| The first time you use Outlook Express (which you can open from the Start menu), the Internet Connection Wizard appears to help you plug in the necessary Internet addresses and codes that tell the program where to find your email. NOTE If you used the New Connection Wizard (Section 10.4) to establish your Internet account, then your settings are probably already in place. In that case, you probably won't see this Internet Connection Wizard; skip to the next section. Click Next on each wizard window to step through the process, during which you'll provide the following information: -
Display Name . The name that will appear in the "From:" field of the email you send. -
Email Address . The email address you chose when you signed up for Internet services, such as billg@microsoft.com . -
Mail Servers . Enter the information your ISP provided about its mail servers: the type of server, the name of the incoming mail server, and the name of the outgoing mail server. Most of the time, the incoming server is a POP3 server and its name is connected to the name of your ISP, such as http://popmail.mindspring.com . The outgoing mail server (also called the SMTP server ) usually looks something like http://mail.mindspring.com . -
Logon Name and Password . Enter the name and password provided by your ISP. If you wish, turn on "Remember password," so that you won't have to enter it each time you want to collect mail. (But turn on Secure Password Authentication [SPA] only if instructed by your ISP or network administrator.) Click the Finish button to close the wizard and open Outlook Express. UP TO SPEED
POP, IMAP, and Web-based Mail When it comes to email, there are three flavors of accounts (not counting America Online Mail, which is a mutant breed and not something that Outlook Express can talk to): POP (also known as POP3), IMAP (also known as IMAP4), and Web-based. Each has its own distinct feeling, with different strengths and weaknesses. POP accounts are the most common kind. A POP server transfers your incoming mail to your hard drive before you read it, and then deletes its Internet-based copy. From now on, those messages are stored on your computer, and it's up to you to save them, back them up, or delete them. (You can configure Outlook Express not to delete the messages from the server, but most ISPs don't give you much disk space. If your mailbox gets too full, the server may begin rejecting your incoming messages.) IMAP servers are newer than, and have more features than, POP servers, but as a result they don't enjoy as much popularity or support. IMAP servers are Internet computers that store all of your mail for you, rather than making you download it each time you connect, so you can access the same mail regardless of the computer you use. IMAP servers remember which messages you've read and sent, too. One downside to this approach, of course, is that you can't work with your email except when you're online, because all of your mail is on an Internet server, not on your hard drive. Another is that if you don't conscientiously manually delete mail after you've read it, your online mailbox eventually overflows. Sooner or later, the system starts bouncing fresh messages back to their senders, annoying your friends and depriving you of the chance to read what they had to say. Free, Web-based servers like Hotmail also store your mail on the Internet. You can use a Web browser on any computer to read and send messages ”or, if it's Hotmail, Outlook Express (because both are Microsoft products). They're also slower and more cumbersome to use than "regular" email accounts. |
NOTE If you want to add a second email account for someone else who uses this PC ( assuming you're not using the User Accounts feature described in Chapter 16), choose Tools  Accounts in Outlook Express. In the resulting dialog box on the Mail tab, click Add Mail; the Internet Connection Wizard will reappear. GEM IN THE ROUGH
Checking a Specific Email Account You don't have to check all of your email accounts whenever you want to get mail. Suppose, for example, that you want to send a message to yourself ”from your work account to your home account. In that case, you'd want to send/receive mail only from your office account. (If, in the same pass, Outlook Express also downloaded messages from your home account, you'd wind up with the same message in your office PC's copy of Outlook Express, defeating the whole purpose of the exercise.) Excluding an account (or several accounts) from the "Send and Receive All" routine is easy enough. Open the Accounts window (Tools Accounts), double-click the account's name, turn off "Include this account when receiving Mail or synchronizing," click OK, and close the Accounts window. Now suppose you usually want to check all accounts, but occasionally want to check only one of them. On such an occasion, choose that account's name from the drop-down list that appears when you click the down-arrow black triangle beside the Send/Recv button. (Alternatively, choose the account name from the Tools Send and Receive submenu.) |
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