Microsoft Outlook Express puts the world of online communication on your desktop. Whether you want to exchange e-mail with colleagues and friends or join newsgroups to trade ideas and information, the tools are here.
If you have several mail or news accounts, you can use them all from one window. You can also create multiple users, or identities, for the same computer. Each identity gets its own mail folders and Address Book. The ability to create multiple accounts and identities makes it easy for you to keep work separate from personal mail and also between individual users.
Using the message list and preview pane, you can view a list of messages and read individual messages at the same time. The Folders list contains mail folders, news servers, and newsgroups, and you can easily switch between them. You can also create new folders to organize and sort messages, and then set up message rules so that incoming mail that meets your criteria automatically goes to a specific folder. You can also create your own views to customize the way you look at your mail.
If your ISP uses an IMAP mail server for incoming mail, you can read, store, and organize your messages in folders on the server without downloading the messages to your computer. That way, you can view messages from any computer that can connect to that server.
You can save names and addresses in your Address Book automatically by simply replying to a message or by importing them from other programs, by typing them in, by adding them from e-mail messages you receive, or by searching popular Internet directory services (white pages). The Address Book supports Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) for accessing Internet directory services.
You can insert essential information into outgoing messages as part of your personal signature, and you can create multiple signatures to use for different purposes. For more detailed information, you can include a business card. To make your messages look more attractive, you can add stationery patterns and backgrounds, and you can change the color and style of the text.
You can digitally sign and encrypt messages by using digital IDs. Digitally signing your message assures recipients that the message is really from you. Encryption ensures that only intended recipients can read a message.
Looking for a newsgroup that matches your interests? You can search for newsgroups that contain keywords or browse through all of the newsgroups available from your Usenet provider. When you find a newsgroup you want to view regularly, add it to your Subscribed list so you can find it again easily.
You can view a newsgroup message and all of the responses without reading an entire message list. When you view the list of messages, you can expand and collapse conversations to make it easier to find what interests you. You can also use views to display only the messages you want to read.
To use your online time efficiently, you can download messages or entire newsgroups, so you don't have to be connected to your ISP to read messages. You can also download message headers only for offline viewing and then mark the headers of the messages you want to read; then the next time you are connected, Outlook Express downloads the message text. You can also compose messages offline and send them the next time you reconnect.