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E-mail (electronic mail) is for sure the most popular and the most important Internet service. Everyone who has a connection to the Internet can get one or more e-mail addresses for free. In most cases you get an e-mail address by your ISP (Internet Service Provider) immediately at the installation time.
With an e-mail application you can
Microsoft Outlook Express is a simple e-mail application. You can use it in addition also as Internet News Reader for Newsgroups, but this tutorial deals only with its e-mailing functionality. For the complete information about all the advanced features of Outlook Express consult please the Outlook Express Online Help System.
To be able to send and to receive e-mail you need
I don't explain here how to connect to the Internet via modem or LAN. An installed Internet connection is the prerequisite to even start the Outlook Express.
As the name says an e-mail provider provides the e-mail service on the Internet for their users. This service includes at any rate send and receive utilities. Some of them offer also the mail management utilities including mail filing system on the server and address book services.
To set up your Outlook Express you have to know some important information concerning your e-mail account by your provider. Here they are:
Each e-mail user on the Internet has to have an unique identity. Only on the basis of this identity it is possible for computer network system to deliver an e-mail to the addressed recipient.
Each Internet e-mail address consists of two parts:
These two parts of the e-mail address are separated with the at-sign '@'.
An example e-mail address is: harry.potter@hogwarts.magic.uk
With an Internet connection and Microsoft Outlook Express, you can exchange e-mail messages with anyone on the Internet.
If you have not installed the Internet connection before, an Internet Connection Wizard helps you connect to one or more mail or news servers when you first time start the Outlook Express. I recommend you to engage an advanced user to help you setting up the Internet connection.
To start the Outlook Express,
Before you can start reading and writing your mail, the setup wizard will take you step by step through the setup procedure.
You will need the following information from your Internet service provider (ISP) or local area network (LAN) administrator:
You can add a new mail or news account later on by selecting Accounts item on the Tools menu. In the Internet Accounts dialog box, tab to the Add button and press ENTER. Select either Mail or News to open the Internet Connection Wizard, and then follow the instructions to establish a connection with a mail or news server.
Each user can create multiple mail or news accounts by repeating the procedure above for each account.
IMPORTANT: Before you start working with Outlook Express you should improve its accessibility by changing some default view options. There are more open windows at the same time by default which can easily confuse you and make reading difficult.
IMPORTANT: Outlook Express has so-called contents sensitive menus. That means, conditional on which window is active (New mail window, a mail folder list etc), the items in the menus change. For example, the Insert item in the main menu bar appears only when the composing mail window is active.
After Outlook Express downloads your messages, or after you press CONTROL+M to activate the Send/Receive command, you get a list of your incoming messages.
To read a message: With UP and DOWN ARROW keys select a message you will read and press ENTER. A separate window with the contents of the selected message appears.
To close the message window and return to the message list, press ESCAPE.
To view all the information about a message, such as when it was sent,
press ALT+ENTER. It is the same as the File menu, and then the item Properties (ALT+F, P).
To save the message in your file system, choose File menu, Save as (ALT+F, A). A standard File Save dialog opens. Here you can select a format (mail, text or HTML) and location. When ready tab to the Save button and press ENTER. The same you can do by pressing ENTER while in the File name Edit field.
It is also possible to attache files to an e-mail message. A file attachment is visualized in a message list through a paperclip icon.
If ***sr does not display the paperclip symbol you have to label this graphic. In the ***sr Online help you can learn how to do it.
To save or open an attachment:
To use your online time efficiently, you can use Outlook Express to find messages, automatically sort incoming messages into different folders, keep messages on a mail server, or delete them entirely. The following topics provide more information:
In the message list, select the message you will delete. Press DELETE key.
If you wish to delete the message which you currently read in its own window, press CONTROL+D.
To restore a deleted message, open the Deleted Items folder, and move the message back to the Inbox or other folder.
If you don't want messages to be saved in the Deleted Items folder when you quit Outlook Express:
To manually empty all deleted items,
On the Edit menu, Find sub-menu, select the item Message and press ENTER. The shortcut key is CONTROL+SHIFT+F. Enter criteria in the search fields.
Outlook Express searches the currently selected folder by default. To search in another folder, tab to the Browse button and press ENTER, and then select the folder with the ARROW keys.
You can search for text in From field, To field, Subject field, in the mail body. You can specify the date limitations and some things more. To start the search process press ENTER or ALT+S to push the Start button.
If there are some search hits, a hit list appears with the first item highlighted.
You cannot delete or rename the Inbox, Outbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items, or Drafts folders.
Whereas the mail body contains the text of a mail message, consists the mail header of several data fields. I will here list some of them with a short description of the data they contain:
There are basically three slightly different ways of composing a mail message:
When writing a new message, you have to fill all important header fields with the proper data. In the case of forwarding, the Subject field is entered automatically and in the case of replying, all the header fields are inserted automatically according to the received message.
Move forward and backward between header fields and mail body with TAB and SHIFT+TAB.
If your message has to go to more recipients, type the e-mail address of each recipient in the To field, separating them with a comma or semicolon ';'.
