Configuring Outlook Express

Outlook Express is the free, fully featured e-mail and newsgroups client that is installed by default in all currently shipping Microsoft operating systems, making it easy to support. Clients are also available for the Apple Macintosh, several types of UNIX, and Microsoft Windows 3.1, although these clients differ a little from the Windows versions.

Both the Macintosh client and the UNIX client have additional support for Exchange Server, a feature not available in the Windows clients. However, the fullest support for Exchange Server is found in Outlook 2002. Because this book isn't about Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, we'll only briefly cover some topics relevant to system administrators.

The version covered in this section is Outlook Express 6, which is included with Windows XP, and available for download for Windows 2000. Most procedures discussed here work under Outlook Express 5 as well.

More Info

For further information on end-user features, refer to the Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 Resource Kit (Microsoft Press, 2001).

The Windows versions of Outlook Express do support Exchange Server using POP3 or IMAP folders, first made available in Exchange 5 and 5.5, respectively. However, public folder support and other Exchange Server features aren't available in the Windows Outlook Express clients.

Setting Up Accounts

Outlook Express is installed by default in all recent versions of Windows (after Windows 3.1) and with installations of Internet Explorer, so let's jump straight into setting up accounts in Outlook Express.

If you set up your e-mail account when you ran the Internet Connection Wizard, you don't even need to configure the mail account unless you have additional accounts you'd like to set up. However, you will need to configure the news servers for access to newsgroups, so read this section anyway. To set up accounts, follow this procedure:

1. Launch Outlook Express and then choose Accounts from the Tools menu.
2. Click Add. Select Mail to add a new e-mail account, select News to add a new news server, or select Directory Service to set up an LDAP directory server. Figure 24-39 shows these options.

   

   Figure 24-39. The Mail tab of the Internet Accounts dialog box.

3. Use the Internet Connection Wizard to set up the account and click Finish when you're done.

Real World

Outlook Express Supports Active Directory and Hotmail

When you join a Windows 2000-based domain, Outlook Express automatically configures itself with support for Active Directory. You can then use the Find People feature of Outlook Express to search Active Directory, along with any other LDAP directories and the address book.

Outlook Express also includes the ability to access Web-based e-mail, specifically the Hotmail service. When you set up a Hotmail account in Outlook Express, you can access Hotmail folders just as if they were IMAP4-based instead of Web-based.

Changing Where Mail Is Stored

The message store is where Outlook Express stores local folders, including local e-mail folders and all downloaded newsgroup information. The message store is located by default in \Documents and Settings\useraccount\Local Settings \Application Data\Identities\{84B06BA3-9B42-4256-A39B-765E5CB06C82} \Microsoft\Outlook Express.

The long, cryptic string in the middle of this path is different on every machine—this is what it looks like on one of our client machines.

This isn't a bad place for storing Outlook Express folders, but you might want to place the message store somewhere easier to access. To move the Outlook Express message store, follow these steps:

1. From the Tools menu, choose Options.
2. Click the Maintenance tab and then click Store Folder.
3. Click Change, browse to the folder in which you want to store the Outlook data, and click OK.

Sharing Address Books with Outlook

By default, Outlook Express is set up to share its address book with Outlook's default Contacts folder if you're using Outlook 2000 in the Internet Only configuration (this ability has been removed from Outlook 2002). This is handy if you use both Outlook and Outlook Express and would like to have a single address book shared across both applications. (You might do this so that you can access your Hotmail account using Outlook Express or use Outlook Express's newsreader function.)

However, sharing an address book can also be a nuisance if you want to keep separate address books or if you have a tendency to forget that the address book is shared and not simply imported. (It's hard to understand why anyone would be foolish enough to think that the contacts are simply imported, and therefore delete the entire contacts list, but it has happened—not that we would know from personal experience.)

To toggle the sharing of the contacts list between Outlook 2000 and Outlook Express, perform the following procedure:

1. Click the Addresses toolbar button to display the address book in Outlook Express.
2. Choose the Options command from the Tools menu.
3. Select the first option to store all of the addresses in Outlook's Contacts folder.
4. Select the second option to store the addresses in the Windows Address Book (.WAB)—a holdover from the days when Outlook Express was called Internet Mail and News.
5. Click OK when you're done.

Customizing the Appearance of Outlook Express

You can customize the appearance of Outlook Express to better suit your needs. You can even make Outlook Express look like Outlook (sort of). Although the interface of Outlook Express can't be customized as much as the Outlook 2002 interface can, and the program doesn't yet support personalized menus and toolbars, as Outlook 2002 does, you can still tweak it using the following procedure:

1. From the View menu, choose Layout. To make Outlook Express look more like Outlook, select the Outlook Bar check box and clear the Folder List check box, as shown in Figure 24-40. Figure 24-41 shows the results.

   

   Figure 24-40. The Window Layout Properties dialog box.

2. To display the contacts list under the folder list (if displayed), select the Contacts check box.
3. Use the Preview Pane check boxes to toggle the preview pane and preview pane header on or off, as well as to control where the pane is placed on the screen.
4. To add or remove buttons from a toolbar, click Customize Toolbar. When you're finished customizing the toolbar in the Customize Toolbar dialog box, click Close.

   

   Figure 24-41. The appearance of Outlook Express made to look similar to Outlook's appearance.

You can add shortcuts to the Outlook bar in Outlook Express just as you can in Outlook 2002: display the folder list and drag the folder onto the Outlook bar.

