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Options in Configuring Your Email

You’ve probably heard the cliché about the technician who confronts the most complicated problems at work, but at home his VCR is still blinking 12:00 because it’s too much trouble to figure out how to program the clock.

E-mail is a lot like that. Most e-mail programs have numerous options and configurations to make them into flexible and versatile tools, and yet the average user never gets beyond the capability to just send and receive e-mail for a single account. Once that’s working, the idea of getting in there and tweaking it seems like more trouble than it’s worth.

If this sounds like you, today’s tech tip should help you get more ‘bang for the buck’ from your e-mail program, as we talk about:

1.0 How to configure an email client program.

2.0 How to check for multiple email accounts from one program.

3.0 How to have multiple users using the same email program.

4.0 How to get your email from more than one location or computer (i.e. office, home, mobile laptop).

Configuring email – There are many email programs to choose from. Most of us probably use Outlook or its little brother Outlook Express but other popular choices include Netscape, Eudora, Pegasus Mail and NetMail. Each of these programs looks and acts a little bit different but all require the same basic configuration settings and you should have them at hand before you start creating your new email account. We’ll explain each of these later, but the basic configuration settings are:

Login user name and password
Email address / reply email address
POP incoming mail server
SMTP outgoing mail server
Mail authentication

This information would be provided either by your ISP or your network administrator but you should make a record of it and then store it securely, since this is all that is needed to check your email anywhere.

Outlook Express (OE) always gets installed with Windows, so for this tech tip we will use OE as the example for configuring your email. If this is the first time you are opening your OE, it will automatically prompt you to create an email account. If not, go to TOOLS- ACCOUNTS – Mail tab. Then click on ADD – MAIL. It will now ask for your Display Name. This is the name that a recipient would see in front of your email address. After typing in your name, click on Next. The program will now ask for your email address, which you will type in and click Next again.

Email Server Names is the next window, which has a pull-down list for the type of incoming mail server you have. If you are setting up a Hotmail account this will be HTTP. Otherwise, it will usually be a POP3 server, although you may occasionally encounter IMAP. The incoming POP3 server is the mail server name that was given to you by the ISP, in a form like MAIL.DOMAIN-NAME.COM. Type this name into the appropriate box. The outgoing SMTP server might be a different server but most of the time it will be the same machine as the incoming server. In either case, type in its name and click Next to continue.

Internet Mail Logon will ask you for your Account Name, which is your user login name, and for your password. There is a box to check so OE will remember the password for you, which is convenient but less secure. If nobody else has access to your machine, go ahead and check it. Another checkbox asks if your ISP requires Secure Password Authentication (SPA). Clicking Next and Finish completes the configuration of your email client.

You can now send and receive emails. If for some reason you are having problems at this point in connecting to your mail server, you may need to add some additional security settings to your configuration. Go to TOOLS- ACCOUNT- Mail tab to select the email account you have created and then click on the Properties. Once the account properties window opens up, select the Server tab. Check the box that says “My server requires authentication.”

Managing multiple email accounts from one OE is a breeze. You can check each account separately, and also have the outgoing mail show a different sender’s display name. To create an additional e-mail account, simply go through the above steps again. This time though, you must choose which one will be your default mail account. OE will assume any mail you create, reply to or forward will be from the default account unless you put in a reply email address.

If the different accounts are used by different people, for instance a family that shares a single computer, OE has an option that lets each person access their own account as if it were a separate OE program, which retains the privacy and organization of each account. To do this, click on Files – Identities – Add New Identity. Type in your unique identity name and add a password for your own security so nobody else can access your email account. You will now be prompted if you would like to switch to this identity. Click Yes. OE will restart as if it was freshly opened, with a prompt asking if you would like to use OE as your default email program. You can now create your new email account as explained earlier. To change from one user/identity to another, go to File-Switch Identity, and then choose which identity to run.

Here’s another scenario: You will be traveling and will want to check your e-mail while you are away, from your hotel, a library or wherever you can find Internet access. However, when you get home you’ll want to have those messages available on your home or office computer for reference. One way to do this is to configure OE leave a copy of each email on the server. This must be done on whatever machine you are using to access your account, not from your home machine. Go to Tools-Accounts- Mail and click on Properties for your email account. Click on the Advance tab and at the bottom you will see a box that says “Leave copy of message on server.” Mark this box and now you are safe to check your email from the road.

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