Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Windows XP in 24 Hours

By Greg Perry

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Introduction
  • Part I: Wake Up with Windows XP
  • Hour 1. Taking a Bird's-Eye Look at Windows XP
  • Hour 2. Getting Started with Windows XP
  • Hour 3. Managing the Windows XP Interface
  • Part II: Morning Windows Desktop Exploration
  • Hour 4. Working with the My Computer Window
  • Hour 5. Navigating Files with Windows Explorer
  • Hour 6. Calling for Help
  • Hour 7. Improving Your Windows Desktop Experience
  • Part III: Early Afternoon Windows Exploration
  • Hour 8. Installing Programs with Windows XP
  • Hour 9. Finding Files, Folders, and Friends
  • Hour 10. Using the Desktop Accessories
  • Part IV: Late Afternoon Internet Integration
  • Hour 11. Surfing the Web with Internet Explorer
  • Hour 12. Tying Windows into the Web
  • Hour 13. Networking with Windows XP
  • Hour 14. Managing E-mail and Newsgroups with Outlook Express
    • The E-mail World
    • Managing E-mail with Outlook Express
    • Using Newsgroups
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • Part V: An Evening with Advanced Windows
  • Hour 15. Exploring Your Hardware Interface
  • Hour 16. Understanding Printing and Fonts
  • Hour 17. Using Windows on the Road
  • Hour 18. Giving Windows XP a Tune-Up
  • Hour 19. Managing Your Hard Drives
  • Hour 20. Tinkering with the Advanced System Tools
  • Part VI: Having Fun at Nighttime
  • Hour 21. Using Media Player
  • Hour 22. Picturing Windows XP Graphics
  • Hour 23. Making Movies with Windows XP
  • Hour 24. Advanced Windows XP Tips
  • Part VII: Appendixes
  • Appendix A. Differences Between the Windows Home and Professional Edition
  • Appendix B. Glossary
  • Appendix C. Answers to Quizzes

Managing E-mail with Outlook Express

Outlook Express offers benefits for e-mail users. Outlook Express supports several formats within an e-mail message. You can send and receive text data, binary data (compressed data such as programs and graphics), sound files, and video as e-mail. In addition, Outlook Express enables you to store HTML code inside your message so that you can customize the look of your message. A message you send might look like a Web page. You can even send complete Web pages as e-mail inside Outlook Express. If you embed a URL inside an e-mail message, the recipient can click that URL and go straight to that site on the Web (as long as the recipient uses Outlook Express or some other e-mail package that converts URLs to hyperlinks automatically).

Here are some of the additional features of Outlook Express's e-mail capabilities:

• Send or receive e-mail in plain, unformatted text to speed performance at the loss of seeing formatted messages.
• Attach files to your messages.
• Provide full support for http://Hotmail.com users so they can send and receive e-mail messages as well as chat online with other MSN Messenger users. (Hour 12, "Tying Windows into the Web," explains http://Hotmail.com and MSN Messenger, as well as the Passport that makes both easier to use.)
• Check spelling before you send a message.
• Reply to messages and forward messages to other recipients.
• Connect to Web-based e-mail address search engines to find people's addresses. (See Hour 9, "Finding Files, Folders, and Friends," for more information on Web searching.)
• Send and receive mail to and from multiple Internet accounts.

Setting Up Outlook Express

The following To Do item explains how to set up Outlook Express for use within Internet Explorer.

To Do: Using Outlook Express and Internet Explorer Together

1. Start Internet Explorer and sign in to your Internet account.
2. Select Tools, Internet Options and click the Programs tab to display the Internet Options dialog box, as shown in Figure 14.1.
3. Select Outlook Express from the second and third options labeled E-mail and Newsgroups.
4. Click OK to close the Internet Options dialog box. When you send or receive mail, Internet Explorer will now use Outlook Express as your e-mail program.

Figure 14.1 Make sure that Internet Explorer knows about Outlook Express.

After you've told Internet Explorer that you want to use Outlook Express as your e-mail program, Internet Explorer remembers your setup and uses Outlook Express every time you send or receive e-mail.

Storing E-mail Contacts

To improve your e-mail productivity, you'll want to store many e-mail addresses in Outlook Express's address book. By storing e-mail addresses of people with whom you regularly communicate, called contacts, you subsequently only need to select the recipient by name when you want to send an e-mail instead of typing the e-mail address for each e-mail message that you send.

The following To Do item explains how to build your e-mail contact list in Outlook Express. Outlook Express makes adding names and e-mail addresses easy and, as you will see, Outlook Express enables you to add new contacts in several ways.

To Do: Adding Names and E-mail Addresses to Outlook Express

1. Start Outlook Express.
2. If you have signed up for MSN Messenger (see Hour 12), your Messenger contacts will automatically appear in the Contacts windowpane. You will not need to add these again because Outlook Express retrieves these contacts from the Web.
3. Click the Addresses toolbar button to display your Address Book, shown in Figure 14.2.
   

   Figure 14.2 Your Address Book contains a list of your e-mail contacts.

4. Click the New button, then select New Contact from the dropdown list that appears, to open a new Properties window with a blank set of fields. Each tab at the top of the window, such as Home, Business, and Personal, provides a means by which you can enter as much or as little information about your contact as you want. At a minimum, you should enter your new contact's name and e-mail address.

5. Click the OK button to save your contact's information.
6. When you receive e-mail, you can quickly save the sender's contact information by clicking Tools, Add Sender to Address Book from Outlook Express's menu. Outlook Express adds the contact's name and e-mail address. You can then right-click over the contact's name in the Contacts windowpane, select Properties, and enter any additional information that you want to add.

