Click the Send/Receive button on the Standard toolbar to send any email currently in your Outbox and receive email from others.
A dialog box that tracks the progress of the Send/Receive process appears briefly as Outlook checks all your email addresses for outgoing and incoming messages.
If the Inbox isn't already open, click the Inbox folder on the Outlook bar to display any new and old messages you have received (and haven't yet moved to another folder).
Unread messages appear in bold text. Click a new message you would like to read. To open the message in its own window, double-click the message.
INTRODUCTION
Outlook's Inbox is where email you receive is stored. When you click a message in Outlook's Inbox, you get a preview of the text in that message before you click to open it in the Preview pane. In addition, open messages in a separate window or have multiple messages open at the same time by double-clicking each one.
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Creating Recipient Rules
If you get a lot of junk email (called spam) from a particular email account, create a rule to send any messages you receive from that account to the Deleted Items folder (trash). To do so, click the Sender Name smart tag and select Create Rule. Select the From [email address] and Move E-mail to Folder options to open the Rules and Alerts dialog box; click the folder you want, and then click OK. (If you need to change this folder later, open the same dialog box and click the Select Folder button.) Click the OK button again, and off you go!
The contents of the new message are displayed in the Preview pane.
Click the Sender Name smart tag to view a list of options.
Optionally, select Add to Outlook Contacts to add the message's sender to your contacts list.
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Reading Message Attachments
You can open and review any files that are attached to messages you receive while you are in Outlook. Double-click the attached file's name, and Outlook asks whether you want to open or save the file. If you opt to open the file, the file opens in the application in which it was created; if you don't have that application installed on your computer, Outlook asks which program you want to use to try to open the file. For more information about handling attachments, see the next task.