Outlook Express

Outlook Express is the mail and news client supplied by the Internet Explorer 4 suite. It is also the cut down version of the full blown Outlook information management package from Microsoft, Outlook 97/98, which was available in full on last month's SuperCD. However, Windows 98 only comes with Outlook Express so you'll find a brief guide to its features below.

Links to major features

Setting up E-mail

The first thing to do on starting Outlook Express is to set up your e-mail account. If you already have an account with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and use Netscape, Eudora or Microsoft Internet Mail, then Outlook Express should automatically import address book and connection details from these packages.

On the other hand, if you are setting up an account from scratch or something goes wrong (not an unknown occurrence, it has to be said), it's a good idea to know how to go about things. To help, Outlook has a reasonable Connection Wizard that will guide you through the process step-by-step, though in common with most Wizards it's not much use if you get really stuck.

To start with, we'll set up a new mail account by selecting Tools | Accounts from the main menu. You'll see a tabbed dialog box:

Select the Mail tab and start the Wizard by choosing Add | Mail. The first Wizard screen just asks for your name as you would like it to appear on your e-mail. It doesn't have to be your real name, but unless you want to go around masquerading as the Emperor Napoleon, it might be a good idea to let it have some relation to who you really are.

The next screen identifies your real e-mail account with an ISP. You will be given this when you open an account with the ISP. Type it in exactly as specified.

Outlook needs to know what Internet protocol to use (normally POP3) and where to look for and send mail. Again, your ISP should tell you the name of the mail server. Outlook can guess at this but sometimes gets it wrong. Usually the incoming and outgoing server names are the same and look something like our example, 'mail.u-net.net'.

The next screen requires your account name and password on the mail server. This will be provided by your ISP.

Once you've finished setting things up with the Wizard, you may want to edit the details at some time in the future and so the next screen lets you enter a 'friendly name' for this e-mail account's settings. Use whatever name you want provided you haven't already used it.

Now you have to tell Outlook how to connect to the mail server. For most people, the first option on the next Wizard screen 'connect using my phone line' will be the one to choose.

The next screen offers you the choice of using an existing Internet connection or creating a new one. We'll use an existing one. And that's it – you're now ready to use Outlook Express's mail!

If you need to edit the details you've entered via the Wizard, you can do so by selecting the entry from the Internet Accounts screen and choosing properties. We'll just add PC Plus to the Organisation field:

As you can see, you can have several accounts with different ISPs (should you wish to pay each of them for the privilege). Strangely enough, one of the ISPs you can't use with Outlook Express is Microsoft's very own Microsoft Network or MSN. This is because MSN doesn't support the POP3 protocol, though Microsoft has promised such support later on this year.

Composing an e-mail

Select 'Compose a Message'. You'll get a new blank message form ready to fill in. First, click on the To icon. If you know the e-mail address of the person you want to mail, you can create a new entry in the address book.

Alternatively, you can use the new Find feature. You can also access this via the Outlook Express shortcut:

Click on Find and type the name of the person you want to locate and click Find Now. Outlook will use the Internet Connection Manager to dial your ISP and attempt to locate the e-mail address of the person you want to write to.

It does this by using one of a number of Directory Service search engines – the default one is BigFoot. If the search is successful you can add the name to your email message by clicking To.

It's a good idea to add a subject line to your e-mail message (though you don't have to) and then you're ready to type in the text. Once you've completed your e-mail, click the Send icon at the top left of the screen

Your e-mail will now be sent immediately. Outlook will dial your ISP if you aren't connected and send the e-mail. If you've more e-mails to write you can cut down on your phone bill by choosing the File | Send Later option and sending them in a batch.

Reading the news

Outlook Express also lets you access the Internet 'Usenet' newsgroups. These are bulletin boards covering just about every conceivable subject from astronomy to zoology with gardening, pets, cars and thousands of other subjects in between. Setting up News access is very similar to setting up your e-mail account. You select Accounts | Add | News to start the Connection Wizard. The only screen that requires a slightly different detail is the News Server Name. This should be provided by your ISP – here we've used 'news.u-net.com'.

When you first connect to a news server, you'll be asked to download all the names of the newsgroups that the server knows about there are around 25,000 available currently, the vast majority you will probably never go near. Fortunately, this only takes a couple of minutes - and you only have to do it once. Then when you've got the newsgroups' names you 'subscribe' to one or more of them. To do this get into Outlook's News section by clicking on the 'Read News' shortcut in the Outlook Desktop:

You subscribe to a newsgroup by selecting Newsgroups tool button, highlight the one you want and click the Subscribe tab. It can be a little tricky finding your target news group since there is such an enormous number of them in the list box. This is clearly one area where a tree based display could be used with advantage.

Typically, news items are downloaded in two stages. The first step is to download the 'headers' or news item subjects and then secondly, mark those headers of interest for a further download of the full message text. This saves telephone charges while you browse around the newsgroup 'off line'. To mark a message or group of messages for download, you select the header by right clicking on it and then selecting Mark Message for Download. When you have finished this process, you can then download your selected news items by choosing 'Download this Newsgroup' from the Tools menu. Outlook will connect to your ISP and retrieve the items.

There's one other item in Outlook's newsreader section – the ability to filter out unwanted articles. One of the disadvantages with Internet newsgroups is the vast amount of 'noise' or junk articles – often from the same person. In order to make any sensible use of newsgroups you may well find that you have to use a filter to eliminate some traffic. With Outlook, you select 'Newsgroup Filters' from the Tools menu and click Add. You'll see that you can filter out messages either by subject or by person. While this is reasonable, it's not perfect. For example, due to a bad childhood experience with a certain plant, you might want to filter out all messages containing the word 'petunia'.

Other features

Outlook also has several other features which we'll outline briefly.

Inbox Assistant
Outlook Express can use intelligent filtering to save you from either junk mail or messages from individuals you wish to avoid.

Subscription services
You can subscribe to Web sites and be notified of updated subscriptions by E-mail.

Smart Reply
Outlook Express will reply automatically to messages in the same format in which they were sent. If you receive HTML format mail, Outlook will reply in the same format.

Stationery
You can create your own HTML stationery (backgrounds) to add a touch of colour to your E-mail.