basic computer part -6

How to backup an Outlook Express Email Account 

When you create a new email account in Outlook Express, the process can be quite tricky - especially if you don't know the pop and smtp details, and have had to phone up your ISP to find out! Now that you've set up the email account, it's worth backing up these details, just in case something happens to your PC. Here how to do it.

• Open up Outlook Express
• From the menu bar, click on Tools
• From the tools menu, select Accounts
• From the Internet Accounts dialogue box, click on the Mail tab at the top
• From the list of available account, select the account you want to backup
• Then click the Export button on the right, as in the image below:
  

In the Image above, we've clicked on the Home and Learn email account to select it. The Export button is on the right hand side, near the bottom.

When you click the Export button, you'll get the follow dialogue box popping up:

The file extension is IAF. This tells you that it is an Outlook Express email account. The name of the file is Home and Learn. We're saving it to our F drive for safe keeping, in a folder called backupOE.

When you click the Save button, the email account will backed-up. (The only thing not saved will be your password.)
If anything happens to your PC, you can import the email account quite easily. Just click the Import button on the Internet Accounts box, instead of the Export button.

Use an Identity to set up a second email account

If you have more than one user on the same PC, you can set up a separate identity for them. That way, they won't get their account mixed up with yours. They won't be able to see your emails, and you won't be able to see theirs. To set up a separate identity in Outlook Express, do the following:

• Open up Outlook Express
• Click on the File menu at the top
• From the File menu Select Identities > Add New Identity
• The New Identity box appears, and looks like this:

At the top of the New Identity box, type a name (We've called ours Second User.) You also have the option of setting up a password for the identity. But as the help button informs you, this is not terribly secure. We'll leave it blank. Click the ok button and you get a message box popping up:

Click Yes to switch to the new identity. Your Outlook Express screen will then tell you that you have one unread message (this is just the Microsoft Welcome email.)

Notice that the name of the Identity is showing - Second User, in our case. If you look on the left, you'll see the folder bar is showing 1 message in the Inbox.

Any folders you set up for your main account will not be there: the two accounts are kept separate. You now need to set up an email account for this Identity. Click Tools > Accounts, then click the Mail tab. You'll see that the text area is blank:

The email account you set up in your identity is missing! You can only see your email account if you switch to your identity. To set up a new email account, click the Add button. Then click Mail. If you're not sure how to create an email account, see the following tutorial: How to set up an Outlook Express email account.

Switching Identities

To switch back to your email account (your Identity), click the File menu. From the File menu, select Switch Identities. You'll see the following box:

The Log Off identity button is quite confusing. If you click it, it closes down Outlook Express. To switch identities, select the Identity you want from the list, then click the OK button. You will then be able to access your own emails.

Delete an Identity

To delete an identity, click the File menu. From the File menu, select Identities > Manage Identities. You'll see the following box:

Select the Identity you want to delete, and then click the Remove button on the right. You can't remove your own Identity, though. If you were logged on as Second User, for example, and then tried to delete this Identity, the button would be unavailable.

When you click the Remove button, you'll see this warning message:

So, think carefully before you delete an identity - you might be deleting a lot of important emails by mistake!

Add a Signature to all outgoing emails 

You can add a message to all outgoing emails in Outlook Express. If you have received an email from somebody with AVG anti-virus, for example, you'll see something like "Checked by AVG Free Edition" at the bottom of the email. This gets added automatically by the programme. It's called a Signature.

To set up your own Signatures, or perhaps just to have your name added automatically to all outgoing emails, do the following.

How to add a Signature in Outlook Express

From the main Outlook Express screen click the Tools menu at the top. From the Tools menu, select Options. From the Options dialogue box, click the Signatures tab, as in the image below:

Click the New button to create a new signature. It will have a default name of something like "Signature #1":

In the "Edit Signature" text area below, make sure Text is selected:

Click inside of the text area and type the text you want to add to all outgoing messages:

At the top of the Signatures tab, make sure "Add signatures to all outgoing messages" is ticked:

To give your signature a more memorable name, click the Rename button. Then type a new name for your signature:

If you have more than one signature set up, you can make one of them the default. Just click a signature to highlight it, and then click button "Set as Default"

To test out your new signature - send yourself an email. The email you get back should now have your new signature on it. If it's not quite what you wanted, go back to the signatures tab and edit your work.
If you have more than one signature set up, you can choose which one to insert. Create a new email, then click the Insert menu at the top of the new email. From the Insert menu, select Signature. You should see the signatures you have set up. Select one to insert it into your email. (If Signature is unavailable, it means you haven't clicked inside the Body of the email. Your cursor is probably in the "To", "CC", or "Subject" areas.)

