When you use Outlook Express as your e-mail program, you read the messages that you receive in an area known as the Inbox. To open the Inbox in Outlook Express and read your e-mail messages, take these steps:
1. Open Outlook Express by clicking the Outlook Express button on the Quick Launch toolbar on the taskbar.
When browsing Web pages in Internet Explorer, you can also open the Inbox in Outlook Express by clicking the Mail button on the Standard Buttons bar and then choosing Read Mail on the pop-up menu that appears.
2. Click the Send/Recv (for Send and Receive) button on the Outlook Express toolbar, or press Ctrl+M, to have Outlook Express check your Mail server and download any new mes-sages and switch to the Inbox view.
As soon as you click the Send/Recv button, Outlook Express opens a connection to your Mail server, where it checks for any new messages to download. New messages are then down-loaded to your computer. The program also selects the Inbox view so that the Outlook Express pane is replaced with two vertical Inbox panes: the one above, which lists the messages in the Inbox, and the one immediately below, which displays the first part of the text of the currently selected message.
You can also open this Inbox view either by clicking the Inbox icon in the Folders pane or the hyperlink in the Outlook Express pane on the right that tells you the number of unread Mail messages in your Inbox.
Descriptions of any new messages appear in bold at the bottom of the list in the upper pane of the Inbox, which is divided into five columns: Priority (indicated by an exclama-tion mark), Attachments (indicated by the paper clip), From,
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Subject, and Received (showing both the date and time that the e-mail message was downloaded on your computer).
Note that mail messages that you haven’t yet read are indicated not only by bold type, but also by a sealed-envelope icon in the From column. Mail messages that you haveread are indicated by an opened-envelope icon.
3. To read one of your new messages, click any column of the description in the upper pane of the Inbox.
The text of the message that you select appears in the lower-right pane of the Inbox, and the From and Subject information appears on the bar dividing the upper-right pane from the lower-right pane. If the message has one or more files attached to it, a paper clip appears on the right side of this bar.
4. (Optional) To open the file or files attached to the e-mail mes-sage with its native program (or at least one that can open the file), click the paper-clip icon and then click the name of the file to open in the pop-up menu. To save the attachments as separate files on your hard drive, click Save Attachments on this pop-up menu (or click File➪Save Attachments on the Outlook Express menu bar) and then select the folder in which to save the files in the Save Attachments dialog box.
Sometimes, you may need to get a hard copy of the message to share with other, less fortunate workers in the office who don’t have e-mail. (If they do have e-mail, forward the message to them instead, as I cover in optional Step 8.)
5. (Optional) To print the contents of an e-mail message, click the Print button on the Outlook Express toolbar or choose File➪ Print (Ctrl+P) and then click OK in the Print dialog box.
Occasionally, an e-mail message will contain some information that you want to be able to reuse in other documents without having to retype it. Rather than having to open the message in the Outlook Express Inbox and then copy the contents to a new document via the Clipboard, you can save it as either a text file or an HTML file (both of which can be opened in a word processor, such as Microsoft Office Word 2003).
6. (Optional) To save the contents of an e-mail message as a sepa-rate e-mail message file or as a text file , choose File➪Save As to open the Save Message As dialog box. Next, choose the folder in which to save the file in the Save In drop-down list box, and the file format in which to save the file in the Save As type drop-down list box (select the Mail [*.eml] option to save it in the e-mail format, Text Files [*.txt] to save it as a text file, or HTML Files [*.htm, *.html] to save it in the Hypertext Markup Language used by Web pages). Then click the Save button.
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If the e-mail message uses the High Priority exclamation-mark icon, chances are good that you may have to reply to it right away. You can respond to the message by clicking either the Reply or the Reply All button.
After you click one of these buttons, Outlook Express opens a message window in which
• The sender of the original message is listed as the recipient in the To: field
• The subject of the original message appears in the Subject:
field, preceded by the term Re: (regarding)
• The contents of the original message appear in the body of the reply beneath the heading Original Message, followed by the From:, To:, Date:, and Subject: information from the original message
7. (Optional) To reply to the author of the e-mail message, click the Reply button on the Outlook Express toolbar. To send copies of the reply to all the others copied on the original mes-sage as well, click the Reply All button instead. Then add the text of your reply above the text of the original message and send the reply (by pressing Ctrl+Enter or Alt+S).
Sometimes, in addition to or instead of replying to the original message, you need to send a copy of it to someone who wasn’t listed in the Bcc: or Cc fields. To send a copy to this person, you forward a copy of the original message to the new recipi-ents of your choosing. When you forward a message, Outlook Express copies the Subject: and contents of the original mes-sage to a new mesmes-sage, which you then address and send.
8. (Optional) To forward the e-mail message to another e-mail address, click the Forward button on the Outlook Express tool-bar. Then fill in the recipient information in the To: and, if applicable, Bcc: or Cc: field; add any additional text of your own above that of the original message; and send the for-warded message on its way (by pressing Ctrl+Enter or Alt+S).
If you ever open an e-mail message and then don’t have time to really read through it and digest the meaning, you can, if you’d like, have Outlook Express mark the message as unread to help remind you to reread it at a later date when you have more time. To mark a read e-mail message as unread, click Edit➪Mark as Unread on the Outlook Express menu bar. Outlook then replaces the open-enve-lope icon in front of the current message with the closed-enveopen-enve-lope icon. To temporarily hide all messages in the Inbox except those you haven’t yet read, click View➪Current View➪Hide Read Messages on the menu bar. To later redisplay both the read and unread messages in the Inbox, you then click View➪Current View➪Show All Messages.
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Also note that as part of the security features in the SP2 update to Windows XP, Outlook Express now automatically blocks the display of all pictures in incoming messages (to prevent the sender from identifying your computer). If you trust the source of the message, you can display the images by clicking the note at the top of body of the e-mail message indicating that the pictures are blocked.