails.
You will end up with a lot of rubbish in your deleted folder and in your sent folder after you have used outlook express for a while. You will also end up with a lot of your e-mails still on your ISP’s server that eventually will fill up your quota. This will then cause e-mails to start being rejected and lost. This article will cover all the essential outlook express customization necessary to manage your e-mails. Follow the instructions below to implement each area I think is most essential for the smooth operation of Outlook Express.
- Set Outlook express to go automatically to your inbox when started.
- Start Outlook Express.
- With your mouse left click on “Tools” then “Options”
- In the windows shown below in the general tab click tick the “When starting, go directly to my ‘Inbox’ folder”.
4. Click OK.
- Remove e-mails from your ISP server after a set time.
- With your mouse left click on “Tools” then “Accounts”
- Select the “Mail” tab and then on e-mail account.
- On the right click on “Properties”
- Select the “Advanced” tab
- In the window as shown below tick all the boxes under the “Delivery” heading and select a period you want the messages to remain on the server. Click “apply” then “OK”
The period you want to leave the messages on your ISP server is up to you but you should allow enough time for you to retrieve an e-mail via “webmail” if you accidentally delete it.
- Remove e-mails from the deleted folder.
- Select “Tools” then “Options”
- Select the “Maintenance” tab.
- Under “Cleaning Up Messages” tick the box marked “Empty Messages frome ‘Deleted Items’ folder on exit.
- Click “apply” then “OK”
You may not want to set this to delete automatically. If you don’t then you have to delete the messages manually by selecting the “Delete Items” folder then selecting the m4essages and pressing the “delete” key on your keyboard. It is important to keep this folder relatively free as the number of messages can mount up using a lot of disk space but more so slowing down Outlook Express.
- Remove e-mails from the “sent” folder
Saving a copy of the e-mails you send are save by default. If you do not want to save a copy you can prevent this by following the procedure below. I do not recommend this because if you send a e-mail and the recipient does not get it you can always send it again from the sent folder. You should periodically clear out the sent folder for the same reason as for the deleted folder.
To turn off saving sent messages.
- Click on “Tools” then “options”.
- Select the “Send” tab and delete the “tick” from the item marked “Save copy of of sent messages in the ‘Sent Items’ folder”.
- Click “apply” then “OK”
There are numerous options that can be customized in Outlook Express but I think these are the main ones to ensure that your copy runs cleanly.