Page Contents -

1. Overview

2. Outlook Express

3. Netscape Messenger

1. Overview

Electronic Mail or Email as it is commonly known is a fast way of sending information to someone, and is cheaper than using more traditional mailing methods.

To use email you'll need an email program like 'Outlook' which comes with IE4 and IE5. IE5's version is more streamlined and friendlier to use. You can also use 'Messenger' which comes with Netscape Navigator, both of which are covered on this site.

Lets say you have an email program so what do you do?

Adding your account details:

With any email program you'll have to create your account details. Some of the details you will need are:

Name: The name that will appear to whoever receives your email.
Email Address: Your email address.
Reply Address: The address that email will be sent to when people reply to your email.  This is not normally needed, unless your reply address is different to the address you are sending from.
Outgoing Mail (SMTP): This handles your email when you send it. Your ISP should tell you this. It is usually your ISP's name with 'mail' replacing www. I.e. Virgin net's address is www.virgin.net. Which will be mail.virgin.net. (some ISP's may use SMTP instead of mail so try both and see which works)
Incoming Mail (POP): This handles the email sent to your address. It is stored here. What ever you placed for the SMTP should be placed here also. (If the ISP asked you to use stmp.isp.com for the incoming mail then replace smtp with pop and use it here.)
Account name: The first part of your email address. I.e. scott.grenney@onlinehelp-uk.com will be scott.grenney.
Password: Try not to use a simple word and keep it safe.

In Outlook account details can be entered by going to 'tools' and then 'accounts'. From here click 'add' and select 'mail'. You will be taken through step by step to create your new account.

In Messager go to 'edit' ' preferences' and click on 'identity' to enter in your details.

2. Outlook Express

There are three versions of Outlook: Outlook 98, Outlook Express which comes with IE4, and the latest version of Outlook Express that comes with IE5. 

It's worth installing IE5 and using the latest version of Outlook that comes with it. It is a lot easier to use and the changes that have been made to it have helped make it one of the best mail/news programs available.

Outlook Express with IE5
Outlook Express is a handy and easy to use Mail and News program. It's worth updating to IE5 because Outlook Express has been tweaked and is much easier to use. It also has a few more options.

Setting up Outlook Express
Lets say you've just installed Outlook. The first thing to do is to set it up for your ISP account.

Go to ' Tools>Accounts '. This will take you to the screen below:

From here you can add accounts, remove them, and more.

Press ' add ' and then select ' mail ' to add a new email account. 

You'll then be taken through a few screens to help you set up your email account.

If you want to change your email settings at anytime then go to the screen above and go to 'Properties'

If you have more than one email account you can change the reply address box so that all emails sent back to you are sent to just one account.

The tick box indicated when ever you use the ' send and receive ' button on the main outlook bar this account will look for and download your emails for this account if there are any.

This is useful if you find you're being disconnected because it's taking too long to get your emails then you should increase the server timeout time.

Also if you use the same email account from home and at work you can set one of them to leave copies of messages on the server.

The server Port Numbers should be fine as they are standard and there's no need to change them.

To configure outlook go to ' Tools>Options ' (As seen below).

There's no need to go through each tab. They are labelled clearly and allow you to make Outlook behave as you want it to.

Ok Now that the email account is set up we'll go onto sending and receiving emails.

Sending Emails

Your messages can be customised in many ways. The best thing to do is have a play about with the options. Everything is easy to follow.

You can even write emails when not connected to the net! All you have to do is write an email and go to ' File ' and ' Send later '. In some cases if you press send by accident when your offline outlook will store it in the ' outbox ' ready to send once you connect to the net.

Attachments can be used to send a file with an email. Say for instance you want to send your CV which is written in a 'word' file. You can press the attach button and select the CV. It will be sent together with the email message, but bare in mind the file size. Try not to send anything bigger than 500KB - the person at the other end has to download the message. The bigger the email the longer it will take to download and the more annoyed the person will get!

Receiving Emails
Simple. Just press the ' Send and Receive ' button. You can also just send or use one account at a time by pressing the small triangle on the ' Send and Receive ' button. All received emails will go to your 
' Inbox ' by default.

If  you receive a lot of emails and have more than one email account, having all the emails you receive going to just the ' inbox ' can get untidy. Luckily this is why folders were created!

Folders can be used to sort incoming mail.

As you can see this rule means any emails I receive from my a-squared account will be moved to my a-squared folder.

Creating your own rules is simple. Select ' new ' and tick the boxes you want, and click the blue links in the rules box to select the options you want it to refer to.

Using rules means you can different email account's emails being all in their own folders and even have emails from certain people being placed in there own folders and a lot more...

Block Senders:  Is very useful to block emails from people who you don't want to receive.

News Rules: You can use them to add rules to certain newsgroups.

Newsgroups
To set up outlook for newsgroups go to ' Tools>Accounts ' Select ' news' and click ' add '  followed by ' news '

There are many NNTP servers. Your ISP should have one, but if not there are plenty of free ones to choose from. For example try nntp.futurenet.com which has newsgroups for a range of PC magazines and internet related newsgroups.

The first time you select the news server in your folders menu you'll see 'none'. First you have to subscribe. To do this click ' Newsgroups... ' (button in pic above). From the list, select the newsgroups you want to subscribe to (subscribing is free). 

All the subscribed newsgroups can then be viewed like above. Just select the news server to view them all. 

If you want to download messages from a newsgroup, just select the newsgroup(s) in the list to the right and click ' settings ' 
- If you select headers only you will not download the content of the message, just the message header.
- All Messages will download all the new messages that have been posted to the newsgroup.

Don't forget to tick the tick box or Outlook will not download the newsgroup messages automatically.

To receive newsgroup messages press the ' Synchronize Account '

Posting and replying to posts is easy. Just select the newsgroup in the folder menu and read the posts. To post and reply just select the relevant buttons on the top left of main outlook bar.

3. Netscape Messenger

Most configuration of Messenger is done while installing Netscape Navigator. However, you may change your name, your E-Mail address or even your server, and this shows you how to make the changes. Access this screen by loading Netscape and selecting ' Edit ' then
' Preferences '. Entering your details is straight forward. If you want to send E-Mail from one account but receive all replies in another, then you need to complete the Reply-to-Address field, with the E-mail address of the account you want to receive the mail in.

These Screen shots were taken from Netscape Communicator version 4.6.

If you have a new mail server then this is where you have to make the changes. To delete the old server, click on it once and then choose delete. You are then able to add a new server by clicking on Add. Note that Messenger only allows you to have one POP server, which is why you have to delete the old one first.

This (below) is where you get to specify how replied messages behave, such as whether the original message is quoted in the reply and so on.