After you filled all header fields, write your message in the mail Edit box.
To send the composed mail message press CONTROL+ENTER. If the Outlook Express is in Offline mode, your message will be sent the next time you go Online. If you are Online, the message is sent immediately.
If the message recipient or message copy recipient is added to the contacts in your Address Book, typing a few initial letters of his name in the To, CC or BCC field will cause Outlook Express to extend his name. If it is correct, press simply TAB to proceed, if not, write strait forward and the name proposal will disappear.
To use the Bcc box, activate View menu, All Headers option.
To save a draft of your message to work on later, activate File menu, and then Save option. You can also choose the Save as option to save a mail message in your file system in mail (.eml), text (.txt), or HTML (.htm) format.
On the Tools menu, activate Options, and then select the Signatures tab.
To use different signatures for different accounts,
To use a signature on individual messages only,
While anywhere in the message window:
The file is listed in the Attach box in the message header.
You can also add a text (*.txt) file into the body of your mail message by choosing the Insert menu and then Text from File option.
Please make sure while in the New Message window, that the Rich-Text (HTML) option in the Format menu is checked. When you send your mail message in plain text format, there is no possibility to add a background sound.
While composing a new message,
In the message,
If you cannot select the Picture command, make sure HTML formatting is turned on by choosing the Format menu in the message window and then activating Rich Text (HTML) option. A black dot appears by the command when it is selected.
If message recipients are not able to view your inserted images,
To insert a background picture in your message,
When you work offline, Outlook Express downloads mail messages to your local computer. When you choose to work online again, messages you marked for deletion are removed, messages in your Outbox are sent, and all other actions taken offline are completed.
There are two situations where it is beneficial to use Outlook Express offline:
To switch to the Offline mode, check the Offline option on the File menu.
Working offline is different from being disconnected. When you are disconnected, Outlook Express takes action to reconnect you. When working offline, Outlook Express knows that you want to remain offline until you choose to work online, when it will initiate all actions taken while offline.
Use this procedure to set up Outlook Express to automatically disconnect after you select Send and Receive from the Tools menu. You can then read and compose messages offline without incurring charges or tying up a phone line.
If you connect to an IMAP or http server, select the server name in the folder list, and then make sure that the items you want to view offline are checked.
To reconnect to send or receive messages,
If you select an IMAP folder when you are offline, and you have not checked Work Offline from the File menu, Outlook Express will reconnect, and will not hang up when you activate Send and Receive option.
You can make all messages, only headers, or only new messages available for offline viewing by changing the synchronization settings for IMAP, HTTP, or news server folders.
The Address Book provides a convenient place to store contact information for easy retrieval by programs such as Microsoft Outlook Express. It also features access to Internet directory services, which you can use to look up people and businesses on the Internet. You'll find that the following features help you organize all your contact information into the most usable form for you.
To open the Address Book from Outlook Express, press CONTROL+SHIFT+B. That is identical to choosing the Address Book option on the Tools menu (ALT+T, A)
To open the Address Book from within a message window, click the To, Cc, or Bcc icon. To use the Address Book directory services from the Windows Start menu choose the Find option (WINDOWS, F), with the ARROW keys select People and press ENTER.
To close the Address Book window, press ESCAPE.
There are several ways to add e-mail addresses and other contact information to your address book:
When you receive e-mail, you can add the sender's name and e-mail address to your address book from within Outlook Express. Open the message. On the Tools menu, point to Add to Address Book and then select the user you want to add. You can also set up Outlook Express so that people whose messages you reply to are automatically added to your Address Book. In Outlook Express, click the Tools menu, and then click Options. On the Send tab, click Automatically put people I reply to in my Address Book.
To add a new contact by hand,
If you have to change or add some information concerning an existing contact in your Address Book,
After you are ready, tab to the OK button and press ENTER.
To delete a contact from your Address Book,
Select the contact name in the Address Book list
Then press DELETE key.
If the contact is a member of a group, the name will also be removed from the group.
You can send a message to a group of people by creating a mailing group (or "alias") containing their names. Then, you just type the group name in the To box when you send messages. You can create multiple groups, and contacts can belong to more than one group.
In the Address Book,
Repeat these steps for each addition until your group is defined.
Please make sure that the View menu option Folders and Groups in the Address Book is checked. Otherwise the groups will not appear in the list.
In the Address Book list, select the group you want and press ENTER. The group's Properties dialog box opens.
You can add people in several ways to the group and in some cases to your address book as well.
In addition to Microsoft Windows, Windows NT, and Windows 95 accessibility products and services, the following features make Microsoft Outlook Express more accessible for people with disabilities.
The preview pane lets you view message contents without opening the message in another window.
To preview a message, click its title once. To open it in its own window, double-click the title.
You can position the preview pane either below the message list or beside it; you can choose to display or hide the message header; or you can hide the preview pane entirely.
To resize the preview pane and the message list,
If you are in the main window,
If you are in a message window,
To change the order in which buttons appear,