Setting Up Outlook Express 5
FamilyClick provides up to five email accounts for each family and offers a web based email client for reading, composing and sending email messages. Most members find that web based email fills their needs but others may desire to use a different method of accessing their email. Because FamilyClick's email service is based on generally accepted industry standards, you are free to use any email application that uses the POP3 and SMTP protocols. Examples include Eudora (http://www.eudora.com), Pegasus (http://www.pegasus.usa.com) and Outlook Express (http://www.microsoft.com).
This document deals with setting up Outlook Express 5, a powerful general purpose email application that is included on your FamilyClick installation CD. Outlook Express features support for multiple email accounts, advanced filtering and sorting as well as personalized stationary and individual signatures. This tutorial shows how to set up Outlook Express for a family administrator account named 'outlook' as well as an additional family member named 'outlook1'. This tutorial assumes either that Outlook Express was installed and configured by the FamilyClick installation process or, if it was pre-installed, that minimal customizations have been done to it.
Getting Started
The FamilyClick installation procedure should have installed Outlook Express 5 and configured it for the family administrator's email account. However, you may need to change some of the settings. Also, if Outlook Express was installed on your computer prior to installing FamilyClick, it may not be configured correctly. The first step is to start Outlook Express and  check that it is configured correctly to work with the family administrators email account.
There should be an Outlook Express shortcut somewhere on your desktop. There should also be an entry for it on your Start menu. To start Outlook Express, either select it from the Start menu or double-click the desktop shortcut.
Configuring the Family Administrator Account
Once Outlook Express starts, select Accounts from the Tools menu. This should bring up the Internet Accounts window that should look similar to the image shown to the right. Outlook Express knows about three different types of accounts: Mail, News and Directory Service. This tutorial only deals with Mail accounts.
When installed, Outlook Express includes seven example Directory Service accounts which are not used with FamilyClick. Directory Service accounts are currently not used at FamilyClick. Somewhere near the middle of the list of accounts should be an account named 'pop.'. This should be listed as your default Mail account and the phrase 'Any available' should appear in the Connection column. If the 'pop.' account does not appear, click on the Add button and, from the menu of choices that appears, select Mail. If this account does appear, highlight it then click on the Properties button and skip down to the Setting the Account Properties section below.
To add a Mail account, Outlook Express uses a wizard to automate all the necessary steps. The first thing you need to do is to enter your name. This is your full name; not your FamilyClick username. Your name will be included in all mail messages that you send to others so enter it as you want it to appear in these messages. When you have it the way you want it, click the Next> button to continue.
Here, you need to enter your FamilyClick email address. Make sure the selection labeled 'I already have an e-mail address that I'd like to use' is checked. The selection labeled 'I'd like to sign up for a new account from' should NOT be checked. Enter your FamilyClick email address making sure to include '' as in outlook'. This is your full email address and is how other people need to address mail messages that they send to you. Click the Next> button to continue.
Now you need to tell Outlook Express about the FamilyClick servers that provide mail service. There are two servers you need to be concerned with. The incoming mail server is the system that receives mail messages that other people send to you. It stores these messages until you are ready to receive them. FamilyClick uses a POP3 server as it's incoming mail server. Select POP3 as the type of incoming mail server and for the name enter 'pop.'.
The SMTP or outgoing mail server is the system that handles mail that you send to others. FamilyClick's SMTP server name is 'mail.'. In case you're curious, POP stands for Post Office Protocol and SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Both are standard methods used by computers to transfer mail messages across the Internet. When you've specified the incoming and outgoing server names, click the Next> button.
The incoming, or POP, mail server needs to know who you are in order for it to deliver your mail messages to you. For this, it needs your account name and password. Your account name is your email address without the '' portion. In other words, if 'outlook' is your email address, then 'outlook' is your account name. Enter your account name in the space provided.
Outlook Express has the ability to remember your password so you don't have to enter it each time you retrieve your mail. If you want it to do this, click on the box next to 'Remember password' and enter your password in the space provided. For privacy, FamilyClick recommends that you do NOT have Outlook Express remember your password - especially if your computer is used by more than one person. If you do decide to store your password in Outlook Express, you will need to remember that if you decide to change your FamilyClick password, you'll need to come back to Outlook Express and change it there as well.
