PCTips - E-mail

Where Did Those Pictures Come From?

Links in E-mail

Incredimail

How to Export Mail from IncrediMail to another Email Program

Has my e-mail got a virus?

Recover an old Freeserve or Wanadoo email address

Winmail.dat

E-mail settings for TalkTalk broadband

E-mail settings for SKY broadband

Additional Sky E-mail Addresses

E-mails not getting through

E-mail Attachments

Cannot connect to BT Yahoo

Thunderbird

E-mail problem after McAfee upgrade

How to e-mail a video clip

Cannot Open Attachment

The Ultimate Spam Filter

How to set up a Googlemail (Gmail) account

Download mail from a Googlemail account

Use Googlemail to access other e-mail addresses

Enable Windows Mail

Spam

Eventually we all get plagued by spam. I get about 50 a day, but most of them are stopped by my ISP’s filter and the few that get through I just delete.

Some people are more sensitive to spam than others, partly depending on who else sees/shares their email account. Somehow people seem to feel responsible for the spam they receive and are ashamed!

The first thing to do if spam bothers you is to check whether your ISP offers a spam filter. The usual procedure is to go to your ISP’s web site and logon to webmail using your e-mail address and password. You can then switch on the spam filtering so that all spam is placed in a junk file on their server and only the non-spam is sent through to your e-mail program.

This does mean that you should check your junk folder on the webmail page every few days to see if the filter has wrongly classified any e-mail that wasn’t really spam. You can then mark that as non-spam and your ISP will send it on to you and try to learn from its mistake.

But these filters tend to be fairly weak - I think that they are afraid that you might accuse them of withholding your vital mail if they are too aggresive with their filtering.

So another way to do it is to use a program like SpamPal (www.spampal.org - it’s FREE). This sits between your internet connection and your e-mail program. As it scans each e-mail coming in it looks at where it came from and checks the servers it has passed through against several blacklists.

If SpamPal thinks an e-mail is spam it adds **SPAM** to the subject line and then sends the e-mail on to your e-mail program. You can then either check each one and deal with it appropriately, knowing that it is probably spam, or you can set up a special Spam folder and set up a message rule to send all messages containing **SPAM** to that folder.

Then you can review the contents of that folder at your leisure. If anything in there is not spam you can add it to SpamPal’s whitelist for future reference.

Similarly if it misses any spam you can add them to SpamPal’s blacklist. Gradually SpamPal learns what’s good and bad in your particular situation.

Not bad for free - a little tricky to set up the e-mail settings, but comprehensive instructions are provided for all the major (and most of the minor) e-mail programs in a downloadable manual that is five times bigger than the program itself!

I recommend that you write down each e-mail setting before you change it so that if you don’t manage to set it up you can reverse the changes.

And whatever you do about spam, set your e-mail program to read your e-mails in plain text - that will stop any nasty programs hidden in HTML messages from running. If you then recognise the sender and want to see their message with all it’s bells and whistles you can view it in HTML on an individual basis. Details for setting this up in Outlook Express are here: Read your e-mail safely

E-mail Sorting

My neighbour was concerned that his e-mail was coming in “out of sequence” and sometimes he wasn’t seeing new e-mails because they were “at the bottom of the list”.

He was using Outlook Express and the answer was that he had accidentally clicked on a column heading and changed the sort sequence.

When you are viewing the Inbox (or any other folder) in Outlook Express (or Outlook) there are usually (at least) 3 columns, headed:
From, Subject and Received.

Beside one of these column headings will be a tiny triangle pointing up or down. This indicates the column that defines the way that the e-mail listing is sorted. So if the triangle is in the “From” column the e-mails will be sorted by the senders name, either forwards or backwards, depending on the direction of the triangle.

If you click on that particular column header the triangle will turn upside down and the e-mails will be sorted in the reverse direction.

If you then click (deliberately or accidentally) on a different column header you will totally change the sort sequence of your e-mails.

My neighbour was used to his e-mails being sorted by “Received” with the newest at the top. But he had accidentally clicked on the “Subject” header so that new e-mails about Zebras always went to the bottom of the list.

