About e-mail accounts

You can get the e-mail service you need by adding an e-mail account to Microsoft Outlook using the information provided to you by your administrator or Internet service provider (ISP). Depending on your needs, you can add several e-mail accounts to a single Outlook user profile. For example, you can add a Microsoft Exchange Server account to handle your business e-mail and then add an Internet e-mail account, such as a POP3 account from your ISP, to handle your personal e-mail.

Note Outlook supports the IMAP4 protocol. Some servers may use an updated standard called IMAP4rev1, which may prevent authentication of your credentials and access to your account. To verify which IMAP protocol your server is using, contact your system administrator or ISP.

The information usually supplied to you by your ISP or system administrator is:

Type of account (Exchange Server, POP3, IMAP, HTTP, or other)
Name of your incoming server and outgoing server
Your user name
Your e-mail address (for example: someone@example.com)
Your password

Note Sometimes the same server is used for both incoming and outgoing messages, as with Microsoft Exchange Server. For POP3 and IMAP accounts, messages you send are submitted to an outgoing server that supports the SMTP Internet standard and then are delivered to the recipient. Messages you receive are stored in your account on a server that supports the POP3 or IMAP Internet standard.

You can connect in two ways:

Over phone lines, by using a modem. You can manually establish a connection or you can use dial-up networking to automatically connect when you start Outlook. If you are connecting to a POP3 or IMAP server, your ISP can supply you with the phone number, modem settings, and network protocols required.
Through a local area network (LAN). Your organization might provide external access to the Internet from your computer through a LAN. Your administrator can provide you with account information and network protocols to gain access to the e-mail servers.

If you are using Microsoft Exchange Server, you can specify to work online or offline. Online (connected to the server) is the Outlook default. Messages you send or receive are delivered immediately. If you specify to work offline, you can choose how often Outlook connects to the server to send and receive messages.
If you are using an Internet e-mail account, you can choose how often Outlook communicates with your Internet e-mail server to send and receive messages.
You can create a Send/Receive group that contains one or more of the e-mail accounts you have set up in Outlook. You can then specify behavior for the group, such as time intervals for sending or receiving messages, or how mail is processed when Outlook is online or offline. With Send/Receive groups you can:
- Specify whether an account is included when sending/receiving mail.
- Specify whether mail should be sent, received, or both, from an account.
- Specify whether attachments should be downloaded.
- Specify size limits on messages to be downloaded.
- Specify folders to include when sending or receiving.
- Specify downloading only headers for new messages.
- Specify different settings for when Outlook is online or offline.

When you use an e-mail account with an Exchange server, by default, your e-mail messages are saved on the Exchange server. For other accounts, Outlook automatically creates a default data file to store your messages and other items. The data file is a Personal Folders file (.pst).