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that by default all mail is sent in HTML format, and all news is sent in plain text. You can adjust these settings if you like, but HTML mail gives you more formatting options than plain text. Users who receive e-mail from you can view the HTML formatting, but if their e-mail client does not support it, it will appear as plain text anyway.

Compose Tab

The Compose tab contains three sections that concern mail composition. These options enhance your messages, but are certainly not required. Here’s the skinny on these items:

●In the Compose Font section, you can choose a mail and news font, style, and color that you want to use. However, do not assume that your recipient will actually see these font and color options. That depends on his or her mail settings. If the recipient’s e-mail client is able to read HTML (which it probably can), the font and colors will most likely be preserved. If not, the e-mail will appear in plain text.

●In the Stationery section, you can choose a background image or pattern to be used when you create your messages. This works like wallpaper on your desktop. Use the Select button to choose an available image or pattern, or if you want to create your own background based on a picture file, click the Create New button, which opens the Stationery Setup Wizard to guide you. Overall, stationery is pleasing, but it does increase transmission time. Also, if your recipients do not use HTML mail, the stationery will be downloaded to them as an attachment to the e-mail, not as a background design displayed in the message.

●You can also create a business card to attach to your outgoing messages. The business card contains as much or as little information about you as you like, and recipients can place the business cards in their address books. If you think the bulk of the people you communicate with will find your business card useful, create one; otherwise, disregard this feature.

Signatures Tab

The Signatures tab, shown in Figure 7-13, provides you with options to create and format a signature that you can apply to your messages. The signature is then automatically inserted into your e-mail message. Signatures typically contain information such as your name, e-mail address, Web page, and your phone number; some people also like to add a favorite quote or slogan to personalize their messages.

caution Make sure that the information you provide in your signature is information you really want to share with users you e-mail. In other words, think twice before placing your phone number or other personal information in your signature.

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Figure 7-13. Create a signature for your messages using the Signatures tab of the

Options dialog box.

To create a signature, click the New button and a default Signature #1 appears. You can click Rename to give the signature a friendlier name. Then, enter the desired signature text in the Edit Signature box. You can also select the File option to attach a signature in a text or HTML file. This is the only way to add a signature that contains a graphic or other visual image. Click the Advanced button to choose which accounts you want to use the signature with.

tip Using Signatures Selectively

If you want to use the signature on some messages but not on others, clear the Add Signatures To All Outgoing Messages check box. You can then individually apply the signature to selected messages by creating a message, and then choosing Insert, Signature from the message’s menu.

Security Tab

The Security tab enables you to configure Outlook Express for minimal virus protection and for secure mail. In the Virus Protection section, shown in Figure 7-14 on the next page, you can choose an Internet Explorer security zone to apply to mail you receive, and you can have Outlook Express notify you when a message might be infected with a virus. The zone you select applies the same zone configuration found on the Security tab of Internet Explorer’s Internet Options dialog box. See “Security Zones,” page 144, for more information about Internet Explorer’s security features.

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Figure 7-14. Use the Security tab to configure low-level virus protection and to enable secure mail.

It is important to note that these extra features are in no way a replacement for antivirus software. The security features provided on this tab simply help you identify possible threats—they do not scan messages and identify viruses. For this reason, you should always run antivirus software that can scan newly downloaded e-mail for viruses.

For more information about dealing with e-mail security issues, see “Coping with E-mail Security Threats,” page 591.

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Be sure the Warn Me When Other Applications Try To Send Mail As Me option is selected. This option protects you from the type of virus that accesses your address book and sends a phony message from you to some or all your contacts, spreading the virus to their machines in the process. A good antivirus program will prevent you from receiving or activating such a virus. But if one should get through your defenses, this option is designed to keep it from replicating to your contacts.

If you want to use secure e-mail, you must obtain a digital certificate from a provider such as Verisign (www.verisign.com). If you choose Digitally Sign All Outgoing Messages, a certificate is sent with your e-mail so that other users can verify that the message has come from you and has not been altered in transit. You can also choose Encrypt Contents And Attachments For All Outgoing Messages, which will keep anyone other than the intended recipient from being able to read the message should it be intercepted. Although these security features work well, the recipient must be able to read the signature or decrypt the e-mail in order for the feature to work, which requires a bit of setup before you can start using it. The digital certificate that you acquire consists of a private portion or key and a public portion. To use the digital certificate, follow these steps:

1Send the public portion of your digital certificate to e-mail recipients with whom you want to exchange encrypted e-mail.

