How to Set up an Outlook Express Email Account

Your Internet Service Provider has probably given you the option to set up more than one email address. Most come with at least five. So you're not limited to just the one. If somebody else in your household wants his/her own address, you should be able to do it. You'll learn how to configure a new address right now (We're using Outllook Express, the most popular Email software.)

To set up an email address, make sure you are looking at an Outlook Express screen and not a New email screen. Then do the following.

• From the menu bar, click on Tools
• From the drop down menu that appears, click on Accounts (one click, left mouse button)

• When you click on Accounts, you get the Internet Accounts dialogue box popping up. Click the Mail tab at the top to see the following:

The Mail tab shows you all the email accounts that you have set up. In the image above, there are no email accounts set up yet. To set up an email account, do the following:

• Click on the Add button in the top right hand corner
• A popup menu appears
• Click Mail with your left mouse button

When you click on Mail, you get an Account Wizard popping up, which will ask you a series of question. We'll run through the various pages of the Wizard in the next part.

In the last part, we left it at the point where the Email Account Wizard pops up. We'll continue right now.

When the Wizard first starts, it will look like this:

• Type in a name you want for display purposes. You can type in anything you like here. It doesn't really matter because Outlook Express will completely ignore the name you pick!
• Click the "Next" button when you're done. The screen will change:

You need to type in an email address. Type in the email address you got from your Internet Service Provider.

• Once you have entered the email address, click Next. You'll get the following screen

It looks a very daunting screen, so let's break it down.

Your Incoming mail server is probably a POP3 one, so leave the drop down box as it is. The first text box is Incoming mail (POP3, IMAP or HTTP) server. You can usually get these details from your Service Provider's homepage. But yours will probably be a POP or POP3 address. This is a method used to receive emails. The format to type into the text box is this

pop.provider.com

So if your Service Provider was Home and Learn, you'd enter this

pop.homeandlearn.co.uk

The next text box to fill in is "Outgoing mail (SMTP) server". SMTP is the method used for sending emails. The format to use is

smtp.provider.com

So if your Service Provider was Home and Learn, you'd enter this

smtp.homeandlearn.com

In the picture below, we have entered some fake POP and SMTP details

• Click the "Next" button at the bottom when you are finished
• The next screen is this one:

• The Account name is the one you got from your Service Provider. They might have given you a password, too. If they did, enter your Password in the text box. Unless your Service Provider has told you otherwise, DON'T put a tick in the box for Log on using Secure Password Authentication.
• When you're done, click the "Next" button
• There's nothing left to fill in, and you are invited to click the Finish button. Click the Finish button and you'll return to the Internet Accounts dialogue box
• Your new Account will be there:

The Account name is a bit messy. Outlook Express has simply taken the name of the Incoming Server - pop.type_your_isp_here.com. To change this to something more memorable, click the Properties button to the right, or simply double click the name of your account. You'll see this dialogue box:

Delete the text at the top, the one highlighted in blue in the image. Then type something of your own:

Click OK and you'll get back to the Internet Accounts screen. You should see your new name appear, under Account:

When you're done, click the Close button on the Internet Accounts dialogue box. You'll be taken back to the main Outlook Express screen. To check if the account has been set up, we can click on the Send/Recv icon in the main Outlook Express screen.

As you can see, our new account has been added at the bottom. It was a success!

In the next lesson, we'll have a look at email attachments.