Creating new email accounts in OE is easy, providing you know the POP and SMTP settings. They are easy enough to find, so don't worry about that right now. Read through this info first before opening Outlook Express.

Open Outlook Express, click on Tools in the top toolbar and choose Accounts.

Click on Add (in the right-hand corner) and then choose Mail.

In the next window type in the name you want your email recipients to see who it is from, and press Next.

Type your email address in the next window, and press Next.

This next window is where you need to know the settings as supplied by your ISP. The incoming mail settings vary from company to company. BT make it easy, as I am sure many others do, but for instance, if you are setting up a Yahoo mail account to run in OE, the settings are these.

In the top box:  pop.mail.yahoo.co.uk      (if it is a dot com account, put dot com instead of .co.uk)

In the bottom box: smtp.mail.yahoo.co.uk

(If you are going to receive and send mail in Outlook Express using a Yahoo account, read the info at the bottom of this page)

If you are uncertain of your settings, open another web browser page (so that you don't lose this one) and go to your ISP's home page and look for Mail Settings which could be in your My Account section of the home page of your ISP.

After establishing and typing in the mail settings and pressing Next, you now insert your username and password details. If you are setting this up for Yahoo, I find it isn't necessary to put the @yahoo.co.uk bit after my username. Press Next when you have filled in the required information and then press Finish.

You should now have a window with something like this showing. Yours will refer to your ISP mail server.

This highlighted text is the account you have just created. Rather non-descript though. It needs a name to identify it if you have more than one email account in Outlook Express. Double click on the highlighted text.

Change the highlighted text to a name that you will know what it is. For instance, "Yahoo", "Mary", "BT", or whatever. When you have done this, just press Apply and OK.

One point to remember is that if you have more than one email account in OE, you should set your preferred one as the default account so that each email you create goes out on that particular email account unless you specify otherwise.

If, when creating an email and you have more than the one account (a single account will automatically be set as the default account) and you want to use a different account to send an email, just look to the top of the email in the From line, click on the down arrow at the far right of this line and select whichever account you want to send with.

And now, about Yahoo. If you want emails from your Yahoo account coming into and out of OE, you have to agree to accept a thing call Yahoo Delivers, which is advertising material, but worth it to enable you to use OE instead of reading and writing emails online in their web pages. Go to your Yahoo home page, find the section on Email Forwarding and sign up to receive emails once a week. Ignore their offer of letting you subscribe. I use the free forwarding, that's why I get an email once a week, which, as we all know, is read completely from top to bottom!!!!

If you sign up, there is one last thing to do.

Open OE again, click on Tools/Accounts and find your Yahoo account. Double click on it and then open the Server tab at the top. Put a tick in the box about authentication and just press OK.

That should be it. If I have missed something out, please forgive me, and email me with the information you need.