Outlook Express Stationery - Brighten up your Emails 

You can brighten up your emails with the use Outlook Express Stationery. This usually consists of a background image, and formatted font. It's very easy to add Stationery to your emails. Try the following.

• Open up Outlook Express, and click the icon for "Create Mail". This will open up a new email, with its own menu bar
• From the New Message menu bar, click Format and make sure that "Rich Text (HTML)" is selected:

NOTE: If you use Rich Text, it means your emails will be sent using HTML. This means you can do all the fancy formatting you want (bulltes, italics, Bold, etc). However, a lot of people don't like to receive emails that have been formatted using HTML, because there are some security issues involved. For example, some dangerous JavaScript can be executed in the background, if you receive HTML emails. If you use Plain Text, then potential for harm is greatly reduced. You can't do any text formatting, though. To change an email into Plain text, simply select it from the Format menu.)

• Click Format again, and select Apply Stationery > More Stationery:

You should get the following dialogue box popping up:

You can select one of the inbuilt templates. Tick the box "Show preview" to see what your email will look like. If you like any of these, click OK. Your new message will then have a background image.
If you don't like any of these (and you won't!) then you can create your own stationery in Outlook Express. To see how to do just that, move on to the next part.

Create your own Stationery in Outlook Express

You can create your own stationery in Outlook Express, and add any images you like. Your new stationery will then be available any time you need it.

From a new email, click Format > Apply Stationery > More Stationery from the menu bar. This will bring up the Select Stationery dialogue box:

• Click the button Create New. You'll then get a Wizard popping up. Click next to see the following screen:

From this screen, you can select an image to use as your stationery, and specify where it should go on the page. Click the Browse button to select the image you want to use for your stationery. (You don't want to select images that are very large, because the size of the file would be too big. Aim for an image that's no more than 10 to 15 kilobytes in size.)
In the images below, we've clicked the Browse button to navigate to an image we want to use:

In the two images above, we've chosen a picture called piano.jpg. The location of this image is then placed in the textbox (F:\stationery\piano.jpg).

We want this image to appear on the left of our email, and for it to be tiled vertically. This will get us the same image repeated down the page. From the Position drop down lists we've chosen Top, Left and Tile Vertically. A preview of what this will look like appears on the right:

If you would like a different colour for the main body of the email, tick the Color checkbox. You can then select your colour from the list:

There's not too many to choose from, but we've gone for Silver.

When you're happy with the Preview, click Next.
The next screen allows you to select the Font you want to use for your email text. This, unfortunately, does not work too well. You can select the font you want to use, along with the colour and size. But when you try to write your email with your new stationery, Outlook Express will often revert to the default of an Arial font in size 10! All the same, we've chosen a Comic Sans MS font in size 12. We've kept the colour on black, and don't want Bold or Italic.

The next screen is an important one. It allows you to set how far from the left the text should start. The size is in pixels. The image we're trying to use is 200 pixels high by 200 pixels wide, so we need the left margin to start at a number higher than 200. Otherwise our email text will end up over the image. You can also specify how far down the page you want your text to start. In the image below, our left margin is 225 pixels and our Top margin is 50 pixels:

Click next, and give your new stationery a name (it's better to use just one word).

When you click Next, you're done. So click the Finish button and you'll be returned to the Select Stationery screen. The name of your new Stationery will already be in the File Name box, so just click OK to see your new stationery added to you email. Type some text to see what it looks like. Has Outlook Express ignored your Font choices and gone back to Arial 10 points? In the image below, it has! The only solution is to type the email text in the default font and then format it later :(

There's plenty of stationery on the Internet, if you want to see what others have created. Try a Google search with "Outlook Express Stationery". (Include the quote marks.) Your emails need never be plain again!