Configuring Your Email

Many of us who work in the industry obviously have to travel a lot and getting email is extremely important. We are now going to talk about how to set up your email client to retrieve your email and send it out. Some people might think this is silly to talk about setting up email, but when one uses his email for business, he can't change it every time he relocates to another storm devastated area.

Your email "client" is the program used to retrieve or send mail to the email "server" which is the host that routes email to its destination. There is no reason to change your email address everytime you change the Internet Service Provider (ISP) through which you logon to the Internet. Your eail client will retrieve your POP email no matter who you logon through. After all, your program has been told where the mail server is.

Since adjusters can get an email address here at AdjustersOnly that does not put the typical 2 megabyte restriction on email, we will set up your email client @adjustersonly.net as an example. The biggest benefit to having your email remain the same is people you have dealt with know how to contact you consistently. What this means to you is, you only have to change your outgoing mail server and not your incoming mail server when you change where you are logging onto the Internet.

The settings are the same no matter which email client you are using. The only thing that might differ is how to bring up the window to access the settings. Some programs may not have the incoming and outgoing mail servers on the same screen. Just go through the configuration until you see both. Sometimes you will not be offered a place to input your password until you actually check your email. In that case, just type in your password and look for the checkbox requesting to "Remember Password", if so desired.

Outlook Express™

We will first cover the steps for setting up an account in Outlook Express™.

To get started you click on the Tools menu at the top of the window and slide your mouse pointer down to select the Accounts menu item. This will bring up a window where you can review and setup different kinds of accounts including News and Email accounts. Also take note of the Options menu item just below Accounts. We will be coming here later.

Then select the Add button on the right. This will pop up a small side menu where you can select Mail as the type of account. This will then start the Email Setup Wizard. Click the Next button or press Alt+N. (For those of you not aware, when a letter on a menu has a line under it, that indicates which letter in that window is that hotkey or shortcut key for that selection on the menu. This means that you can press that letter while holding down the Ctrl or Alt key on your keyboard and it will make that selection for you. This allows you to keep your hands on the keyboard, since having to move your hand from the keyboard to your mouse is an extra step that slows you down. A good program will have a hotkey for all of its menu selections.)

On the First window you type in your Display name. This is how you want people to see your name when they receive email from you. You can either use your email address, your actual name or Uncle Ted if you so desire. After typing in your display name, click on Next or press Alt+N.

The next screen will ask for your email address. Type in yourname@yourdomain.net and click Next. Make sure when typing out your email address that you do not leave any space. This is supposed to be typed as one word. Also, it is best to type everythiing in lower case. Most email servers only recognize letters in lower case. Some of them will convert upper case letters to lower case, which just slows the process. The exception to this as I know is AOL™. After typing in your email address click the Next button or press Alt+N.

The following window is where you will input your incoming and outgoing mail server information. When you are using one email address that you do not want to change, the incoming mail server will remain the same and you would only change the outgoing mail server. (See One Email Address.)The incoming mail server is generally mail.yourdomain.com. The outgoing mail server will either be mail.yourdomain.com or smtp.yourdomain.com. If you aren't sure try one and if that doesn't work, the other should. The only time that this will be different is when the ISP is so large it has to divide the load over several mail severs by region. Then you might see mail1., mail2., mail3. and so on. After inputting your mail servers, click the Next button or press Alt+N.

Outlook Express User Name and Password Window

The next screen is where you will input your username and password. In some cases your user name is only that part of your email address that falls before the @ symbol in the address. In this case it is the whole email address. Of course, if you want to not have to type in your password everytime you check email, or you have your email checked automagically every 10 minutes, you will want to check the Remember Password checkbox. Click the Next button or press Alt+N.

The following screen just congratulates you for having completed the setup for your email account. Click the Next button or press Alt+N.

You are now back to your account screen where you can see the account listed. If you ever have a need to edit the account, simply click the Properties button on the right after highlighting whichever account you want to edit by clicking on it. You can add as many email addresses here as you need. Some of us have about 8 or so to contend with. Since there are other settings we should look at while here, let's go ahead and click on that Edit button.

More Settings in Outlook Express

There are a couple of other settings you might want to be aware of in Outlook Express™. Remember, most email clients have the same settings. For example, if you keep your main computer at home and that is where you sort your email or you want to make sure that both your home computer and your notebook computer that you have on the road with you can check your email, then you will want to make the following setting. From the Properties screen that we just discussed, click on the "Advanced" tab along the top of the screen. The last section of this screen is titled Delivery. Check the check box by Leave a copy of messages on server. You can set both your home computer and your traveling computer this way. To avoid having to do so later, you can set your email client to delete the email from the server after so many days or when you empty your Deleted items folder.

You can also set your email client to automatically check email every so often. In Outlook Express™ this is done by going to the Tools menu again and selecting the last item on the menu, Options. On the General tab under the second section is a check box by Check for messages every X minutes. Change the number in the text box to however long you might need. I never let it go longer than 10 minutes out in the field while my home computer can download once per day.