1. Sending bulk email
You can send emails to more than one person at a time by manually typing in the email addresses, choosing them from your address book or by sorting the emails into different groups, which we'll look at in tip number three.
If you manually enter addresses, you need to separate them with a semi-colon, which looks like ;. No space between the semi-colon and the next address is necessary.
If you open your address book and start double clicking on entries, it will automatically put semi-colons in for you.
If you put multiple addresses into the TO: or CC: fields of your message, everyone that you send the message to will see who else also received the same message. To hide the list of message recipients, see tip number four.
2. Adding email addresses into your address book
Rather than having to remember someone's email address and manually type it out each time, you can use the Outlook Express address book to store all of your email addresses. Click on the Addresses icon on the Outlook Express toolbar, or click Tools and then Address Book.
Once inside, the first icon on the toolbar is called New. When you click on this icon, you're presented with two choices, New Contact or New Group.
Click on New Contact. Now you can enter in your contact's first, middle and last name, their title and their nickname and the email address itself. When finished, click Add and then OK. You've just added a new entry into your address book.
3. Splitting your address book into "groups"
This is where you can create a series of email groups, for example, family, close friends, work colleagues, etc.
Go into the address book as per tip number two. Instead of clicking on New Contact, click on New Group.
For this to work, you need to already have a series of names entered into your address book.
Once you've clicked on New Group, a Properties box appears. Start by typing in the name of this group, for example: Family. Then click on Select Members. The Select Group Members box appears. Go through your list of email addresses, and double click on each name that you want to assign to your new group. If you select a name in error, click on that name in the Members box on the right hand side of this box and press the Delete key.
When you've added all the names for that group, click OK. Now the "Family" group appears in bold text in your list of email addresses.
When you next send an email for that group of people, click on the TO: icon in your email message, the address book will appear, and select that group and click OK. Alternatively, just type in the name of the group, ie: FAMILY, into the TO: field and Outlook Express will automatically know which group you have selected.
You can create as many groups as you want. The only potential downside to this is that some ISPs have a limit on the number of recipients you can assign to a single email, primarily to stop the spammers out there. If you discover that your message is being rejected by your ISP and won't send, you have probably put too many people into that group. In this case, split your group into smaller groups of 10 to 20 people, and call them, for example: Family One, Family Two etc.
Then send your message multiple times, with Family One in the first message, Family Two in the second identical message, etc.
4. Using the CC and BCC fields
You can use the CC: field in your email messages to signify to people that they are simply receiving a copy of the message as a courtesy, with the message actually meant for the person in the TO: field.
You can use the BCC: field to suppress the recipient list - this means that no-one on the list knows who else received the message. If you don't see the BCC: field in your blank email message, first click on New Mail or Create Mail (depending on which version of Outlook Express you have), and in the new message that appears, click on View and from the menu that appears click on All Headers. The BCC: field now appears under the TO: and CC: fields.
5. Opening attachments safely
The first step here is to ensure that you are running the latest version of Outlook Express, Version Six, and if not, ensure that you have run the Windows Update utility (click Start, then Windows Update at the top of the Start Menu for Windows 98 and ME users, Windows XP users are already using Outlook Express Six). This will download the updates Outlook Express needs to ensure that you aren't infected by viruses that take advantage of security holes which can allow attachments to open automatically and infect your computer. It's also paramount to have an anti-virus program that automatically updates itself to protect you, as you cannot rely on the latest version of Outlook Express or security patches alone.
If you are in doubt about an attachment, don't open the attachment, but choose to "Save it to disk" first. Then you can use your anti-virus software to scan that individual file before opening it, although a good anti-virus program should already have detected the attachment as a virus and quarantined or deleted the file for you.
6. Setting up message rules and junk mail folders
You can set up message rules so that messages from specified accounts, users or message with specific words in the subject line can be automatically moved to a different folder. To set up your own message rules, click on Tools, then Message Rules, then click Mail. The Message Rules box appears. Click the New button. The New Mail Rule box appears. Here you can first select the conditions for your rule, select the actions for your rule, and then choose the rule description that best suits your needs. You can also give your rule a name.
This process is fairly straightforward. For example, in step one, we might select "Where the From line contains people". In step two, we could select "Move it to the specified folder".
In step three, we now have to define which person we mean in step one and which folder we want to move the message to. You'll see that in step three, certain words are in blue and are underlined. We can click on these words to specify who, where and what we mean.
In this case, we can see that the words "contains people" are in blue. If you click on these words, the Select People box appears. Here you can type in the name of the person, or if you are unsure of a spelling or other detail, click on the Address Book button and select it from there. Then click OK to get back to the New Mail Rules box.