Sending Mail with Outlook Express

The following To Do item explains how to send various forms of e-mail to recipients. Outlook Express has many options, but you can send e-mail messages and files to others very easily without worrying too much about what else is under Outlook Express's hood.

To Do: Sending E-mail from Outlook Express

1. Start Internet Explorer and sign in to your Internet account.
2. Click the toolbar's Mail button and select New Message from the menu that drops down. (You can also click the Taskbar's Outlook Express icon if you've displayed the Quick Launch toolbar or select Outlook Express from the Start menu.) The New Message dialog box opens, as shown in Figure 14.3.
3. Type your recipient's e-mail address in the To field or click the To button to select the recipient if you've saved the name in your Outlook Express address list.
   

   Figure 14.3 You can now send a message to one or more recipients.

4. Use the Cc (Carbon copy) field to send copies of your message to another recipient. The recipient will know that the message was copied to him. If you enter an e-mail address in the Bcc (Blind carbon copy) field, the To and Cc recipients will not know that the Bcc recipients got copies of the message. If you do not see the Bcc box, select View, All Headers, and the Bcc field will appear beneath your carbon copy field.
5. Enter a subject line. Get in the habit of entering a subject so that your recipients can file your messages by subject.
6. Press the Tab or Shift+Tab key to move from field to field. When you type the message in the message area, a scrollbar appears to enable you to scroll through messages that don't fit inside the window completely. Use the formatting toolbar above the message area to apply formatting, color, and even numbered and bulleted lists to your message. You must be careful, however, to make sure that your recipients have an e-mail program capable of reading all the formatting that Outlook Express can produce. Unless you send plain text messages, your recipient might not be able to read your message clearly without Outlook Express or a fully compatible e-mail program.
7. If you want to attach one or more files to your message, click the Attach toolbar button (the one with the paper clip) and select your file from the Insert Attachment dialog box that appears. (The Insert, File Attachment menu option also includes attachments.)
8. To send the message, click the Send button and the message goes on its way toward the recipients.

Sending e-mail messages and files requires only that you know the person's e-mail address or that you've stored the address in your Outlook Express addresses. This address collection becomes your Windows Address Book, available for you to use in other programs as well. Attach files of any type to your message and the recipient will receive the message and the files.

Sending Web Pages as E-mail

You can send entire Web pages or any file composed of the Web page's HTML code by following the next To Do item.

To Do: Sending Web Pages Inside E-mail

1. Start Internet Explorer and sign in to your Internet account.
2. Display the Web page that you want to send to somebody. (You can send the page to your own e-mail account for a test.)
3. Click the toolbar's Mail button.
4. Select Send Page. If the Web page is complicated, it might be considered a read-only Web page that cannot be edited. If so, Internet Explorer displays a message telling you that your recipient might receive the message as an attached file or as a read-only file. In this case, if you are sending the page to yourself or to someone you know has Internet Explorer, send the page as a read-only page.
5. The e-mail window opens so that you can select a recipient and add copies to others if you like. You can see the Web page at the bottom of the window as shown in Figure 14.4. Now that's quite a fancy e-mail message!
6. Click the Send button to send the Web page.

Figure 14.4 The recipient will see the Web page when viewing this e-mail

Receiving E-mail

You can receive and organize the e-mail that people send to you by following this To Do item.

To Do: Receiving and Managing E-mail in Outlook Express

1. Start Outlook Express. Click the Inbox icon in the Folders windowpane if the Inbox icon is not selected. You will see any existing e-mail and contacts, as Figure 14.5 shows.
   

   Figure 14.5 Check your e-mail from this window.

2. E-mail comes to your Inbox (the preview area) at regular intervals, but Outlook Express does not constantly check for new mail because your Internet connection would slow down because of the mail check. At any time, you can manually check for new mail and send any that has yet to be sent by clicking the toolbar's Send/Receive button or by selecting from the Tools, Send and Receive menu option. You don't have to be signed on to the Internet to create or read e-mail after the e-mail arrives in your Inbox.
3. The Outbox area (you can click on the Folder list to see your Outbox contents) holds items that you've readied to send but that have not actually gone out yet. When your Outbox contains unsent mail, the Outbox icon changes to show that mail is still there unsent.
4. As you click on the headers in the Inbox, a preview appears for that message in the lower pane. (Drag the center bar up or down to make more or less room for the headers.) If you double-click on an Inbox item, a window opens so that you can view the message from a larger window without the other screen elements getting in the way.
5. Delete mail you do not want by selecting one or more message headers and dragging them to the Deleted Items icon. Deleted Items acts like the Windows Recycle Bin. Mail does not really go away until you delete items from the Deleted Items area by clicking on the Deleted Items icon and removing unwanted mail. You can also delete mail by clicking the mail item and pressing Delete.
6. You can easily reply to a message's author, or to the entire group if you are one of several who was sent mail, by clicking the Reply or Reply All toolbar button. In addition, when reading e-mail, you can compose a new message by clicking on the toolbar's Compose Message button.
7. Create new folders to store e-mail that you want to keep for future reference. Right-click over the Local Folders icon and select New Folder. Type a name for the folder and press Enter to see the new folder. You could create a folder for business correspondence and one for personal correspondence that you've received and want to keep. When an e-mail comes in to your Inbox that you want to save, drag that e-mail's icon from the Inbox window to its appropriate folder.

Figure 14.6 The Outlook Express folder shows this one-step usage screen.

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