When you click on Next>, you'll be brought to the Finish screen. If you want to go back and review what you've entered, click on the Back button. When you are satisfied that everything has been entered correctly click the button marked Finish. This will bring you back to the Internet Accounts window. You should see the Mail account that you've just set up in the list of accounts; it should be named 'pop.'. There are still a few items left to configure so highlight the account and click on the Properties button.
The Outlook Express Properties window allows you to change the properties associated with an Outlook Express account. The first thing you should change is the name. As configured, this mail account is shown on the Internet Accounts window as 'pop.'. It would be much more descriptive to display this with something meaningful. If you want to change this, enter any word or phrase that identifies this account. You may use your name or anything else that is meaningful to you. You may even leave the account name as 'pop.' if you wish. Remember that this is the name that Outlook Express assigns to the account. Changing anything here does not cause any changes to be made for the account on the FamilyClick servers.
You should click on Servers tab to verify that the Incoming and Outgoing mail servers are set to 'pop.' and 'mail.'. Also, if you ever change your mind about having Outlook Express remember your password, this is the place where you can change it.
Finally, click on the Advanced tab. Most of the settings in this section can safely be ignored as the defaults are appropriate. However, you need to be aware of the settings near the bottom of the window in the section labeled Delivery. By default, when Outlook Express retrieves messages, it will remove those messages from the incoming mail server. If you leave this as it is, once each message is copied to your computer, it will be removed from FamilyClick's incoming mail server. There will be no other copies of those messages other than those on your computer. Outlook Express gives you a couple of options. If you click the box next to 'Leave a copy of messages on server', you can elect to have them removed from the server after a specified number of days or have them removed from the server after you've removed them from Outlook Express. Or, you can leave them on the FamilyClick mail server indefinitely and periodically use the web email interface to clean them up.
As you consider how to set this up, remember that each FamilyClick email account has a 10-MB limit. 10 MB is enough to store hundreds of simple typed messages. On the other hand, 10 MB may be able to store only a handful of more complex messages containing sound files, images and other types of data. The number of messages that can fit in a 10-MB space varies according to the size of each message. But when that 10-MB limit is reached, your mailbox is considered full and any messages that arrive for you will be returned to the sender.
For the purposes of setting up Outlook Express, FamilyClick recommends that you initially leave messages on the server. This will allow you to get everything setup and tested without the possibility of accidentally deleting an important message. Once Outlook Express is working the way you want it, we recommend that you let Outlook Express remove all messages from the incoming mail server after they've been retrieved. That will help to ensure that your mailbox has sufficient room for incoming messages.
If you choose to leave the messages on the server, consider the number of messages that you normally receive and the types of those messages. Keep in mind that if your FamilyClick account is fairly new, your email usage is likely to increase over time. If you normally receive only a dozen or so small messages per week, you'll probably be safe letting Outlook Express remove them after 5 days or so. On the other hand, if you typically receive many large messages, you'll need to ensure that they are removed from the incoming mail server soon after you've read them. Another non-automatic option is to use the FamilyClick web email interface to manually remove any messages after you've read them.
Once you've made all your changes, click on the OK button. This should bring you back to the Internet Accounts window. Click on Close.
Send Yourself a Test Message
To make sure everything is set up correctly, you should now send a test message to yourself. Click on the New Mail button near the upper left corner of the main Outlook Express window. This will bring up the New Message window.
In the To: field, enter your full email address. The Subject: can be anything you want as can the text of the message itself. You don't need anything fancy; the intent is simply to verify that Outlook Express is working correctly. When your message is ready, click the Send button. The message should be sent and the New Message window should disappear.
As configured, Outlook Express is not configured to automatically check the incoming server for new messages. If you want to set this up, select Options from the Tools menu. Click on the Mail Delivery tab. In the section labeled 'Mail Account Options' you can set how often Outlook Express should check for incoming messages. Assuming that Outlook Express is NOT automatically checking, wait a minute or so for the test message to arrive at the mail server and then click the Send/Recv button.
