If you use Microsoft's Office suite, you're probably familiar with Outlook. Outlook is the primary communications tool included in the Office package, and many professional PC users like it. However, don't be misled by the name similarity between Outlook and Outlook Express. OE6 is not a “lite” version of Outlook; these two applications are actually quite different. Aside from the name and a few basic interface similarities, the only thing they have in common is the capability to handle email.

Outlook includes many features that Outlook Express does not, such as the following:

In addition, Outlook's system of managing personal contacts is far more advanced than that of Outlook Express. If the ability to integrate a heavy email load with your personal scheduler on a daily basis is important to you, Outlook is the clear choice.

If you are already using Outlook and like the Calendar and Journal, stick with it. Furthermore, if your company's network or workgroup uses Exchange Server for mail services, Outlook is the only fully compatible upgrade to that system. Outlook is also Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) capable, which means it can share mail with other MAPI-capable programs on your system. Outlook Express is not MAPI-capable. Because Outlook is bigger than OE, it requires more disk space, more RAM, and slightly more patience on the part of the user. If you find that you don't use Outlook for anything but email, you might be better served by Outlook Express.

Microsoft isn't the only company producing high-quality email clients. One of the most popular alternatives is Eudora Pro from Qualcomm (www.eudora.com). Eudora offers an excellent package of mail management and filtering features, as well as compatibility with the latest Internet mail standards. Like Outlook Express, it is considerably more compact than Outlook, but it does not incorporate a newsgroup reader. Some unique Eudora features include the following:

A free version of Eudora called Eudora Light is available, but it lacks so many of the features available in the identically priced Outlook Express that, at this point, it isn't worth your consideration.

Another popular email client is Netscape Messenger, which comes as part of the Netscape Communicator package and is available as freeware. Messenger is comparable to Outlook Express in terms of mail management and newsgroup capability, and its interface is clean and uncluttered.

Numerous other email clients exist. A simple search on the Web or of www.download.com will flush them out.

Before you can send or receive electronic mail, you need to have an email account. There is a good possibility that your account has already been configured by your company's IS department or that some software from your ISP took care of it for you. Otherwise, you'll have to set it up yourself.

You can set up an account directly from Outlook Express by following the instructions listed here. These steps also work for setting up a second or third account or mail identity on the same machine.

The only other piece of information that Outlook Express needs is which network or dial-up connection it should use when sending and receiving mail. You probably don't need to select this connection because OE6 automatically assigns your default connection to all mail accounts.

Note

What Are POP, IMAP, SMTP, and HTTP?

You've probably noticed the veritable alphabet soup of acronyms that exist for the many different kinds of email servers. Unlike so many other cryptic terms thrown around in the PC world, these acronyms are actually worth remembering.

First, a basic understanding of how email flows across networks (including the Internet) is important. Usually, when you send a message, Outlook Express transfers it to a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server. An SMTP server is controlled by the sender, meaning that it waits for you to push mail through it. After you send the message to your SMTP server using OE6's Send/Recv or Send All command, no other interaction is required to deliver the message to its final destination.

NOTE

The Send command must be used in the main program, not just in an individual email. Otherwise, the mail you've written will simply pile up in your Outbox. You can click on the Outbox in the Folder list to see if there are messages waiting to be sent. If so, click the Send/Recv button on the toolbar.

Mail sent to your computer doesn't just go from the sender to your PC. Since your PC is likely not always online, and certainly not always ready to receive email, messages must go to an interim server (usually maintained through your Internet service provider). To receive mail, you probably use either a Post Office Protocol (POP) or Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) server. POP and IMAP differ in that POP servers forward all messages directly to your local machine, whereas IMAP servers maintain the messages on the server until you delete them. When you check for mail on an IMAP server, a list of message headers is downloaded, but the actual message bodies stay on the server (like newsgroup messages, as explained in the next chapter). An IMAP server comes in handy if you travel a lot and want to be able to check messages on the road with your laptop or PDA, but don't want to remove them from the server until you can download the mail to a more permanent location on your home desktop.

