Setting up Outlook to Retrieve Email
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Setting up Outlook to Retrieve Email
Managing emails can be quite a cumbersome task, especially when it comes to receiving and sending hosts of emails everyday. Microsoft has brought to us a solution to this problem in the form of Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Office Outlook. It is a part of the Microsoft Office package. This incredible tool makes emails more manageable and helps you to organize your messages as per your convenience. Besides organizing email messages, Outlook is also capable of maintaining a journal, calendar, tasks, managing names and addresses, taking notes, etc.
Here is how it looks when you open Microsoft Outlook application:
Sending Emails
In order to send an email you need to create it first. Click on “New” option at the top left hand corner. A window will appear that will allow you to compose the email. Insert the email address of the recipient in the “To” field, the subject of the mail in the “Subject” field and type your message text in the space given below. Once the message is ready you can click on the “Send” option on the top left corner and can send your mail. You can also send a copy of the mail to someone by simply inserting his/her email address in the “Cc” field. The message can be written using different fonts, colors, and styles. You can also set the priority of the mail – high, normal or low – depending on their importance.
Attachments – You can conveniently send an attachment (file) with an email. All you need to do is to click on the icon of the paper clip. You will be prompted to select a file from the files located in your computer. You can now choose the desired file, attach it to the message and send it like a normal email.
Read Receipts – There are times when you are not sure whether the mail recipient has received the mail or not and whether he/she has seen it or not. In order to free yourself from such anxiety you can use the “Read Receipt” option. You need to enable this feature by going to the tools and selecting this facility under the “Receipt” option. Enabling this feature will probe the recipient of your email to send a confirmation on the receipt of your email.
Auto Signatures – Adding the same details of the sender like name, designations, address, phone number, etc. at the end of each mail can be tiring. You can use the “Auto Signature” option to avoid this. Once you add a specific detail to this option, you can add this signature to every mail without typing it all over again.
If you find the send option missing from the toolbar of your Outlook, there may have been a problem with installation. Make sure you add your valid email address to the Outlook profile from which the emails will be sent.
Receiving Emails
You can receive and check your mails by clicking on the “Send/Receive” button on your toolbar. You can also receive mails by selecting the option “Check for New Mail” in the drop down menu under “Tools”. There is a third way of retrieving new messages from your email account. You can use the short cut key “F5” to do so.
Once you receive your mails, a window similar to the image below will be displayed to you.
Email Techniques
Outlook enables you to use several techniques in managing your email messages. In case you have made an error in your sent message and would like to rectify it before the recipient reads it you can “recall” your message. The recipient will get the recall message before the real message and when he checks the recall message the original message will be deleted and you will be notified about this action. Now you can send the rectified version of your email.
You can also get prints of a specific message or the list of some messages by selecting the “Print” option from the drop down list under “File” menu.
If you would like to avail of the editing facilities of Microsoft Word you can easily do so by selecting relevant options in “Mail Format” under “Tools”. You can format your email messages to plain text, rich text or even HTML text. Microsoft Outlook also offers you with an option to create your messages on different backgrounds. These are called “Stationery” and can be activated under the “mail Format” option. When you are creating an email, you can control the feel of the message by giving a thematic look to the email in terms of design, font, images, etc. Selecting the “Theme” option under the “Format” dropdown list can do this. Messages can be saved as draft and used later, they can be sent along with voting options and you can again revert to the voted result.
Organizing Messages
As has been already mentioned, Outlook is primarily used to manage the email messages. Keeping track of the various messages, received, sent and drafted and having complete control over the emails can be extremely difficult at times. The use of Microsoft Outlook can help you to organize your emails and make them more easily accessible.
Message Folders – You can categorize your messages and access them more conveniently by creating folders for different types of messages. These folders can be formed on the basis of sender names, dates, importance, type or any category that you may desire. The folders can be created under Inbox, Outbox, Sent Items, Drafts, etc.
All you need to do is click on the “New Folder” option under the “File” drop down list. You will be prompted to give a name to the folder, categorize its contents and select the place where you want to create the folder.
Search – When your mail account is loaded with received mails, sent mails, deleted mails, drafts, junk mails, etc., it might be very difficult to find a particular old mail. For this Microsoft Outlook provides you with the option to search. You can use the “Find” option to search for a message from a specific folder or in general. You can also search for an entire folder or even for saved contacts of people.
Rules – You can have greater control over your messages by setting specific rules for them. The “Message rule” option under “Tools” can do the needful. This will enable you to set rules for specific emails and news items like deleting them, copying or moving them to a folder, forwarding them, highlighting and flagging them, replying to them with a predefined message, etc. This facility even allows you to block messages from certain senders.
Additional Features
Besides handling your email messages, Microsoft Outlook offers several additional features. These features help you many ways, which may not be relevant to your emails. Some of these features are discussed below:
Multiple Identities – It is not necessary that you can use only one single email account for your Outlook. You can manage messages of more than one email accounts and can simply access them by switching identities.
Journal – You do not need to go to a different location in order to write and save your journal entries and keep track of various things. This can be done in Outlook itself. You simply need to click on the option named “Journal” and you will be taken to a page like the one that follows.
Tasks – Manage your tasks with a great deal of convenience in Microsoft Outlook. Just like the “Journal” option, you will be able to find an option called “Tasks” and you get the following page where you can insert the subject and the due date for the task.
Calendar – Another provision that Microsoft Outlook offers is the Calendar facility. Hence, you do not need to go anywhere else to check dates and months and set reminders, meetings, appointments and events.
Versions
Microsoft Outlook has introduced several versions over a period of time like Outlook 97, Outlook 98, Outlook 2000, Outlook 2002 and Office Outlook 2003. Outlook Express has often been mistaken for being yet another version of Microsoft Outlook. However, it is only a compact application by Microsoft that manages contacts, emails and newsgroups.
The latter half of 2007 will probably witness the release of Outlook 2007 with enhanced features like improved security, better management of information and time and other connecting facilities.
Security
Like everything else, Outlook also has its pros and cons. You are likely to face security problems while using Microsoft Outlook. The processes executed by the Outlook are automatic and this increases the ability of the hackers to send viruses like Melissa (via mail attachments). Again the simple programming language also aids the effect. Your email account may also be a target for spam due to similar reasons. Office Outlook 2003 has come with better security in the form of Junk Mail filter, anti-Phishing filter and inability to load images in HTML messages automatically.
Installation
Before installing Outlook you need to go to your Account Manager and set the SMTP Relay options and assign a username and password for the same. Now you have to click on the Microsoft Outlook icon on your computer and proceed step-by-step following the instruction provided by the inbuilt installation wizard. You are required to feed in specifications like your name, email address, username, password and various other options.
For more details and in-depth knowledge about Microsoft Outlook you can visit .
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