Setting Up Outlook Express Identities

Outlook Express has a relatively new feature called identities. Identities are a nonsecure way of setting up Outlook Express for multiple users (or for a single user with multiple personalities, if you prefer)—all in a single user account. When you set up a new identity, a new folder is created—with the long string of characters being your unique, new identity—called something like \Documents and Settings\useraccount\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{84B06BA3-9B42-4256-A39B-765E5CB06C82}.

The folder store isn't in a different user account, just a different folder in the same user account. It's not really a feature that originated with Windows NT in mind, but is instead intended for users of Windows 95/98/Me who don't set up separate profiles. If multiple users want to share a computer, set up multiple user accounts, which adds file security that identities don't provide (assuming that you use an NTFS volume to store user settings).

However, the identities feature can be handy for keeping personal folders stored separate from your business folder store, although it usually makes more sense to set up separate folders in a single Outlook Express folder store and use message rules to move messages received from different accounts to different folders. (For more on rules, see the section entitled Creating Message Rules to Automatically Process Mail later in this chapter.)

If you still want to set up and use multiple identities after reading this, you've probably found a good reason, so without further ado, here's how to do it:

1. From the File menu, choose Identities, and then choose Add New Identity from the submenu.
2. Enter the name and then optionally select the Require A Password check box to provide a minimal amount of security to the identity. Click OK when you're finished.
3. Click No when asked if you want to switch to the new identity.
4. In the Manage Identities dialog box shown in Figure 24-42, select the identity to use as the default identity when starting Outlook Express and then click Close to be done with identities.

Figure 24-42. The Manage Identities dialog box.

When you switch to an identity for the first time, you need to set up the e-mail accounts you want to use with this identity.

Changing the Default Mail Program

When you install Outlook Express, the program automatically becomes the default e-mail and newsreader program. To change the default e-mail program you use on the system to another program, follow these steps:

1. Open the Internet Options Control Panel tool.
2. Click the Programs tab and then select the programs to use for each type of Internet activity, as shown in Figure 24-43.

Figure 24-43. The Programs tab of the Internet Properties dialog box.

If you change the default e-mail program from Outlook Express to another program, the next time you launch Outlook Express, you'll be asked whether you want to use Outlook as the default e-mail program. Click No.

Creating Message Rules to Automatically Process Mail and News

Outlook Express, like Outlook, has the ability to create rules that automatically process e-mail and newsgroup messages for you. (Remember message rules don't work for IMAP4 or HTTP mail accounts, only for POP3 accounts.) To use this feature, follow these steps:

1. In the Inbox, choose Message Rules from the Tools menu, and then select Mail to create a new rule that processes e-mail, or select News to create a new rule that processes posts in newsgroups that you read.
2. In the Select The Conditions For Your Rule box (Figure 24-44), select the rule conditions.

   

   Figure 24-44. The New Mail Rule dialog box.

3. In the Select The Actions For Your Rule box, select the actions to perform when the specified conditions are met.
4. Click the underlined words in the Rule Description box to fill in necessary information.
5. Enter a name for the rule in the Name Of The Rule box at the bottom of the dialog box and then click OK.
6. To disable a rule in the Message Rules dialog box shown in Figure 24-45, clear the check box next to it.

   

   Figure 24-45. The Mail Rules tab of the Message Rules dialog box.

7. To run a rule now on the messages you currently have, select the message and click Apply Now.
8. To add people to a list of blocked senders from whom messages are deleted (for e-mail messages) or hidden (for news messages), click the Blocked Senders tab, click Add, and then enter the sender's e-mail address in the text box provided.

Configuring Secure E-Mail

Outlook Express allows you to increase the security of e-mail messages by using a digital ID to digitally sign and optionally encrypt them. Digitally signing e-mail allows message recipients to verify that you were the sender of the message and not an impersonator. Encryption allows you to encode messages so that even if intercepted, e-mail can't be read by anyone other than the intended recipient.

To use secure e-mail in Outlook Express, you need to obtain a digital ID from a certificate authority such as VeriSign, Inc. For more information on obtaining a digital ID, choose Options from the Tools menu, click the Security tab, and then click Get A Digital ID. Once you have a digital ID, follow these steps to set up Outlook for secure e-mail:

1. After obtaining and installing the digital ID in Internet Explorer as directed by the certificate authority you obtained the digital ID from, go to the Tools menu and choose Options.
2. Click the Security tab, and then click Digital IDs to verify that the certificate is installed correctly.
3. Select the Encrypt Contents And Attachments For Outgoing Messages check box at the bottom of the Security tab to encrypt all messages you send.
4. Select the Digitally Sign All Outgoing Messages check box to sign all messages you send.
5. To change advanced security settings, click Advanced and then use the following settings, as shown in Figure 24-46:
   • Include My Digital ID When Sending Signed Messages This option enables recipients to send encrypted replies to messages.
   • Encode Message Before Signing This option prevents messages from being tampered with. Note that recipients whose e-mail programs don't support S/MIME signatures (such as most programs you access through Telnet) won't be able to read your messages.
   • Add Senders' Certificates To My Address Book This option automatically saves other users' certificates to the address book when you receive digitally signed messages, allowing you to send encrypted messages back to the sender.
   • Only When Online This option checks digitally signed messages you receive to see if the certificates are valid. Select Never to disable this check.

   

   Figure 24-46. The Advanced Security Settings dialog box.

Select the Do Not Allow Attachments To Be Saved Or Opened That Could Potentially Be A Virus check box in the Security tab of the Options dialog box to prevent Outlook Express from opening particularly dangerous attachment types (such as .EXE and .VBS files).