Another type of email server is a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) server, such as those offered by Yahoo!, Hotmail, and others. An HTTP mail account is useful for those who wish to travel light because it is not necessary to take a computer or software with you. You can access your HTTP account using a Web browser on any computer with access to the Internet, and generally the only information you will need to provide is your login name and password. Outlook Express can also be used to read and send mail using an HTTP account.

Note

After you have an account set up, you are ready to begin downloading and reading mail. To get started, open Outlook Express, and go to the Inbox. By default, Outlook Express automatically checks for new mail when it first opens. If your installation is configured otherwise, click the Send/Recv button on the toolbar. As your mail is coming in, a dialog box appears indicating which account is being checked, and shows the progress of the sending and receiving. It will also tell you how many messages are being transferred. New messages will then appear in your inbox, as shown in Figure 10.5.

Figure 10.5. The Inbox has seven new messages.

When you reply to a message, you need to be wary of a few things. First, note that if the incoming message was sent to a group of people, clicking the Reply button will send your message to the single person who sent it to you; clicking Reply All will send your message to the entire list of people who received the original message. Although this can be a helpful tool when communicating with a group of people, it could get you in trouble if you think you are writing to a specific person and accidentally click the Reply All button. Before you send any message, make sure the correct person or persons are listed in the To: and Cc: fields. Anyone listed in those two fields will receive a copy of the message as well as a list of the other recipients and their email addresses, so make sure you aren't airing your dirty laundry any more publicly than you intended. The section “Creating and Sending New Mail” discusses addressing messages more thoroughly.

The rest of the reply process is fairly straightforward. You just type in your own text and click Send on the toolbar when you are ready to deliver the message. By default, Outlook Express automatically places the text of the original message in the reply.

When you're composing your reply, you should keep in mind these important points:

How and when messages are deleted depends on what kind of mail server you use. If you receive mail from a POP server, deleted messages remain in the OE6 Deleted Items folder indefinitely, similar to “deleted” files in the Windows Recycle Bin.

You can permanently delete them by right-clicking the Deleted Items folder and choosing Empty 'Deleted Items' Folder from the shortcut menu that appears. If you have an IMAP mail server, the Deleted Items folder is emptied automatically when you log off the mail server.

You can change the way Outlook Express handles items in the Deleted Items folder. To do so, choose Tools, Options, and select the Maintenance tab to customize when and how mail messages are deleted.

Of the many features that make email a versatile method for communication, perhaps the most useful is the capability to send files along with an email message. You can attach any electronic file stored on disk to an email message in Outlook Express and then send it to someone else.

Attaching a file to an outgoing message is easy. In the message composition window, click the Attach button on the toolbar, and locate the file you want to send in the Insert Attachment dialog. After you have selected the file, click Attach. The file attachment should appear in the header information, as shown earlier in Figure 10.7.

Before you send any attached files, consider the bandwidth it will require. Even if you have a very fast network or Internet connection, if the recipient connects to the Internet via a dial-up modem, downloading the attachment could take a long time. In general, you should avoid sending any attachments that are larger than one or two megabytes unless you are sure the recipient can handle them or knows in advance that they're about to receive some rather large files. It's best to ask your recipient first. Many mail servers (especially Web-based accounts) limit the total amount of space a person can use, and many also set a limit to the size of attachments allowed (often capping the attachment size at 1MB).

One more thing: If you or the recipient uses a 56Kbps or slower Internet connection, it is usually a good idea to compress large attachments before you send them. Simply right-click on the document(s) you wish to send, choose Send To, and then Compressed (zipped) Folder. Attach the compressed version to your email.

To open an attachment in a message you receive, right-click the attachment (listed in the header) and choose Save As to save it to disk, or simply open it. If the attachment is a picture file, it often appears in the body of the message as well.

Computer viruses often propagate themselves through email attachments. Hackers seem to get their jollies out of slowing down the Internet or bringing corporate business to a crawl. One way to do this seems to be targeting the most popular email programs, such as Outlook and Outlook Express. As a result, the bulk of email-borne contagion exists in the form of attachments whose payloads sneak through weaknesses in those two programs. Personally, I think that both these programs are excellent email clients, so I don't suggest changing your email program just to avoid the onslaughts of malicious Internet hackers.

