Using Outlook Express

Opening & Reading Email

l. Click on Start  

2.     Click on Outlook Express  

3.     Outlook Express opens and looks like this

When you open Outlook Express, email will automatically download into the Inbox. Each line represents one email.

Double click on the email line to open the message. Another trick if double clicking is hard is to right click on the email line then when the menu opens left click on open. This also opens the email.

After you have read the email, left click the x in the top right corner of the message. This does not delete the message only closes it.

To delete the email, click on the red x at the top of the email message.

Writing an Email Message

1. After you have opened Outlook Express and read your email, chances are you will want to answer your mail.  

2. Click on Create Mail on the row of buttons in Outlook Express.

Another way of creating an email message is to click on “Message” on the top row of Outlook Express. You have the choice of “New Message” or “New Message Using”. If you chose New Message, a plain blank email opens. If you chose New Message Using, you may select different designed stationery for your email message.

 3. Create Mail opens a blank email.

4. Your email Message alone will look like this.

Note: The blinking cursor is already in the Address line. Also take note when you put the

mouse over the email message it changed into an “I-bar”.

Depending how Outlook Express configured, you may type in the name of the person you want the email to go.

Click on the Tab key to move the cursor down each line.

In addition, depending on Outlook Express’s configuration you may or may not type a subject in the subject line.

Click the Tab key to put the cursor in the body of the email message.

If you do not want to use the tab key, you may use the “I-bar” to move the cursor. Put the mouse over the space in which you would like to type then left click once. The cursor is set.

When you have finished writing your message, click on “Send” it is the first button of the button row. You message disappears meaning it has been sent.

If you check the “Outbox”, you will see you email if it has not been sent. If you look at “Outbox” and see numbers, it means that number of emails was not delivered.

If you would like to check an email, you sent to see if you said what you thought you did, check the “Sent” box. Copies of all emails sent are kept in the “Sent” box.

In the “Email Age”, paragraphs are not always indented. Click on “Enter” to move to the next paragraph. If you were writing a printed formal letter to be in your word processing program then you would follow the old rules of letter writing.