Incidentally, if you change the sort sequence in one folder then that will also apply to all other folders (not like Windows Explorer, which remembers different sort sequences for different folders).

Where Did Those Pictures Come From?

My elderly caller was confused - he had received some photos from his son by e-mail and when he double clicked on them they opened up nicely in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.

But when he scrolled through them with the left and right arrow keys he got a lot more pictures that he was sure his son had not sent him. Where had they come from?

The pictures sent by e-mail were actually stored in a temporary folder. Windows Picture and Fax Viewer was scrolling through all the pictures in that folder - and also in that folder were images that had been downloaded from the internet during normal browsing.

Eventually the files in the temporary internet folder will get deleted or overwritten by others.

Links in E-mail

Take care when sending links in e-mails - I suggest you put them in the body of the e-mail, not in the subject line. Because.......

My daughter sent me an e-mail with a web site address in the subject line. I opened the e-mail in Outlook Express but the web site address was not a clickable link. No problem I thought, just copy and paste the link. But I couldn’t do that either!

So, a URL in the subject line of an e-mail does not become a hyper-link in Outlook Express, nor can you select it and copy it.

But when I tried it in Outlook there was no problem.

So avoid links in the subject line unless you are certain that the recipient is using Outlook.

So many people think that Outlook Express is a cut down version of Outlook. But it isn’t. It was designed by a different team. And I don’t think they ever met!

Incredimail

I came across two clients on the same day who were running Incredimail instead of Outlook Express - and neither of them knew why.

Somehow both of them had been “tricked” into downloading and installing Incredimail without really knowing what they were doing.

Incredimail is, so I am lead to believe, a perfectly good alternative to Outlook Express with additional bells and whistles to make it attractive.

When installed it will copy over all your e-mails from Outlook Express (and probably Outlook as well, but I haven’t checked that) together with your contacts (Address Book) and e-mail server settings. It will register itself as the default e-mail client in order to make the changeover as seamless as possible.

But:

1. There is no built-in option to export your messages into another e-mail program if you want to change again. However there is a way of exporting mail from Incredimail using another program - see the next tip

2. The program is supported by advertisements shown in a small section of the window.

3. Users who don’t realise what has happened can still open Outlook Express but find that they don’t get any e-mails because Incredimail defaults to checking for and downloading e-mails every 5 minutes. This effectively hijacks the e-mails from Outlook Express.

This last problem caused a small business a lot of hassle because for two days the boss kept checking Outlook Express for e-mails that had gone to Incredimail without his knowledge.

How to Export Mail from IncrediMail to another Email Program

There is full explanation (with screenshots) of how to do this using IncrediConvert at: http://email.about.com/cs/incredimailtips/qt/et012403.htm

Briefly, the procedure to get mail into Outlook Express is:

Download IncrediConvert (as a .zip file) by left clicking this link:
IncrediConvert.zip
(Note where you download it to.)
Unzip IncrediConvert.exe from the .zip file to the Desktop.

Open Incredimail and check if any of the mail folders are empty. If they are, delete them.
To be safe, backup your remaining Incredimail folders before proceeding further.
Close Incredimail.

I suggest that you now disconnect your internet connection whilst you do the transfer. That way you won’t lose any emails that come in between you copying them from IncrediMail and deleting the program.

Double left click IncrediConvert.exe on your Desktop.
The program will automatically select your default IncrediMail Identity and all folders (except Deleted Items).
(To convert mail from another identity, select its path in the folder tree on the left.)

Left click the Export toolbar button.
In “Select output folder” go to the top of the tree - the Desktop.
Left click Make New Folder.
Change the name of New Folder if you want.
Left click OK
The mail will be converted and stored in New Folder
Left click Open folder.

Go back to the IncrediConvert window and left click OK.
Left click OK to the TProgressbar property out of range warning.
Close IncrediConvert.

Now open Outlook Express and resize it’s window so that you can also see the New Folder that you still have open.