As you might suspect, Microsoft doesn't want to lose customers either, so it makes a point of looking for viruses and posting critical updates to its site for easy download. A good approach is to run a Windows System Update regularly. As of SP2, Automatic Updates are turned on for just this reason.

In addition, security has been improved in OE6 to specifically combat this problem. By going to Tools, Options and clicking the Security tab, you'll notice the addition of Virus Protection since the previous version of OE. By default, OE6 will warn you if another program attempts to send a message to contacts in your Address Book. As you may be aware, this is a common way for viruses to spread. I recommend that you keep this option selected.

There is also an option that deals with potential threats from incoming email attachments. If you click the box next to Do Not Allow Attachments to Be Saved or Opened That Could Potentially Be a Virus, you'll be more protected, but your ability to access any attachment to email in OE will be quite limited. If you're diligent about it, a better way of dealing with the possibility of attachment-borne viruses is to carefully look over your incoming email before opening any attachment by following the tips below. I've found that when enabling the automatic feature in OE6, even the most innocuous attachments are prevented from opening. (You can regain access to these attachments simply by returning to the Security dialog box and deselecting this option.)

Yet another option is to download and use one of many available anti-virus programs. http://www.mcafee.com is a reliable source, and its Web site is another good place to check for the latest discovered viruses and how to protect your computer from them.

Contrary to popular belief, simply downloading an infected attachment virtually never harms your computer. With few exceptions, it is only if you open an attached executable file that there could be dire consequences. If possible, save the file attachment on a separate disk, and then scan it with antivirus software.

Be especially wary of

If you use email for much of your personal and business communication, you may like to “sign” outgoing messages with an electronic signature file. These signatures frequently include additional information about you, such as an address, title, phone number, company name, Web URL, or a witty quote. Outlook Express makes it easy to set up a standard signature that will be included in every message you compose. You can configure your own signature by following these steps:

It is possible for OE to send a request along with email you send, asking the recipient to simply click a box to notify you that your email message has been read. This is called a “read receipt.” When typing a message, go to Tools, Request Read Receipt. If there is not already a check mark next to it, click on Request Read Receipt.

Note that this is a request only: The recipient has the option of refusing to send the receipt. Still, it is a helpful tool: If you don't get a receipt, you can follow-up with another email or a phone call.

If you intend to request a read receipt every time you send email, you can change your settings to make it simple. In OE, go to Tools, Options, and click on the Receipts tab. Click the box at the top of the window that says “Request a read receipt for all sent messages.” Consider this carefully; your Inbox could get filled quickly with read receipts, and the significance of receipts could be diluted (and recipients irritated) if a request is attached even to the messages of minor importance that you send. In addition, this window allows you to select your preference for returning read receipts. If you find the pop-up windows to be annoying, choose an option to “never” or “always” send a receipt when requested.

A simple way to enrich email is to apply message formatting using HTML code, the same type of code used to construct Web pages. HTML is the default format for new messages you create in OE6, although replies are typically formatted in whatever manner they were originally sent to you.

Applying special formatting to HTML messages is easy. Outlook Express provides a formatting toolbar similar to what you would see in a word processing program, where you can choose such formatting options as bold, italic, and so on. You also can give HTML messages graphic backgrounds by choosing one of several varieties of “stationery” provided by OE6. To do this, choose Format, Apply Stationery. You can even generate email that looks much like a Web page, complete with pictures (and, heaven forbid, banner ads), as well as links.

One problem with HTML messages is that not all modern email clients can view them properly. Messages formatted in this manner may appear with a huge quantity of gibberish at the end of the message if the recipient doesn't have an HTML-compatible client. Likewise, mailing lists usually cannot handle HTML formatting in messages that are sent to them.

There are two types of plain text message formatting available. Until a few years ago, all email was formatted as simple text, with no special characters or fancy formatting. These early emails utilized a message format called uuencode, short for Unix-to-Unix encode. You don't need to be running UNIX to read uuencoded messages, though; virtually any email client you are likely to encounter—including OE6—can read and send messages in this format.