The words "contains people" have now changed to the name of the person you selected. The second thing we have to specify is the name of the folder. The word "specified" is in blue. Click on this word to bring up a list of folders. Here you can select an existing folder, or you can create a new folder. If you create a new folder, you have two choices. If you want your folder to appear in the same list as the Inbox, Outbox, Sent Items, etc, make sure that the Local Folder is selected in blue before clicking on the New Folder button.
If you want to create a sub-folder underneath the Inbox folder, for example, then click on the Inbox folder so that it turns blue before clicking on the New Folder button.
The give your new folder a name and click OK, then OK again to be returned to the New Mail Rule box.
Now go to step four and give your new rule a name. Click OK to finish. You'll see the message rule appear in the Message Rules box. You can click the Apply Now button to use the rule on the email that is already in your Inbox. Click OK to close this box.
You can use these rules to create any number of message rules. You can use it to look for specific words in messages, such as ADULT, and then have those messages automatically moved to a newly created spam or junk mail folder or simply moved to the Deleted Items folder.
7. Blocking senders
To add an email to the Blocked Senders list, where the sender of a message will have their email automatically moved to the Deleted Items folder, first click on the offending message. Then click on the Message menu in the top toolbar. From the menu that appears, click on Block Sender.
A message appears saying: "thename@youselected.com has been added to your blocked senders list. Subsequent message from this sender will be blocked. Would you like to remove all messages from this sender from the current folder now?" The email address attached to the message will appear in place of thename@youselected.com.
If you have blocked someone in error, and now wish to remove their email address from the list, click on Tools, then Message Rules, then Blocked Senders List. The Message Rules box appears with the list of all Blocked Senders. Click on the name you wish to remove, and then click the Remove button. You will be asked if you are sure that you want to remove the sender from the list. Click the Yes or No button as desired. Click OK to exit the Message Rules box.
8. Adding a signature
Click on Tools, then Options. The Options Box appears. Click on the Signatures tab at the top of the box. In the Signatures section, click New. The Edit Signature section will now become active. Type in the text you wish to automatically appear at the end of each email you send. Click OK when finished. You can click the Advanced button to assign a signature to an account if you access more than one email account on your PC.
9. Using fonts, colours, font styles and images in your email
You can switch Outlook Express into Rich Text mode so you can write text in different colours, fonts, sizes and styles, just like your word processor. Anyone using Outlook Express or another modern email program can read email that you've created in Rich Text mode, so these days it's generally considered safe to use this mode.
To permanently set Outlook Express to Rich Text mode, click on Tools, then Options. Click on the Send tab. In the Mail Sending Format section, select HTML. If you want to permanently change it back, go back to this screen and select Plain Text.
In the Sending section above the Mail Sending Format section, there is an option to "Reply to messages using the format in which they were sent". If you want, you can take the tick out of this box so you always send your emails in Rich Text mode.
You can also change emails on a case-by-case basis to Rich Text or Plain Text mode. To do this in a new email or in one you're replying to, click on Format in the email message, and select either Rich Text or Plain Text mode.
10. Using fonts and colours
Now that you're in Rich Text mode, a new formatting toolbar now appears above the area you type your message in your new blank emails, or ones that you reply to. This toolbar looks like a cut-down version of the one you see in your word processor, where you can choose a font, font size, style and colour, text justification and other settings such as bullet point and numerical lists.
11. Setting a background and adding a sound to your email
You can use a colour or any image you've scanned in, taken with a digital camera or found on the Internet as a background to your email messages. If you use a dark background or colour, make sure that the font colour you use is white, or a light colour.
In a blank email message, click on Format, then background. Here you can select a colour, choose an image or insert a sound. Go to the folder that contains the image or sound and click OK.
12. Inserting an image or photo in your email
Instead of attaching an image or a photo to your email, you can insert an image or photo directly into the email itself. This way you can add comments to photos one by one or use an image to get a point across. In your email message, click on Insert, then Picture. Click on Browse to go find the folder that contains your image. Double click on the image, then click OK. The image will appear in your message. In theory you can add as many images as you want.
13. Outlook Express stationery
Outlook Express comes with a range of pre-created stationery to give your messages a theme. To create a new message with stationery, click on the down arrow next to the New Mail or Create Mail icon at top left hand corner of Outlook Express. A menu will appear with a number of themes. Choose one of the ones listed, or click on Select Stationery. More choices are listed. Choose one and click OK.
14. Where to find more stationery
You'll find hundreds of stationery choices online at the following Web sites:
15. Create your own stationery