How to use Outlook Express for your e-mail Outlook Express is a popular e-mail program created by Microsoft. This packet will teach you a little bit about this program. This packet will cover how to receive your mail, create mail, send mail, and create and maintain an address book. It will also briefly tell you a bit about messaging rules to stop unwanted mail. Lets get started. First, you need to double-click on Outlook Express. A dial-up box will appear. Click the connect button to connect to the Internet. After you get connected the Internet, your ready create your new messages. To create a new message, click the create mail button, in the upper left hand corner. It looks like this On this window, the first thing is to type an e-mail address in the to line. This is for whom you are going to send the message to. 1
After that, click on the Subject line, and type the subject of the message. The subject is a brief statement saying what the e-mail is about. After the subject is filled out, its time to type the actual e-mail, in the body. The body is the large empty space in this window. 2
After you have the message all typed out, click the send button towards the upper left. It looks like this If your computer is connected when you click Send, it will send the message immediatley. If you are not connected, it will put the message into a special folder called outbox. The next time you click the send/receive button or open Outlook Express, it will send any messages that are in the outbox and receive any new mail that was sent to you. Whenever you receive new mail from somebody, it is very easy to add them to your address-book. The address-book is a list of people or contacts you know. Using the address book, you can maintain their information. Information such as their name, nickname, phone number, e-mail address, street address, work info, personal information (spouse name, number of children etc) and if they have a web page or not can be stored in the address book. To add someone to the address book, simply right click on the message and left click on add sender to address book. This will add that person to the address book. When you do this, it doesn t automatically put all their information in, which is something that you can do manually. To enter the rest of their information, click on the button addresses towards the top. A window will appear like this. 3
To add more information to a contact, double click on that contact. It will open a window that looks like this. Just click through the different tabs at the top of the window to add in the User Name information, Home information, Business information, etc When done with that user, click ok, and follow the same steps for every contact that you wish to edit. This is how you create and maintain and address book. Virus Protection: All e-mail that goes through your NCATS e-mail address will be scanned for viruses. This is a free service to our customers. If we find a virus, the infected e-mail will be removed, and an e-mail message will be sent to the sender and proposed recipient(s) to let them know what happened. For maximum virus protection, NCATS recommends that you purchase a virus scan program and keep it updated. Junk e-mail (SPAM) SPAM is a term that has been dedicated to junk mail on the Internet. NCATS provides a free SPAM filtering service. This means that we subject all e-mail to a number of tests that determine if it may be junk SPAM mail that you probably don t want. If the tests indicate the message is probably SPAM, the word SPAM: is added to the subject of the message. This is an optional service, and we can turn it off for your account if you want. NCATS recommends that you just delete SPAM, especially if you don t know who it s from. In some cases, if you try to unsubscribe to a SPAM message, it just lets the sender know that they found an active e-mail account. Sometimes SPAM may start to come in great numbers or may get so indecent you don t even want to see it. The remainder of this document is optional, but it will show you how to make that SPAM go right into your deleted folder using a message rule. 4
First, you have to click on tools, message rules, and mail This will bring up a window that looks like this Here, you can create e-mail processing rules. To setup SPAM filtering, put a checkmark in Where the subject line contains specific words, go to #2, and check Delete it. Then in the third line, click on the blue words contains specific words. Type in SPAM: (NOTE: the colon must be included) 5
Click the add button. This adds the word SPAM: the list of words in the Subject line, which will automatically be deleted. Now click down to #4, and type in SPAM Rule, where it says New Mail Rule #1 When your screen looks like the one above, click OK 6
If you have added the rule correctly, Outlook will move all the SPAM directly to the deleted folder when it is receiving it. If you don t want to use up your time receiving all those SPAM messages, call our tech support number and we can setup a similar rule on our mail server to delete the messages before you even receive them. Now should know use most of the main features in Outlook Express. You should have no trouble creating mail, and sending it out to all of your family and friends. If you still have any questions about Outlook Express or have any questions about your computer, please feel free to give NCATS a call. We have phone support from 8:00 AM until 7:00 PM at 924-8872. Or you can e-mail us at helpdesk@ncats.net. Thank you for choosing NCATS as your Internet Service Provider (ISP). 7