To address the shortcomings of ASCII-based uuencode email, the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) specification was developed. MIME, which is supported by most modern email clients, allows the use of graphics, file attachments, and some special non-ASCII characters in email messages.

Most mailing lists and users in general can handle MIME messages. To change the default sending formats for outgoing messages, open the Options dialog in OE6. On the Send tab, choose HTML or Plain Text. If you choose Plain Text, your default message format will actually be MIME. If you want to change to uuencode, click the Plain Text Settings button, and choose the appropriate options in the dialog that appears.

Note

Email has fast become an essential method of communication, but for some uses, it might not be secure enough. Hiding or falsifying one's identity on the Internet is easy enough that some unscrupulous person could be masquerading as you or one of your associates. To combat this problem, several companies offer digital IDs that help verify the identity of the sender.

Another threat to the privacy of email is the possibility that messages will be intercepted and read by others (think digital wiretapping). Sending encrypted email will prevent your mail from being read by anyone on the way to your intended recipient.

A digital ID is made up of a private key, a public key, and a digital signature. When you digitally sign a message, two of these three things are added to your email: a public key and your digital signature. This is called a certificate. The private key stays with you.

When you send secure mail, recipients use your digital signature to verify your identity. They use your public key to send encrypted email to you. When you receive the encrypted email, you use your private key to decrypt the message.

The mechanics of how this works are elaborate and a topic that can entertain the most advanced cryptologists and software engineers. What's important is that in order to send or receive secure mail, you will need to have a digital ID. To encrypt messages you send, your Address Book must contain a digital ID for each recipient.

You can obtain a digital ID for yourself by following these steps:

When you have a digital ID, it is simple to add it to a message. To do so

Outlook Express will automatically add your digital ID to your email account when you send your first digitally signed message, by searching your computer for a valid digital ID which matches the email address from which you are sending. If more than one valid digital ID is found, you must choose which ID to add to that email account. Also note that if you have more than one email account, you will need to have a different digital ID for each account from which you want to send secure email.

When others send digitally signed email to you, messages are marked with a red seal in the message header. Outlook Express shows you an explanatory message about digital signatures before displaying the message. If you are online, you can check the validity of the digital ID of the sending party. To do this, choose Tools, Options, Security tab, Advanced, Check for Revoked Digital IDs, Only when Online.

By default, OE adds an entry to your address book whenever you reply to an email you've received. This is an easy way to fatten up your address book quickly. Before your Address Book grows to an unmanageable size, you may want to turn off that feature (see the Troubleshooting notes at the end of this chapter). If you do this, you'll need to know how to add contacts in other ways. A fool-proof way to add someone to your Address Book is by doing the following:

You also can add someone to your address book the old-fashioned way—that is, manually from a business card or other source. In Outlook Express, click on the Addresses icon. This will open up the Address Book. Click on the New icon, and select New Contact. The Properties window, described previously, will open for you to enter information.

To edit a contact later, click on the Addresses icon to open the Address Book. Select the contact that you wish to edit by double-clicking that person's name. The Properties window will now open with a summary of that person's contact information. To change or add information, you need to click on one of the other tabs along the top of the window—the information can not be changed on the Summary tab.

You might find duplicate listings or unwanted contacts in your Address Book. Deleting a contact is simple: Just highlight the entry and click Delete. Be certain you've selected the correct contact, since this action can not be undone.

Sending a single email message to several people is not unusual. However, entering multiple addresses can get tiresome, especially if you frequently send messages to the same group of people.

To simplify this task, you can create distribution lists in the OE6 Address Book. You can group many people into a single list, and when you want to send a message to the group, you simply choose the distribution listing from your Address Book. Distribution lists can be created for co-workers, customers, friends and family, or any other group you communicate with. To create a list, just follow these steps:

A listing for the group then appears in your Address Book. When you are composing email for the group, simply select the group name from your Address Book to automatically send the message to all group members. To delete a group, highlight the group name and click Delete. Note that this deletes the group, but not the group's members, from your Address Book.

