Access Web-Based Email in Outlook Express

Many people have had Hotmail or other Web-based email accounts for years. They are hard to beat in terms of convenience and universal access. For example, I'm on the road quite a bit, and I'm often available only via my Hotmail account. Until recently, however, users have not been able to check their Web-based email accounts with a full-featured email program like Outlook Express.

Fortunately, that's no longer the case. With Outlook Express's Web-based email server integration, you get the convenience of a Web-based email service combined with the features of a dedicated email program. This can be especially useful when searching through a large folder of emails, or for saving copies of Web emails for archive purposes.

In this example, I'll step you through the process of setting up OE to check a Hotmail account, but the steps should be roughly the same no matter what Web server you're using.

1.	Open Outlook Express, and from the Tools menu, choose Accounts…
2.	The Internet Accounts dialog box opens. Click the Add button, and select Mail, as shown in Figure 12-6. Figure 12-6. Add a Hotmail account to Outlook Express.
3.	From the Internet Connection Wizard, type the name used in the "from" line and click Next. This is the name that others will see when they get an email from this account.
4.	From the Internet email address window, type your Hotmail account email address and click Next.
5.	From the email server names, choose Hotmail in the drop-down menu. Then, under the "My HTTP mail service provider is" section, select Hotmail and click Next.
6.	From the Internet mail log on, make sure that the email address listed under "account name" is correct and then type your password into the password field.

Other Web-based email services support OE integration and can be set up using the same method. In the steps listed previously, choose the HTTP server option, then choose Other for the email service provider, and then specify the complete URL address for that service, as shown in Figure 12-7.

Figure 12-7. Configuring another Web-based service provider.