Back to index page Send this page address - CLICK HERE - to a friend ! Email and Outlook Express

Where does Outlook Express store my emails on my Mac OS9 ? Where does Outlook Express keep my messages? Locate your Outlook Express folder and open it. Open the folder named "Identities". Inside you'll find another folder named "Main Identity" and possibly others named "Identity 1", "Identity 2" etc. Open each of these and you'll find your Messages file and associated database. To archive everything it's best to save the entire "Identities" folder. Holiday Mesages My ISP provides me with a "Cobalt" mail server with browser access so I can set up various email addresses and aliases. One of the facilities is a "vacation reply". If I tick the "vacation reply" box and type in a message, that reply gets sent to each person who sends me an email. BUT! It does this only once per week for each specific sender. In other words, if it receives a message from fred@somewhere.com it sends a vacation reply. If it receives another message from fred@somewhere.com after only 6 days, it does NOT send my vacation reply. But after 7 days it WILL send it again if fred writes to me. This prevents the dreaded "holiday bounce" effect. I bet you've all seen it on mailing lists where some twerp has left his holiday reply ON (without bounce control) so that *every* message to the mailing list generates a "sorry, I'm on holiday in Outer Mongolia for the next six months" reply. Now, in Outlook express, you've got an option under "Tools" called "Schedules". Select this and then select "New" + "Schedule" from the "File" menu. I'm not going to describe this in detail but it allows you to set up an "action" that tells Outlook express what to do with incoming mail. One "action" could be to file messages that contain the Subject line "Richard's Newsletter" into a folder called "Good stuff" (for example). This is a handy way to stop your inbasket filling up with stuff that isn't urgent. You can even use it as a spam filter to trash messages that contain certain words like "v;agra" (who needs it? . IF [message body] contains "v;agra" File in folder "erect;ons" Another action could be to take ALL incoming messaages and send a holiday reply AND to use the "IF" facility so that IF the Subject line contains "Richard's Newsletter" then DO NOT send the holiday message. You make sure that your holiday reply does not respond to any of your regular mailing list subscriptions to avoid the "holiday bounce" effect. Obviously you need to leave your computer ON (not the monitor) and set Outlook Express to look for mail at least once a day automatically. Other useful stuff There are certain things you can do to reduce the risk of virus problems: Launch Outlook Express. Mac Click on Tools --> Accounts. Double click on the account name, click on the Options tab and set "Partially retrieve messages over" to 30k, making sure you tick the box to activate the option. Win (6.1) Click on Tools --> message rules --> mail. Click on the new rules tab. Click 'new' on the right. Scroll down through the top list until you find 'where the message is more than size'. Then scroll down the second list until 'do not download it from server'. In box 3, click on the word 'size' (in blue) to select size. Then click apply. There are no viruses smaller than 30k and very few ordinary e-mail messages exceed 30k. If you are sent a longer file, you'll see the first few lines and be given the option to receive it, leave it on your POP server or delete on server without receiving it. In addition, in your "address book" create a new person called "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" and leave his e-mail address blank. Do the same for "ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ". That way, you'll be alerted if a virus attempts to use your address book because it will bring up an error message "illegal recipient" or some such nonsense. Other changes you might like to make: Launch Outlook Express email program. Click on the "Edit" menu at the top of the screen and select "Preferences" at the bottom of the drop-down menu. Click on the "Compose" tab at the top of the window that appears. Now you see where it says "Reply and Forward"? Click on the tick box "Include entire message in reply" to REMOVE the tick. You can now include *only* the text which you choose to highlight by dragging the cursor across it. Also make sure that the button "Place insertion point after quoted text" is black (click on it). Now click on "OK" to close the window. That's it, fixed! Copyright ©1998 SatCure Updated October 22, 2003 This file may be downloaded for private and personal use but NO part of it may be published in any form without the prior permission of the author. Send this page address - CLICK HERE - to a friend !