A number of people-search directories exist on the Internet to help you locate individuals. Outlook Express does a good job of integrating these search engines into the program, making it easy for you to search for people and add them to your Contacts list.

To find people who aren't in your Address Book, follow these steps:

After setting up an email account or two, you may find that you'd like to change a few things, such as the server name, password, connection preference, and more. To do this, go to Tools, Accounts, click the mail tab, and click Properties. Poke around in here to see all the characteristics that you can change.

Under the General tab, you can change how your name will appear on outgoing mail. Whatever you enter in the Name box will be what the recipient sees. Think about whether you'd like your email to be listed in recipients' inboxes in a casual or formal way, or even with your business name instead. (In other words, enter “Bob Cowart” or “Mr. Robert Cowart” or “Bob's Car Care.”)

You might want to send mail from one email address, but have replies go to a different email address (when recipients click Reply.) To do this, enter the outgoing email address in the Email address box, and the alternate email address in the Reply address box.

Some email accounts (University accounts, for example) require you to connect to the Internet using a specific connection in order to access your email. If you need to change the connection used for an account, open the Internet Accounts dialog and follow these steps:

Some estimate that spam (unsolicited email) constitutes as much as 60% of all Internet traffic. This is an unbelievable waste of bandwidth that could be better used. Then again, look at how much paper “spam” we get in our physical mailboxes every week, and that consumes trees. Don't get me started!

Spammers are very clever about distinguishing between live addresses and dead ones. Spammers often use programs that generate thousands of potentially accurate email addresses, based on known domain names (such as AOL.com, Mindspring.com, or other domains in the publicly viewable domain registries). As explained earlier, one way of “mining” a real address is to send out an email that has image links in it. You may not know that email images can be sent in two different ways: Stored in the email itself, or pointed to by placeholders in the email that direct the email reading program (in this case, Outlook Express) to download the images from a server on the Internet. The former is a good way of ensuring that recipients can see the images even if they are not online at the time they read the email. However, this approach slows down the transmission of the emails because the images increase the file size of the emails. Pumping out spam in this way takes too much time, so spammers use the second method, with an additional benefit. When the recipient views an email (assuming they are online), the links download the images from the spammer's Web server. At that point, the spammer's server notes who is downloading the images and then updates its spam database, marking that address as live.

One way around this problem is to use a less popular email “client” (program), such as Eudora, Pegasus, or a Web-based client such as Yahoo! mail or Hotmail. But I have found that there are incompatibilities of various kinds that I prefer not to deal with. Again, I'd prefer to buttress my defenses and continue to use the industry standard Outlook or Outlook Express. Outlook 2003 already had a defense against this image downloading issue, and it has migrated into Outlook Express. Here's how to use it:

Another advantage of this arrangement pertains to folks using dial-up connections to the Net. In previous Outlook Express versions, viewing an HTML email with external images (that download from a server) would cause the computer to begin a dial-up session. This was annoying.

See more spam-battling techniques at the end of this chapter.

Email programs that can read and execute HTML-formatted email are potential targets for virus authors because HTML email can include scripts. These scripts are little programs that can run when the email is viewed. Microsoft attempts to thwart such vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and Outlook Express via security patches and system updates disseminated via the Windows Update site, but people don't check it as often as they could, and there is often a delay between the outbreak of a virus across the Net and the availability of a fix. However, a more failsafe approach is to turn off Outlook Express's ability to execute HTML email altogether.

As of SP2, Outlook Express can do this via a setting that causes emails to be read using a “rich text” editor instead of the HTML editor. This turns off the part of Outlook Express that would execute malicious HTML code (typically code stored in the HTML header). You won't see images or stuff like font styles, sizes, and color, but you can still read the text just fine.

Here's how to turn off the HTML editor/viewer:

Now whenever you read emails, they will not have HTML formatting displayed, but potential malicious HTML header won't be executed, either.