For every folder inside New Folder:
Open the folder by double left clicking it.
Press Ctrl-A to select all .eml files.
Drag and drop them to the folder in Outlook Express where you want to put them.

Your Incredimail emails should now be in Outlook Express.

Uninstall Incredimail using the normal uninstall program that comes with it.

Delete IncrediConvert and New Folder from the Desktop and IncrediConvert.zip from where you saved it.

Finally, don’t forget to reconnect your internet connection!

Note that the .eml files that IncrediConvert produces can be dragged and dropped into Outlook Express but cannot be dragged and dropped into Outlook. So if you want to get your mail into Outlook you need to first put it into Outlook Express and then use the Outlook Express export function to move it to Outlook. Annoying, but it works. I don’t know if you can drag and drop the .eml files into any other e-mail program.

Has my e-mail got a virus?

The message you sent yesterday appears to contain some self-generating virus and keeps repeatedly appearing in my Outlook Express. I have already deleted about 200 Megabytes of it but it still keeps coming. I have deleted it from my server but it seems to regenerate itself in cyberspace between my system and my server. I think that I may lose all my Outlook Express program in the end as I am fighting a losing battle with it. It has fortunately been filtered as Spam by my system so is not causing so far any further problems and there are no viruses present in my system.

I can at least send messages via Outlook Express but not receive them except by going to my Server - hence this message to you.

I don't think this is a virus at all.

I think that there is some error either with the message or with the e-mail server.

That error means that the message is not being deleted from the server after you have downloaded it. So the server keeps sending it over and over again.

"I have deleted it from my server but it seems to regenerate itself in cyberspace between my system and my server". That is not possible - it must still be on the e-mail server, I think. Or......

"It has fortunately been filtered as Spam by my system so is not causing so far any further problems". Does that mean there is an anti-spam program running? Could that have gone faulty? Anti-spam programs act as an interim server between the e-mail server and Outlook Express so it could be that the fault is with the anti-spam program that keeps forwarding the e-mail to Outlook Express and not deleting it.

It seems as though your PC is clean of viruses but what's happening is not the sort of thing that viruses do.

Step one - go to ISP's webmail page, log in and delete the message.

Step two - if that doesn't work, uninstall the anti-spam program.

Your most helpful analysis of the possible cause of my e-mailing problems has indeed solved the problem.

There were in the end 75 spam messages not getting into my system which was nevertheless trying to download them. The first of them was your message and that was the only one identified. However upon disabling my McAfee anti spam system they were all downloaded and the problem has hopefully gone away.

I have in fact also got an anti-spam system from Cloudmark running so perhaps having 2 of these systems on at the same time is not a good idea though this is the first time I have had this problem.

Many thanks to you and apologies for false accusations of spreading viruses.

Glad to have been able to help.

Yes, two anti-spam programs is a situation I would avoid - they are likely to "fight"

The same goes for software Firewalls (most third party firewalls automatically switch off the Windows XP firewall for just that reason).

And also Anti-virus programs.

But curiously running more than one anti-spyware program is not usually a problem.

My advice on Spam is:

If possible, use your ISP's anti-spyware filter if they have one. You set this up on their web site and they store what they think is your spam in a folder on their server for a few days.
You can go in and look at this every now and again to check that they haven't stopped some "proper" messages. You only get to download what they think is non-spam.

Set your email program to read all messages as plain text (in Outlook Express, it's Tools, Options, Read all messages in plain text). That means that no malicious code can run and you can delete the remnants of spam without fear of "getting infected". If you then want to see the remaining messages "in glorious technicolor" then you just click View, Message in HTML whilst the message is displayed. And then if you want to see the embedded pictures just click on the bar at the top of the message that starts "Some pictures have been blocked".

Recover an old Freeserve or Wanadoo e-mail address

This tip applies to Freeserve and Wanadoo dial-up accounts of the form:

user@user.wanadoo.co.uk
user@user.freeserve.co.uk
user@user.fsnet.co.uk etc.