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2The recipients must send you the public portion of their digital certificates so that you can read encrypted e-mail that is sent to you from those recipients.

3The public portion of the digital certificate you send must be added to their address books and be attached to your contact information. When you receive their public keys in e-mail messages they send you, you must add those keys to your address book and attach them to their contact information. You’ll find a Digital IDs tab in your contact’s properties dialog box where you can add the public keys they send you.

4Remember that both parties must first send the public keys to each other without encrypting the messages.

5After both parties have added each other’s public keys to their address books, activate one or both of the options in the Secure Mail section of the Security tab in the Outlook Express Options dialog box to start sending secure messages.

6When you receive encrypted e-mail from a particular sender, the certificate for that sender is found in your address book and is used to automatically decrypt the e-mail.

tip Signing or Encrypting Your Mail Selectively

It is unlikely that you will need to digitally sign or encrypt your mail to everyone you correspond with, so you might not want to set the options on the Security tab,

which apply to all outgoing messages. Instead, you can sign and/or encrypt outgoing messages individually by clicking the Sign and/or Encrypt buttons on each message’s toolbar.

Connection Tab

The Connection tab provides basic configuration for handling dial-up connections and links you to Internet Explorer’s connections options, which it shares. A noteworthy item in the Dial-Up section is the Hang Up After Sending And Receiving option. If you are using a dial-up connection and you have your mail account configured to check for messages automatically, you might consider using this option so the connection will automatically hang up after mail has been checked. Of course, if you are trying to work online, this setting can get very annoying because it will automatically disconnect every time you send and receive mail.

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Maintenance Tab

The Maintenance tab, shown in Figure 7-15, offers some important options for managing Outlook Express. You can review the available options concerning whether Outlook Express deletes messages from your Deleted Items folder when exiting, removes the deleted messages on an IMAP server, and compacts your message files to save space. The default handling method for news messages is also configured on this tab. The default settings are usually best, but read through these options to see if there is anything you want to change. You can choose to clean up messages in order to conserve disk space, and you might want to change the location of the store folder (where your mail and news messages are kept) so it is easier to find them and back them up. You might want to click the Store Folder button to see where your files are located, deep within the Documents And Settings folder.

Figure 7-15. Use the Maintenance tab to configure how Outlook Express handles downloaded mail and news messages.

Managing E-mail

Outlook Express provides a number of options and features for sending and receiving e-mail. Although newsgroup usage is an important feature of Outlook Express, you will probably use Outlook Express mostly for e-mail, so this section is devoted to the options and features concerning e-mail management.

Sending Mail

When you click the Write Message button in Outlook Express, a New Message window appears, as shown in Figure 7-16.

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Figure 7-16. Outlook Express provides a New Message window where you can format and create a mail message.

When you create a new mail message in Outlook Express, you have several options that you can use to customize your message. You are probably familiar with many of these, but several are listed for you to review. If you discover a feature in the list that you have not tried before, you can experiment with it on your computer:

●You can use the blind carbon copy (Bcc) field to send a copy of a mail message to addressees without their names being visible to those addressed in the To and Cc fields. The blind carbon copy (Bcc) field might not be visible in your New Message window. If you do not see it, choose View, All Headers, and it will appear. You can select a message in your Inbox and choose File, Properties to learn more about it, but the Bcc field is still hidden—even when you click the Message Source button on the Details tab.

●You can designate the priority of an outgoing message as High, Normal, or Low by using the Set Priority button on the message’s toolbar or by choosing Message, Set Priority. This feature can be valuable when you are trying to get someone’s attention for a quick reply. But the recipient needs to be using Outlook or Outlook Express for the feature to work.

●If you have not configured stationery to apply to all messages, you can add it to individual messages by choosing Message, New Using, and then selecting the stationery you want to use.