Sometimes you'll want to display HTML effects, however, because it can be easier to read the message when it's all prettified and whatnot. No biggie. Just do this:

Increasingly, individuals have more than one email account. Outlook Express can be configured to handle multiple email accounts, even if they are on separate servers. For example, I have four email accounts, one from each of my Internet service providers. I can pull all my email into one inbox by setting up the various accounts under a single user identity. When I click on Send/Receive Mail on the OE toolbar, OE goes out and pulls in all the new mail from all four accounts automatically. It's just that simple. How do you set up your system so it can do this? Read on.

Each email account needs to be set up and configured in Outlook Express as explained earlier in this chapter. Simply set up an account for each email address and server you have, using the information provided by each ISP (or email account, if a single ISP has given you multiple email accounts).

Normally, OE6 checks all accounts when looking for new mail, even if they use different servers. Sending and receiving email from different accounts will normally happen automatically and without impediments. You connect to the Internet (whether by dialup service or over your LAN or cable/DSL modem), click Send/Receive, and OE will try to access each server one after another, using the currently active Internet connection. However, there are a couple instances where this gets more complicated:

You can set up an unlimited number of email accounts in OE6. You can even set up multiple accounts using the same email address and server information. Each account can serve as a separate identity for you.

When you compose a new mail message, it is automatically addressed for your default mail account. The default account can be set in the Internet Accounts dialog. You can change the account used for an individual message manually, as follows:

Note

You don't have to receive very much mail to realize that your Inbox can get cluttered in a hurry. The best way to save important mail and stay organized is to organize your mail into folders, just like files are organized on your hard drive.

The process of creating folders and storing messages in them is quite simple:

The new folder appears in the OE6 Folder list under the parent folder. You can simply drag and drop messages from the message list to the designated storage or project folder.

Many email users—especially those who subscribe to mailing lists—receive dozens or even hundreds of messages per day. Wading through all this mail for the really important stuff can be challenging (to say the least), so OE6 includes a mail filtering feature similar to Outlook's Inbox Rules that helps you direct certain kinds of mail to specific locations. For example, you might want to direct all mail from a list you are subscribed to into a special folder where it can be read later.

You can even use mail filters to delete mail you don't want to see at all. Mail can be filtered by content, subject, or sender information. If you are frequently being bothered by someone, you can simply set up OE6 to send all messages from that person to the Deleted Items folder.

To set up a filter:

The rule then appears in the Message Rules dialog with a check mark next to it. You can open this dialog at any time to edit, disable (by clearing the check box), or remove any rules.

To block mail from a specific sender, you can use the Blocked Senders tab of the Message Rules dialog. You can open this tab directly by choosing Tools, Message Rules, Blocked Senders List in Outlook Express. Click Add in the dialog, and type the person's email address in the Add Sender dialog. After you add the address, that person's name appears in your Blocked Senders list. Notice that you can opt to block newsgroup messages from that person as well.

Before leaving on a trip, consider setting up a message rule in Outlook Express to forward all incoming messages to your HTTP mail account (such as Hotmail or Yahoo!). That way, you can read all of your mail on the road, regardless of which of your addresses to which the messages are sent. Of course, in order for this method to work, your computer must remain on while you are away, and OE must be set to check for new messages regularly. This is not the best idea, environmentally speaking, but there are conditions where it will work with no wasted energy, such as if your office computer will be in use by others in your absence.

A better way to check email while away from your computer is to set up POP mail in your HTTP mail account. At your HTTP account online, go to options (or something similar) to enter your POP server settings. Some servers let you differentiate between different mail accounts with color coding of messages. Once this is set up, simply click on the online Inbox or, in some cases, Check Other Mail.

One of the unique aspects of electronic mail is that it can serve as a permanent record of your communications. Mail that seems insignificant now may be invaluable in the future, and many people back up all their correspondence on a regular basis to ensure that a record is kept for all time. You can save copies of individual messages by choosing Save As from the File menu in the message window. Choosing this option opens a standard Windows Save dialog, where you can choose a location and name for the file. It is saved with the .EML extension.

In addition, you might want to use a backup procedure regularly to store messages elsewhere and remove them from OE. If you receive and send thousands of messages a year, removing them and storing them elsewhere (yearly or quarterly) will help keep Outlook Express running efficiently and will free up space on your hard drive.

