Microsoft Outlook Express

Outlook Express is the Email and News program that comes with Internet Explorer 4.x. It enables you to send and receive email and receive and post to newsgroups.

To run Outlook Express for email, either run the program directly or run it from inside Internet Explorer.

When the program is open, you will get a screen looking like this:

Checking the email settings
Before you can use Outlook Express you need to make sure the settings and preferences are set correctly. There are two ways to get to the preferences from the main Outlook Express window (above).

The first way is to click the Edit menu then select Preferences

or the second way is to click the Preferences icon on the Outlook Express Toolbar

Outlook Express: Preferences
Once you have selected Preferences this is the screen you will see:

From here you can set all the appropriate email settings.

Sending Email
To write an email to send to someone click on the New icon on the toolbar (or click the File menu and select New then Mail Message) and an email window will appear.

Here you need to put the email address of the person you are sending the message to in the To box. If you are sending it to more than one email address, put one in the To box and put the other email addresses in the CC box separated by commas.

Next put a title for the email in the Subject box. This will give an idea to the person you are sending the message to of what the email is about before they read it.
Finally click on the blank lower half of the window and this is were you type the message you want to send.

When finished click the Send icon on the messages toolbar and this will connect you to the Internet, if you are not already connected, and send the message. If you do not want the message sent immediately, click the File menu and select the option Work Offline before clicking the Send icon.

Receiving Mail
To check if you have any email waiting for and to collect it if you do, you can either:

click the Send & Receive icon

or click the Tools menu and select Send & Receive then Send & Receive All

This will then connect you to the Internet (if you were not already connected) and send any email waiting to be sent and check to see if you have any email to receive.

If you have either then a Progress window will appear to indicate what is happening.

Once you have done this you can then disconnect and read any email you have at your leisure.