If you don't use your Freeserve or Wanadoo dial-up account to dial-up to to the Internet for over 90 days, then your dial-up account will be suspended and you won't be able to connect with it or access your Freeserve/Wanadoo e-mail via any other connection.

If this has happened to you then you can reactivate your account for up to 260 days from when you last dialed in. So you have 170 days from the suspension of the account to reactivate it. If you don’t reactivate it then your account will be deleted and you will not be able to use it ever again.

To reactivate your account:

Go to “retrieving your account and restoring settings” at: http://www.orange.co.uk/time/ret_rest_account.htm#suspended and left click on the “retrieve account” button.

Fill in your suspended email address and password and left click the “sign in” button. The page will change to “your account - Account Retrieval”. Three lines up from the bottom, left click to select the box to accept new terms and conditions (you don’t have any choice if you want to continue). Left click the “continue” button.

If it has worked then the next page will invite you to left click an “install” button.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS - YOUR ACCOUNT HAS ALREADY BEEN REACTIVATED.

But if you DO left click “install” then your dial up internet connection settings will be changed to Orange and your email address will be added as an account to your default email program. This may be exactly what you want, but if the reason that you lost the old account was because you changed ISP (maybe got broadband) then you won’t want your connection settings changed. In this case, don’t click the “install” button, just exit the web site.

Your email address will be restored immediately (if it’s within 260 days) and you will be able to access it either through Orange webmail (sign in under “email” at www.orange.co.uk) or through your email program. If you didn’t click the “install” button then see my tip: How to set-up Outlook Express to send and receive email from a previous ISP

If you can't get online to do this, call Orange Customer Support on 0844 412 2202. (Lines are open from 8am-10pm, seven days a week and calls are charged at national rates).

Remember - if you take no action, after 260 days your account is lost forever.

Winmail.dat

When someone uses Microsoft Outlook to send messages with attachments and uses Microsoft Word as the e-mail editor then Rich Text Format (RTF) instructions are created and the message includes an additional file called Winmail.dat. Winmail.dat files can only be opened by other Microsoft Outlook users.

Recipients of the e-mail who are not using Outlook will not be able to open the files.

Winmail Opener is a small and simple utility that allows you to view and extract the contents of winmail.dat files. With Winmail Opener you can view the rich text message contents and the attachments embedded into the winmail.dat file.

Get it from:

http://www.eolsoft.com/freeware/winmail_opener/

E-mail settings for TalkTalk broadband

When you register for TalkTalk broadband they send you a broadband account name in the form: yourtelephonenumber@talktalk.net. But once you have set up the broadband you can register a “proper” email address, either as part of the setup process or subsequently by going to “My Account” at www.talktalk.net

During the setup process your e-mail program should have been setup for your chosen e-mail address, and this is what the settings should be:

Your Name: Your name in the form that you want your e-mail recipients to see it when they get mail from you.

E-mail address: Your full xxx@TalkTalk.net e-mail address (not your broadband account name which is yourtelephonenumber@talktalk.net)

Incoming Mail (POP3) Server: mail.talktalk.net

Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server: smtp.talktalk.net

Account Name: Your full xxx@TalkTalk.net e-mail address (not your broadband account name which is yourtelephonenumber@talktalk.net).

Password: the password for your xxx@TalkTalk.net email account

Log on using Secure Password Authentication (SPA): Do not tick this box

For detailed Outlook Express instructions see:

How to set up a new e-mail account in Outlook Express or:

How to change an e-mail account in Outlook Express

E-mail settings for SKY broadband

Google are now providing the technology and servers for the Sky e-mail service (addresses ending in @sky.com).

The Sky e-mail webpage has the same interface and capabilities as Google Mail/Gmail except that every occurrence of the word Google has been replaced by the word Sky!

Existing customers of Sky who use an e-mail client to get their mail have found that suddenly their account settings are wrong and they cannot send or receive mail.

They need to log in to the Sky e-mail webpage (start at www.sky.com and left click on Email & Tools). When the Mail page opens, left click on Settings and then on Forwarding and POP.

In the POP Download section select one of the two “Enable POP” options and then left click the Save Changes button.

Then, under Configure your email client, left click “Configuration instructions”. A new page will open and you should select your particular Mail Client.

Before following the instructions to configure your mail program, go back to the Sky mail page and logout - otherwise you may not be able to test your changes successfully.

Follow the setting instructions exactly - Google (and hence Sky) e-mail uses unusual settings which must be set correctly. Some of the instructions are not quite right - a single set covers Outlook Express and Outlook 2002, but is not quite right for either of them. But you should be able to work it out.

Additional Sky E-mail Addresses

(Note - now that Sky e-mail is “powered by Google” (see above tip) I don’t know if the following tip is correct any more. When I can find a Sky account to play with I will change this tip if necessary.)

Sky customers can have an additional 9 e-mail addresses on their account.

But to set them up you need to register an “Additional User” for your Sky account. So if you want the e-mail address for yourself you have to create a fictional additional user, just to get another e-mail address.

Go to www.sky.com left click on Login/Register, enter your Sky username and password and left click Login.

Go through the procedure to register an additional user and you will eventually be invited to pick an e-mail address for this fictional person.

Long-winded, but it works.

To add the new address to Outlook Account, see:

How to set up a new e-mail account in Outlook Express

E-mails not getting through

These are the usual reasons for e-mails not getting through.

1. Wrong address - you wouldn't believe the number of cases I see where folk put spaces or other invalid characters in an e-mail address. People try to put "real world" spelling and punctuation into e-mail addresses. i.e. an address might be:
MWSmith@anisp.co.uk - now any combination of upper and lower case letters doesn't affect it, but put a space or a full stop between the initials “M” and “W” and it becomes a totally different address! If the bit after the @ sign is correct then you may or may not get a "bounce" message from the recipients server - but some don't bother - it wastes their bandwidth.

2. Messages pass through numerous servers between sender and recipient. Any/all of them can have anti-spam precautions in place which can just throw away mail according to an arbitrary set of rules. Sometimes a server has a list of other servers which have been known to send spam recently - so anything from those servers is dumped for the next 24 hours or so. If someone else on your ISP has a compromised PC that is sending spam (part of a "botnet") then the spam filters might brand the whole of one of your ISP’s servers as a spammer and block it. Hence everyone else using that server will be blocked. But that's not your ISP's fault.

So if your ISP's server is accepting your e-mails - which it is if you don’t get a bounce from it, then all it can do is pass them on to the internet system. They can do nothing more.

Because no one organisation runs the internet there is no-one that you can blame for over zealous spam filtering. Not like being able to blame the Post Office for snailmail not getting through!

People hate spam and expect their ISPs to try to stop it, but there is no 100% perfect way of doing that without sometimes stopping genuine mail and sometimes missing spam.

The best way would be to charge for each mail sent - that would stop most of the spam. You don't object to sticking a stamp on a letter, so why should email be free?!!!!!!

E-mail Attachments

Some people still have dial-up connections - so if you are lucky enough to have broadband give a thought to your recipients when your e-mail them. It may only take a few seconds for you to send all those photos of the kids, but it may take many many minutes for your recipient to download them.

My friend has a dodgy dial-up connection (he is trying to get it fixed) and got into an endless loop with his e-mails. Someone had sent him a lot of photos as an attachment to an e-mail. When he connected to his ISP his e-mail program downloaded several e-mails, then got to the big one and spent several minutes until eventually the connection went down. Because the whole download session had not completed successfully none of the e-mails were deleted from the server. When he reconnected the e-mail download started again from the beginning. So he was getting duplicates of e-mails that he had already got. And couldn’t work out why.

I sorted it out by connecting to his account through webmail using my broadband, copying the photos to a file and then deleting the offending e-mail. So it then didn’t take long for his e-mail program to complete the download of the remainjng e-mails successfully and delete them from the server.

Cannot connect to BT Yahoo

A new subscriber to BT broadband received a BT Home Hub and managed to successfully connect to broadband.

But he couldn’t log in to BT Yahoo to use his new e-mail address. Everytime he tried to login the login box would return but with no error message.

After hours talking to BT’s help desk in various places around the world they concluded that it must be his McAfee firewall that was causing the problem.

He called me because he didn’t know what to do about the McAfee firewall - should he disable it or uninstall it, and if so, how?

He had the full McAfee Security Suite, so I ran a few trials with various elements disabled and discovered that the thing causing the problem was not the firewall but the McAfee Privacy Service.

So I uninstalled the Privacy Service through Add/Remove programs and the job was done.

I’m sure he can manage without the Privacy Service - most of the rest of us do! I’m not really sure what it actually does. (Apart from causing problems!)

Thunderbird

Thunderbird is a free email client from Mozilla - the Firefox people.

You can download it from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/ .

It is claimed to be more secure and customisable than Outlook Express (OE), and I’m sure it is.

If you are starting from scratch then it is probably much better to start with Thunderbird than OE, but if you are considering transferring from OE then you may experience some of the problems that I had:

Because I was just trying it out I didn’t want to transfer all my old emails from OE. But there was no way of stopping Thunderbird copying them all over.

My OE was set up to collect and send to 4 different email accounts. Thunderbird only managed to correctly transfer the settings for one of them.

One of the ones it failed to transfer was a Gmail account - even though setting up Gmail is one of it’s features. And when I went to set up the Gmail account manually using it’s Gmail wizard it insisted that my account should end in @googlemail.com - but my account ends in @gmail.com!

Another of my accounts is an old Freeserve account that allows anything before the @myname.freeserve.co.uk. But Thunderbird would not accept a username that was not in the form someone@somewhere, so I couldn’t set up a catch-all account to pick up all the different freeserve addresses that I have created.

And Thunderbird completely ignored my richard(at) pctips.org.uk account!

I had a number of message rules written into OE to automatically move certain emails into specific folders. Thunderbird did not transfer these rules.

So I was not very impressed with Thunderbird’s ability to transfer users from OE!

E-mail problem after McAfee upgrade

I have come across a couple of instances recently where an upgrade to McAfee security suite has caused incoming e-mails to stop.

Part of the McAfee suite is an anti-spam program. In common with several other anti-spam programs it sets up a software e-mail proxy server on the PC.

The proxy server gets the incoming email from your ISP and your e-mail program (Outlook Express, etc.) gets its incoming mail from the proxy server, after it has been checked for spam by McAfee.

But the McAfee upgrade seems to stop the proxy server working in some cases, so that your e-mail program fails to find it and gives you an error message.

If this could be your problem, check your Incoming (POP3) e-mail server address. If it is 127.0.0.1 then try changing it to the POP3 address of your ISP - typically something like pop.myisp.com or mail.myisp.com.

If that gets you back up and running then the anti-spam program was the culprit. If you really want to use it then I can only suggest that you uninstall and reinstall McAfee. But that is no small task, and may give you problems with your McAfee registration.

How to e-mail a video clip

Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) limit the size of attachments that you can send with an e-mail. A typical limit would be 10Mb.

But video clips can easily exceed this limit, so how can they be sent?

The answer is to upload the file to a web server and then send an e-mail to your contact to tell them where the file is. They can then download the file from the server to their computer.

The easiest way to do this is to use a site like YouSendIt. This is free to use for files under 100Mb and no registration is required. Just click on the link above and follow this simple procedure:

1. Type in the Recipient’s e-mail address
2. Type in your own e-mail address
3. Type a Subject (just like for an e-mail)
4. Type your message (just like an e-mail)
5. Browse your PC to find the file that you want to send and left click Open.
6. Left click the green SEND IT button.

The file is then uploaded to the YouSendIt server and an e-mail is sent to the recipient with a link for them to left click to enable them to download the file. You will also receive an e-mail giving you the same link.

For a small fee you can send bigger files, keep them on the server for longer than 7 days, password protect them and get notification of downloads. But what you get for free is probably enough for most people’s requirements.

Cannot Open Attachment

If you cannot open an e-mail attachment it’s because the PC that you are using has not got a program installed that can read that particular type of file.

I have recently begun to see this problem more because our friends in Microsoft have introduced a new set of file formats called the Microsoft Open Office XML Format. They want this to become the new standard for Office documents. (You can recognise these files because their file type ends in “x”, e.g. .docx .xlsx .pptx)

Older versions of Microsoft Office and OpenOffice cannot read the new type of file. Hence, if you are sent one as an e-mail attachment, your PC will not be able to read it.

And when you contact the sender they will just send the same thing again, thinking that it must be a transmission problem.

For more information and instructions on how to open this sort of file see my tip:
New Office Document Formats

The Ultimate Spam Filter

Over the past year or so Google’s Gmail (Googlemail in the UK) has established an excellent reputation for spam prevention and detection. Partly because of the volume of mail that it handles it is arguably now the best anti-spam e-mail provider.

So it’s simple - if you don’t want spam, use a Gmail account.

But supposing that you already have a well established e-mail address that you don’t want to change, and that you also wish to continue to send and receive this e-mail using an e-mail program (called an “e-mail client”) like Outlook or Outlook Express. How can you do that and also stop spam?

Well Google can do it for you, for free, in just a few simple steps.

1. Set up a Gmail/Googlemail account.

2. Set the Gmail account to allow POP3 access.

3. Tell the Gmail account to get mail from your other e-mail account and also enable it to send from that address.

4. Change your e-mail client (Outlook, etc.) to use your Gmail account instead of your old account.

I have tested this (of course) and it works just fine.

Other advantages:

Access all your e-mail from any PC anywhere.
Over 5000 megabytes (always rising) of free storage, so no need to ever delete any e-mails.
Search all your mail using Google.
You can retrieve your mail from up to five POP3 e-mail accounts.
You can access Gmail on your mobile.

Disadvantages:

Mail may take slightly longer to reach you - Gmail only checks your other accounts approximately every half hour.
Awkward to set up (but you only have to do it once, and my tips will help you!).
Cannot be used for e-mail accounts that do not allow POP3 access (the free versions of Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.).

How to set up a Googlemail (Gmail) account

Open your internet browser and go to http:\\mail.google.com (NO www at the front).

Left click on Sign up for Google Mail.

Fill in your First name, Last name and Desired Login Name (between 6 and 30 characters).

Left click on the “check availability!” button.

If your Desired Login Name is not available (i.e someone else is already using it) then Google will suggest 4 alternatives.

You can select one of these, or left click on the “check availability!” button again to get 4 more suggestions, or type in another suggestion of your own until you get to one that you are happy with and is available.

Write down this Login Name and then type in your password (twice).

Do what you like with the Remember me and Enable Web History boxes. I suggest that you leave them unchanged.

Left click on the down arrow to choose a Security Question and then type in the answer. (Google will only use this if you forget your password).

Type in a Secondary email address, if you have one.

Select your Location (it will probably already be correct) and then type in the Word Verification characters.

Left click on the “I accept. Create my account.” button.

When you get to the Congratulations! screen, left click on “I’m ready,show me my account.”

At the bottom of the next screen left click on the “Sweet! Go to my inbox >>” button.

That’s it, you now have a Googlemail e-mail account.

Explore it at your leisure. “Sign out” is in the top right hand corner.

To log in to your account in future, open your internet browser and go to http:\\mail.google.com (remember, no www at the front).

Type in your Username (they called it Login Name before!) - without the @googlemail.com bit. Type in your Password and left click the Sign in button.

Isn’t it nice that you didn’t have to give them any personal information!

Download mail from a Googlemail account

Although Googlemail/Gmail was originally designed to be accessed through a website interface, it is now possible to download this mail to a “conventional” e-mail program (client) like Outlook or Outlook Express.

(This is not possible with the free versions of Hotmail or Yahoo! mail.)

To do this you first need to enable the facility in your Gmail account.

Open your internet browser and go to http:\\mail.google.com (NO www at the front).

Type in your Username - without the @googlemail.com bit. Type in your Password and left click the Sign in button.

Left click on Settings in the top right hand corner and then left click on Forwarding and POP.

In the POP Download section select one of the two “Enable POP” options and then left click the Save Changes button.

Then, under Configure your email client, left click “Configuration instructions”. A new page will open and you should select your particular e-mail Client.

Before following the instructions to configure your mail program, go back to the Googlemail page and logout - otherwise you may not be able to test your changes successfully.

Follow the setting instructions exactly - Google e-mail uses unusual settings which must be set correctly. Some of the instructions are not quite right - a single set covers Outlook Express and Outlook 2002, but is not quite right for either of them. But you should be able to work it out.

Use Googlemail to access other e-mail addresses

Gmail/Googlemail can get mail from your “normal” e-mail supplier so that you can deal with it on-line from anywhere in the world. By “normal” I mean the type of e-mail account that you get from your ISP and read with Outlook or Outlook Express. It’s called POP3 e-mail.

But Gmail cannot be used for e-mail accounts that do not allow POP3 access (the free versions of Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.).

Before you start you need to write down some vital settings from your current e-mail program. These settings are:

e-mail address
username
password
POP server
POP port
Is a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connection used?

Without this information you cannot continue, so collect and write down the above settings as you left click through the following:

Outlook:

Tools, E-mail Accounts, View or change existing e-mail accounts, select your account name, Change, More Settings, Advanced.

Outlook Express:

Tools, Accounts, All, select your account name, Properties, General, Servers, Advanced.

The only thing that you won’t have been able to find is the password - but you should know that.

Then open your internet browser and go to http:\\mail.google.com (NO www at the front).

Type in your Google Username - without the @googlemail.com bit. Type in your Password and left click the Sign in button.

Left click on Settings in the top right hand corner and then left click on Accounts.

Halfway down, in the section marked Get mail from other accounts, left click on Add another mail account.

In the box that opens type in the e-mail address of the account that you want to get mail from and then left click Next Step >.

In the next box fill in the Password, POP Server and Port boxes. Left click to select the SSL box if required.

There are 3 other options here that you need to consider carefully. They are fairly self-explanatory, and depend on the way that you want to use your Google account in conjunction with your existing e-mail program.

Left click on the Add Account button. Google will test your settings and if all is well they will then tell you that your mail account has been added. Leave the Yes option selected and left click on the Next Step button.

In the next window enter your name and left click on the Next Step button again. In the next one left click on Send Verification. In the final screen click on Close window.

Back on the Google settings page, halfway down, in the section marked Get mail from other accounts, you will now see the e-mail address that you just set up. Against this left click on Check mail now and wait until the words “checking mail” go away. It should say that it has fetched at least one e-mail. (You might have to wait a few minutes for the e-mail to get through the system.)

Now left click on Inbox (LHS under Compose Mail) and then left click on the Google Mail Confirmation e-mail. Left click the link to confirm your request.

Your Gmail account is now set up to send and receive e-mails from your other e-mail address. (You can set up 4 more if you want!)

Enable Windows Mail

Windows Mail is the new version of Outlook Express that comes with Windows Vista.

Unfortunately the Business version of Windows Vista comes with Windows Mail disabled. Presumably they think that business users will want to use Outlook.

You can enable (or disable) Windows Mail in any version of Vista as follows:

1. Open the Start Menu.

2. In the Start Search area, type regedit and press Enter.

3. Left click the Continue button for the UAC prompt.

4. In regedit, navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft

5. To Enable Windows Mail -

A) In the right pane, right click on ManualLaunchAllowed and left click Delete.
B) Left click Yes to confirm deletion.

6. To Disable Windows Mail -

A) In the left pane, right click on Microsoft and left click on New and Key. Type Windows Mail and press Enter.
NOTE: If you already have Windows Mail in the left pane, then skip this step 6A and go to step 6B instead.
B) In the right pane of Windows Mail, right click on a empty space and left click on New and DWORD (32-bit) Value. Type ManualLaunchAllowed and press Enter.

7. Close regedit.
8. Logoff and logon, or restart the computer to apply the change.


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