D:Documents and SettingsOwnerApplication DataMicrosoftAddress BookOwner.wab

A hot topic in email circles today is the subject of commercial advertisements mass-delivered via electronic mail. This type of unsolicited mail is generally referred to as Spam, a name attributed in Internet lore to a Monty Python musical skit pertaining to the pink meat product of the same name. This type of mail is so offensive to some people that a few states have even enacted laws against it.

Some groups are also working with the U.S. Federal Government to ban unsolicited electronic mail and place identification requirements on people and organizations who send advertisements via email. Countless anti-Spam organizations exist, with one of the foremost being CAUCE, the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (www.cauce.org).

The real problem with Spam is that scam operations are rampant and difficult to detect. Spam also has an impact on Internet traffic, requiring a considerable amount of bandwidth that many people feel would be better used for other purposes.

If you have been online for very long, you've almost certainly received some Spam yourself. You can protect yourself from receiving a lot of Spam by taking some basic precautionary measures:

Alas, no matter how careful you are, some spam will get through. Many spams contain instructions for getting yourself removed from their lists. Beware that following their instructions may result in even more spam, because some unscrupulous spammers use this trick to find active addresses. To avoid this, simply delete the messages.

You can also check with your local, state, or federal laws from time to time to find out whether there are regulations against spam that apply to your account. If so, you may have legal recourse against spammers. The CAUCE organization mentioned earlier is a good starting point to search online for information about laws in your area.

The server will not accept my password.

Many email servers are case sensitive. If the Caps Lock key on your keyboard is on, it could cause the password to be entered in the wrong case. Sometimes an inadvertent space can be the culprit as well. This is true even if you have configured Outlook Express to remember your email address so that you don't have to type it in every time you check mail.

I don't like the name Outlook Express is using to identify me in outgoing messages.

The name Outlook Express uses could be indicative of several things. First, if you have multiple accounts or identities configured in Outlook Express, make sure that you are selecting the desired one in the From: field when you send the messages. You can also open the Internet Accounts dialog and check the Properties sheet for your email address(es). The Name field under User Information on the General tab is the name used to identify you on outgoing mail.

I have several mail accounts, but OE6 doesn't check all of them when I click Send/Recv.

Open the Properties sheet for each of your mail accounts in the Internet Accounts dialog. On the General tab is an option labeled Include This Account When Receiving Mail or Synchronizing. Make sure a check mark appears next to this option for each of your mail accounts.

Several people in my Contacts List shouldn't be there, including spammers.

By default, OE6 adds an entry to the Address Book for every source to which you reply. You can disable this feature by opening the Options dialog in the Tools menu. On the Send tab, disable the option labeled Automatically Put People I Reply to in My Address Book. Then, to remove unwanted entries from your Address Book, highlight the contact and click Delete.

People on my mailing list are sending me hate mail because of machine characters or strange attachments that accompany each of my posts.

HTML messages are not compatible with most electronic mailing lists. Change your default mail-sending format to Plain Text on the Send tab of the OE6 Options dialog.

Alternatively, you can have OE remind you of specific people in your address book that request Plain Text messages. Open the Address Book and click on the name of a person who requests Plain Text mail. Click on the Name tab, and put a check mark in the box next to Send E-Mail Using Plain Text Only. When you try to send HTML email to this person, a reminder window will pop up asking if you'd like OE to reformat the email to Plain Text.

When I try to go online and check mail, an error occurs stating that the server could not be found.

Assuming that the server information for your account is correct, you probably have a problem with your connection. OE6 should automatically dial a connection if one is not present, but if it doesn't, open the Internet Properties icon in the Windows Control Panel. On the Connection tab, select the option Dial Whenever a Network Connection Is Not Present, and click OK to close the dialog.

I want/don't want Outlook Express to automatically check for mail periodically.

Go to the General tab of the Options dialog. If the option Check for New Messages Every XX Minutes is checked, OE6 automatically checks for new mail at the specified interval. Just below that option, you can also specify whether you want OE6 to automatically dial a connection at this time.

My Outlook Express folders seem to have disappeared.

They might be still on disk, just not in Outlook Express anymore. Use these steps: