How to setup Outlook Express on a Windows machine

Setting up Outlook Express can be confusing, especially if it's not part of your job description. The exact settings will always vary depending on how you connect to the Internet and with whom you have your email.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• A computer.
• Outlook Express installed on that computer.
• A working Internet connection (You can setup Outlook Express without this, but you cannot get email once it is setup.)

1. Starting from scratch, Open the Outlook Express program. Once it is open, click on "Tools" and then "Accounts".
2. From here, click on "Add" and select "Mail".
3. This will open the account setup wizard. The "Display Name" in an internal organization method for your email account. Unless you want different information, just enter your name here, i.e. John/Jane Doe.
   
   Click "Next".
4. In this window, type in the email address that you will be sending email from or want people to respond to.
   
   Click "Next".
5. The needed information from this screen depends on where your email service is located.
   
   Generaly, the type of email server is "POP3", unless your email service says otherwise, leave this alone.
   
   Your incoming and outgoing mail server names must be supplied to you by your email service. In general, incoming mail servers usually look like "pop.yourdomain.com" and outgoing mail servers usually look like "smtp.yourdomain.com".
   
   This is by no means a hard and fast rule. So if you are unclear in any way, contact your email provider.
6. In the Internet Mail login window, is where you supply your email account login. It can be just the first part of your email address, i.e. johndoe, or it can be your entire email address, i.e. [e-mail]. This depends on your email provider.
   
   Click "Next".
7. Congratulations! Your email account is setup.
8. The Steps from here on out are not all necessary, but may have to be made, depending on your email provider and your Internet Service Provider (ISP). With ever increasing security on the Internet, complications arise.
9. To look at the details, or properties, of your account, select the email account you wish to view and click on the "Properties" button.
10. Here are the "General" properties for your account. Most of this is fairly straight forward. If you want people to reply to a different email address than your main email account, add that different email address in the "Reply To:" field.
    
    Be aware, depending on how the SPAM filtering is setup by the recipiant email service, this may cause the email to be blocked.
11. This step is important for Sending email. With the increasing security of different ISP's, many now require you to supply the password for your account to send email. This is to make sure that the email sent is coming from a real account and now an unknown source.
    
    To set this up, put a check mark in the box that says "My server requires authentication".
12. In the "Advaced" tab of the "Properties" window. This can be odd, but don't worry. If you are recieving an error saying somthing to the nature of "Unable to connect to smtp.yourdomain.com" and your email company has confirmed that the mail server is running, you may have to make a few changes in this window.
    
    Contact your email provider and ask if they have an alternate "port" to send email from. If they do, change the "Outgoing (SMTP)" port from 25 to what ever number your email service provider tells you.
    
    If this still does not work, chances are that your email provider is different from your ISP and your ISP is blocking all outgoing email transmissions. See the next step.
13. Since all outgoing email transmissions have been blocked by your local ISP, they will have set you up with your own email account with them. That's fine, Just change the outgoing mail server to what they provide. Check the box saying "My Outgoing mail server requires authentication" and then click the "Settings" button. Here make sure to change it so that user name and password reflect the account that your ISP has supplied to you.
14. That should take care of almost everything. If you are having further problems, contact your email provider. You may have to contact Microsoft if you are having problems with the program that are unrelated to email services.