If you configured Outlook Express not to remember your password, a window will popup asking for your password. Enter your password and click the OK button. If everything is correct, Outlook Express will retrieve the test message that you've just sent and place it in your Inbox folder. To read it, just double-click on the highlighted word Inbox toward the left of the Outlook Express window. Please note that if you are setting up Outlook Express for an account that has been in use for some time, it may retrieve many messages; some of which you may have read before.
If everything worked as planned, we recommend that you go back and tell Outlook Express to remove messages from the server after they've been retrieved (Tools … Accounts…Properties).
Setting up Additional Accounts
Most FamilyClick households have more than one mail account; your FamilyClick membership allows up to five. Outlook Express handles multiple accounts by assigning each to a separate identity. If multiple members of your family will be using Outlook Express, you should create an identity for each family member that has a FamilyClick email account.
When Outlook Express is first installed and executed, it creates what is known as a Main Identity. All the configuration work you've done so far has been applied to that main identity. If you intend to create additional identities, we recommend that you first assign a meaningful name to the Main Identity and assign a password to it.
Go to the File menu and select Identities … Manage Identities. This will bring up the Manage Identities window. This should only have one identity named Main Identity. Highlight the Main Identity and click on the Properties button. The Identity Properties window allows you to change the name of an identity and assign a password to it. You should enter a descriptive name and you should also click on the box labeled Require password.
We recommend that each identity be given a password. Note that this password is different from the password that is used to log into FamilyClick or retrieve mail from the incoming mail server. It is a password unique to Outlook Express that prevents non-authorized people from switching to the identity. If you do not assign each identity password, other people will be able to start Outlook Express using that identity and read messages that you've already retrieved. They don't need to know your FamilyClick password in order to do this. If you've set Outlook Express to remember your FamilyClick password, they'll be able to retrieve any new messages that may be waiting on the server. To assign a password to this identity, click the Require Password box then enter the desired password in the window that pops up. When done, click on OK.
To create a new identity, go to the Outlook Express File menu and select Identities, then Add New Identity. This will bring up the New Identity window. Enter the name of the new identity; this should be set to the name of the FamilyClick account that you are assigning to the identity. For this example, we're using 'outlook1'.
Once you've defined the identity and assigned a password, Outlook Express will ask if you want to switch to the identity. To continue configuring the new identity, click on the Yes button.
Outlook Express will now restart under the new identity. It will not have any of the account settings associated with the main identity. If, when it restarts, it detects that other email software such as Eudora or Pegasus is installed, it will offer to import the settings from that software. Unless you know that the other email software is correctly configured for the FamilyClick account, you should have Outlook Express create a new Internet mail account. Note that you will not see this window unless you have other email software installed on your system.
From this point, Outlook Express adds the information about the mail account for this identity in exactly the same manner as it added a new account earlier in this tutorial. You should go through the same steps as you did earlier, making changes in account name, email address and other data as required. Once complete, Outlook Express running under this other identity will behave as if it were a completely separate copy of the software. All folders, address books, filters and other settings are maintained separately for each identity.
You should create a new password protected identity for each member of your household that has a FamilyClick mail account. When configured with multiple identities, Outlook Express will allow you to switch between identities by selecting Switch Identity under the File menu. When supplied with the name of the identity and the correct password, Outlook Express will then restart under that identity.
An important thing to remember when using multiple identities is that you must exit Outlook Express by selecting Exit and Log Off Identity under the File menu. If Outlook Express is closed this way, it will ask for the identity and password the next time it is started. If you just exit without logging off from the identity, it will start up in the last identity; without requiring a password, the next time that it is started.
Further Help
More information on Outlook Express is available via the Outlook Express Help menu. There is also help available from Microsoft's website at http://www.microsoft.com. FamilyClick provides a tutorial on configuring Outlook Express to use a whitelist. A whitelist is a list of email addresses that you will receive mail from. For other FamilyClick email issues, please send email to support.
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