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Outlook Express Tips

You'll often work in Outlook Express because of the prevalence of e-mail in today's online world. You can make Outlook Express more enjoyable by utilizing some of the following tips.

Compress Files

If you store many sent and retrieved e-mail messages or subscribe to a lot of newsgroups, your disk space can fill up quickly. To help, you can reduce the amount of space consumed by messages and newsgroup files by selecting Tools, Options, and clicking the Maintenance tab. When you click the Compact button, Outlook Express compresses your message and file space.

If you click Remove Messages instead of Compact, Outlook Express removes the message bodies but retains all message headers (descriptions) so that you'll know which messages you've already read. (Outlook Express places a read icon next to your read messages as long as you've saved the headers.)

If you click Delete, you save the most space because Outlook Express removes all newsgroup messages and files from your disk; but you have to download those newsgroup messages and files if you ever need them again. Reset performs a cleanup that deletes both message headers and bodies.

Clean Up Your Deleted Folder

Like files that you delete to the Recycle Bin from within Windows Explorer, e-mail messages that you delete from your Inbox and Outbox don't really go away; they move to your Deleted Items folder. If you want to free space completely of unwanted, old e-mail messages, routinely open your Deleted Items folder and delete the messages from there. You have to confirm the delete because Outlook Express knows that the files are truly gone when you delete them from the Deleted Items folder.

If you decide not to delete one or more messages from the Deleted Items folder, you can drag messages from the Deleted Items folder to any other folder at the left of the Outlook Express screen. Feel free to create new folders from the File menu or by right-clicking over the list of folders if you want to create an organized set of folders. You can create a folder for your business correspondence and one for your personal correspondence. You then can keep your Inbox, Outbox, and Deleted Items folders free from messages that should appear in other folders.

Create a Personal Signature

You cannot sign your e-mail with your handwriting, but Outlook Express's signature feature is the next-best thing. An e-mail signature is text that appears at the end of your e-mail. Your signature might be just your name, or you might want to close all correspondence with your name, address, and phone number.

Outlook Express enables you to add a signature to your e-mail messages, your newsgroup postings, or both. To create the signature, select Tools, Options and click the Signatures tab. You can select a default font to use for the message as well as a signature if you click the Signatures button to display the dialog box shown in Figure 24.7.

Figure 24.7 Create a signature for the bottom of your messages and postings.

Your signature can come from text you type at the Text option or from a text file on disk that you select at the File option.

Check E-mail Often

If you receive much e-mail throughout the day, select Tools, Options and decrease the time that Outlook Express waits before checking for new e-mail. If you read your e-mail only once or twice a day, you might want to check for new e-mail less often than the 30-minute default so that your system runs more efficiently when you don't want e-mail. You must have Outlook Express running before it can check for new e-mail.

Outlook Express emits a sound when new e-mail arrives. When you hear the sound, it's time to check the Outlook Express Inbox for new messages. Check or uncheck the option on the Options General page labeled Play Sound When New Messages Arrive to request or cancel the new message sound. (Open the Control Panel's Sounds icon to change the sound that plays when you get a new message.)

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