Working with SendReceive Groups

Working with Send/Receive Groups

Use send/receive groups to control when and how often your email accounts are polled and whether the full messages are downloaded or just headers. Although many people are satisfied with the default send/receive settings and have just one send/receive group , you can have as many groups as you need to control your email accounts. Send/receive groups are especially useful for travelers because they enable you to create different groups based on where you are.

When you choose to download full messages, you get just that: the full messages, including attachments. You can read, delete, and reply to messages as soon as Outlook has finished downloading your messages.

When you download headers only, you have to download the message body before you can read the message. In most cases, you can delete the message header and the message will be deleted from the server the next time Outlook checks for new mail.

To set up your send/receive groups, you must first access the Outlook Options dialog. Select Tools, Options and then select the Mail Setup tab (see Figure 7.9).

Figure 7.9. Use the Mail Setup tab to reach the configuration dialogs for your email accounts and send/receive settings, to set the location of your data files, and to control how Outlook handles dial-up accounts. Check Send Immediately when Connected and messages are transferred by SMTP as soon as you press the Send button.

First, configure your dial-up settings on the Mail Setup tab to control how Outlook connects to your mail server using dial-up accounts. If you use more than one dial-up connection, select W arn before switching an existing dial-up connection to prevent Outlook from disconnecting you.

To work with send/receive groups, click the Send/Receive button (see Figure 7.10). Configure your send/receive group settings to control when and how often Outlook checks for new mail.

Figure 7.10. When automatic send/receive is enabled, Outlook checks for mail as soon as it is loaded and every nn minutes. To reduce the load on your email server, you shouldn't check mail more frequently than every 8 to 10 minutes.

Outlook includes a default group that contains all of your email accounts. All accounts in your profile are enabled for send and receive using the default settings for the account type. Select the group and choose E dit to change the settings or select N ew to create another send/receive group (see Figure 7.11).

Figure 7.11. Use the Send/Receive Settings dialog to configure your send/receive groups. Create as many groups as you need to control how Outlook checks for new mail on each account.

Each mail account in your profile can have different send and receive settings. Configure IMAP, HTTP (Hotmail), and Exchange Server accounts to download specific folders with full messages or headers only, with the capability to download full messages up to a certain size on POP3 and Exchange Server accounts.

When a send/receive group isn't enabled for online or offline mail checks, you can still use the group by choosing Tools, S e nd/Receive and selecting the group by name .

The send and receive options available for use with an account are different for each account type.

After your send and receive groups are set up, you can press the F9 key or click the Send/Receive toolbar button to check for new email in all accounts included in a send/receive. When you want to check for new mail in a single account, use the T ools, S e nd/Receive menu choice to select the account or folder.

IMAP accounts enable you to check for new mail per folder or per account. Use Shift+F9 to check for new mail in the selected IMAP folder, or use F9 to check for new mail in all the folders in the current account.