Outlook Express

Configure inward (received) email with the help of the Inbox Assistant. This lets you set up rules and apply them to mail being received, as well as that already received.

To add a folder fast you no longer need to slog through multiple menus and dialogs. Just right-click the Outlook Bar and select New Folder from the Context menu.

You can setup Outlook Express so that when you reply to a message, the sender is automatically added to your address book. Select Tools/Options and click on the General tab. Select "Automatically put people I reply to in my Address Book."

If you save a lot of messages, you should back them up. Copy the MBX file for each folder to backup media. The MBX files will be in the directory you specified when you installed Outlook Express. To restore the files, copy them back to the directory and delete any IDX (index) files.

But to backup the message rules there is no easy way. And if you have a lot of rules, you should try our tip. First backup the Registry. Then Open the registry (Start/Run, enter Regedit and click OK) and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\{A9EA07CD-2BAD-4D08-9F1C-C12263040D51}\Software\Microsoft\OutlookExpress\5.0\Rules (your ID number may be different). Select Registry/Export Registry File from the menu bar. When presented with the save dialog, click Selected Branch as the export range and save the file.

To restore rules, open the registry and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\{A9EA07CD-2BAD-4D08-9F1C-C12263040D51}\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express\5.0\Rules (your ID number may differ). If the number A9E.... is different (which it most likely will be), copy the number to the clipboard (without brackets). Open WordPad (or another text editor with find & replace capability) and open your saved registry rules file.

Select find and replace from the edit menu, paste the clipboard number into the "replace with" entry. Go to the text file and highlight the number inside the {...} brackets after "Identities" (not including the brackets), and copy and paste this to the "Find what" entry in the dialog box. Do a "replace all" or replace one at a time and save the file. Close everything, right click on the saved registry file and click merge and your old rules will be restored.

To prevent unwanted messages from even reaching your Inbox use filters. You'll find them under Tools/ Newsgroup Filters. The feature lets you set rules based on the sender's address, the subject line, the message's size and its age.

If you want to e-mail a screen shot, make sure the desired window has focus and then press Alt-PrtScrn. Next, open your e-mail program or Microsoft Word and then press Ctrl-V. This will paste the window into your e-mail message. If you want to capture the entire desktop, rather than just the active window, press just PrtScrn without the Alt-key.

Search services on the Web for e-mail addresses from Outlook Express. Select Find People from the Edit menu and select the Internet e-mail service to search.

Compiled by G. Menon
[email protected]

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