Using Outlook Express to Receive E-mail from Multiple Accounts

Explore the Net with Internet Explorer
A Publication of The Cobb Group
Published September 1997

These days, many people have more than one telephone number—home, office, and mobile. This same trend is cropping up on the Internet as people collect more than one E-mail address. Until now, collecting your mail from different mail accounts has been a tedious "open, shut down, rename" process. Fortunately, Outlook Express, which comes bundled with Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0, addresses (no pun intended) this situation directly and makes it quite easy to collect your mail from several POP 3 or IMAP accounts.

Unlike the Microsoft mail client for the Macintosh, Internet Explorer 2.0 users were denied the ability to check more than one account in a single session. And the Mac client required a resetting of preferences before it would check for mail from different accounts. Outlook Express does it all at once, saving you valuable time and lessening your frustration level. Let's set up several accounts and take a look.

On This Page

Adding new accounts
Configuring properties
Setting your default account

Adding new accounts

From the Outlook Express Tools menu, select Accounts. In the Internet Accounts dialog box, shown in Figure A, click the Add button. You'll then see a pulldown menu prompting you to choose a new Mail or News account. Select Mail to go to the Internet Connection Wizard, shown in Figure B, which will walk you through the fields of information required to access your different accounts. You'll need to know whether you're on a LAN or using a dial-up account, your POP 3 or IMAP outgoing mail and incoming mail server name, your E-mail address, the name or title you want to see displayed in your client mail viewer (as well as the tag that goes along with your E-mail to its destination), and your E-mail account password. Repeat these steps until you've set up all the accounts you want.

Figure A: Multiple POP 3 accounts are easy to set up with Outlook Express.

Figure B: The Internet Connection Wizard walks you through the steps to configure your various accounts.

Configuring properties

After entering the necessary addresses and protocols through the Internet Connection Wizard, you can go back and configure each account with the properties you desire. Simply highlight the specific account and click the Properties button in the Internet Accounts dialog box, then configure your information in the Mail Account Properties dialog box, shown in Figure C. An example of case-specific custom properties would be an E-mail address that you share with a colleague or work team that requires you to leave mail on the server so that everyone in the group can receive messages.

Figure C: In this dialog box, you can configure the properties of your accounts.

Setting your default account

Choosing the proper account as your default is very important because this account will send your E-mail. Consequently, if the person receiving your E-mail simply clicks Reply To Sender, the reply mail will be routed through this account. Confusion might occur if you're sending replies to personal mail from your company mail account or vice versa. This seems to be Outlook Express' only shortcoming, and it's even money that Microsoft will clear up this problem in future releases.

To set your default, just highlight the account you want to use and click the Set As Default button in the Internet Accounts dialog box. Now that you've set up your various E-mail addresses, you can simply click the Send And Receive button in your E-mail viewer and watch Outlook Express collect your mail from any number of Internet mail servers with which you have accounts. If you have any problems configuring Outlook Express, check out Microsoft's public newsgroup, which is located at microsoft.public.inetexplorer.ie4.outlookexpress.

The article entitled "Using Outlook Express to Receive E-mail from Multiple Accounts" was originally published in Explore the Net with Internet Explorer September 1997. Copyright © 1997, The Cobb Group, 9420 Bunson Parkway, Louisville, KY 40220. All rights reserved. For subscription information, call the Cobb Group at 1-800-223-8720.

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