●If you want to request a read receipt for an individual message, choose Tools, Request Read Receipt. You can also use the Tools menu to encrypt or digitally sign a message, or click the respective buttons on the toolbar.

●If you do not want to use stationery but you want to use some other HTML element, such as a picture or background color, choose Format, Background, and then make a selection.

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●If you need to send a message in a different language using another encoding scheme, choose Format, Encoding, and then select from the choices or click More to reveal all the options.

●Files, business cards, signatures, pictures, and hyperlinks can all be inserted into your e-mail using the Insert menu option. You can also use toolbar buttons for several of these features.

tip Inserting Hyperlinks

Although you can officially insert a hyperlink using the Insert, Hyperlink command, you can usually just type the URL, and Outlook Express will automatically format it as a hyperlink if you are composing your mail as HTML.

●You can also customize the New Message window’s toolbar. Choose View, Toolbars, Customize to select the size and labeling of icons and to add, remove, or reorder the buttons on the toolbar.

●If you are working on a message and need to stop before sending it, click File, Save to save the message to your Drafts folder. You can then reopen the message from the Drafts folder at a later time to complete the message and send it. Unsent messages can reside in the Drafts folder as long as you like.

●You can also use the File menu to save messages to different folders, or you can use the Save As option to save a message to its own file in one of several formats: Outlook Express Mail format (.eml), Text, Unicode Text, or HTML.

●As you are working with a new mail message, you will see a formatting toolbar above the message box if you’re using HTML. Use the options on the toolbar to apply fonts and styles to your message as needed. If you use plain text, this toolbar is hidden.

●For contacts in your address book, you only need to type their names in the To, Cc, or Bcc fields. Outlook Express can resolve the names to their e-mail addresses. As each name is resolved, it is underlined; if you want to force an address to be resolved, type at least a few letters of the name, and click the Check Names button on the toolbar.

●If you are sending mail to multiple recipients, simply separate the recipients with a comma when typing them in the To, Cc, or Bcc fields.

Using Mail Folders

The Outlook Express interface provides you with the Folders list in the left pane, a message list in the upper-right pane, and a Preview pane below it so that the text of a

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message appears when you select it in the message list. By default, Outlook Express stores messages in local folders for your account. The basic folders included are the Inbox, Outbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items, and Drafts folders. Although these basic folders do not need an explanation, there are a few important items to keep in mind about each of them:

●All e-mail received arrives in the Inbox unless you have a rule configured to move the item elsewhere. See “Creating Message Rules,” page 209, for more information about sorting your mail using rules.

●All e-mail that you send goes to the Outbox. The mail resides in the Outbox until you are connected; it is then automatically sent by default. Once it is sent, it is removed from the Outbox and is moved to the Sent Items folder. If you don’t want your mail sent automatically, open the Options dialog box, and on the Send tab, clear the Send Messages Automatically option. The mail will remain in your Outbox until you click the Send/Recv button.

●All e-mail that you send is stored by default in the Sent Items folder so that you can reference it later if necessary. You can, however, open this folder and delete messages. If you don’t want to save copies of your sent mail, open the Options dialog box and, on the Send tab, clear the Save Copy Of Sent Messages In The ‘Sent Items’ Folder option.

●Deleted messages are stored in the Deleted Items folder. If you want to reclaim a message from the Deleted Items folder, open the folder, and drag the message to a different folder. If you want to permanently delete all messages in the folder each time you close Outlook Express, choose Tools, Options, select the Maintenance tab, and then select Empty Messages From The ‘Deleted Items’ Folder On Exit. You can also open the Deleted Items folder and individually delete items, or right-click the folder and choose Empty ‘Deleted Items’ Folder from the shortcut menu. Once you delete an item from the Deleted Items folder, however, it is permanently removed.

tip Use Caution When Deleting Messages

Don’t delete items from the Sent Items or Deleted Items folder unless absolutely necessary. These folders serve as a great reference and give you a safety net if you need to refer to a sent or deleted message at some point in the future. However, if you receive an abundance of spam messages, you might consider creating a different folder where deleted items are stored so that you can more easily keep spam mail separate from valid e-mail. Or, you can create a rule that sends spam to a folder you create, such as a Spam folder. See “Creating Message Rules,” page 209, for more information.

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Using the Compact Feature

Over time, mail messages can take up a lot of space on your hard disk, especially if you manage a lot of e-mail. Many users tend to keep everything in the Sent Items folder and Deleted Items folder in case the messages are needed for future reference. However, from time to time, you should consider using the compact messages feature to clean out wasted space in the message folders. To compact a message folder, select the folder in the Folders list, and choose File, Folder, Compact; or to compact all folders, choose the Compact All Folders command. Also, select the settings on the Maintenance tab of the Options dialog box to compact messages in the background based on various criteria or to use the Clean Up Now command.

Aside from the default mail folders, you can also create your own mail folders. If you right-click Local Folders in the Folders list in the left pane, you can click New Folder to create a new folder. You can also create subfolders in your Inbox, Outbox, Sent Items, or Drafts folders. Any e-mail that arrives in your Inbox can then be dragged to the desired folder, or you can create a rule to automatically place it there.

Managing Attachments

An attachment is anything sent along with an e-mail message, such as pictures, business cards, files, programs, and so on. E-mail attachments are very common and are a great way to move information from one place to another.

Overall, attachments are easy to send. When you are typing a mail message, simply click the Attach File To Message button (the paper clip icon) on the toolbar or choose Insert, File Attachment. Better yet, you can drag and drop files onto the e-mail message. Attached items appear in the Attach field when you are creating a new message

(the Attach field appears beneath the Subject field once you’ve attached an item).

Your attachments are sent with your e-mail; however, if you change your mind about including an attachment before sending, just right-click the file in the Attach field and click Remove.

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tip Adjust the Size of Your Messages for Your Recipients

Files consume bandwidth and might take some time to transfer, depending on the size of the file and the speed of your connection. So, if you have a fast Internet connection such as DSL, keep in mind that dial-up users might have a difficult time downloading your large attachments. Also, consider using the new Windows XP Compressed Folder feature to create a folder (actually a file using the ZIP file format) to compress items before sending them. Open Help And Support from the Start menu, and search for

Create a zipped compressed folder for specific instructions.

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When you receive an e-mail containing an attachment, you can simply double-click the attachment to open it, or you can drag the attachment to a folder on your local computer for later use. However, e-mail attachments are a major way in which computer viruses are spread, so keep these points in mind:

●Never open any file that you have not scanned with an up-to-date antivirus program. Most antivirus programs feature an e-mail scanning option that can scan your e-mail attachments as you download them. Use the feature if available. Most antivirus programs also check files as you attempt to open them and will not do so if they detect a virus.

●E-mail viruses are spread through executable files, which usually have a .exe file extension. Be wary of any *.exe files you receive. You can select the Security tab of the Options dialog box, and select the option labeled Do Not Allow Attachments To Be Saved Or Opened That Could Potentially Be A Virus. However, this might not work well, especially if some of the executable files you receive are valid and wanted. The point you’ll have to remember is to use caution and common sense. If you receive an attachment from someone you do not know, delete it. If you receive an attachment from someone you do know, let your antivirus software work and proceed with caution.

For more information about dealing with e-mail security issues, see “Coping with E-mail Security Threats,” page 591.

Managing Received Messages

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You can manage messages that you receive in a few different ways, depending on your needs. When you receive e-mail, it all arrives in your Inbox, usually ordered by arrival date and time. All messages appear in the Inbox whether you have read them or not until you either move them to a different folder or delete them.

However, there are some additional viewing options available to you. If you open the View menu in Outlook Express and point to Current View, you will see the options Show All Messages, Hide Read Messages, and Hide Read Or Ignored Messages. You can modify an existing view by clicking Customize Current View, or you can define your own view by choosing Define Views. When the Define Views dialog box opens, shown in Figure 7-17 on the next page, the currently applied view is selected.

To create a new view, click the New button. In the New View dialog box, select a condition for the view, select an action, and then give the new view a name. For example, in Figure 7-18 on the next page, a view is about to be created that will hide messages when the subject line contains certain words. If you scroll through the list of conditions, you see that there are several conditions that you can apply to customize your view. One view can use several conditions, linked by and or or logic.

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