Introduction & Opening | ICW and Outlook Interface | Configuring, Creating Folders & Receiving
Composing & Sending | Address Book | Accessing Newsgroups | Reading & Posting News
Automating Tasks | Outside Resources

The Outlook Express Address Book:
Outlook Express can be complicated enough. So, you don't want to have to remember typing a person's e-mail address on top of it. Not only could you have it spelled wrong, but you could also have made a typo while attempting to type up the address.

To make your life easier, Outlook Express has an Address Book feature within it. This is where you can store contact information including phone numbers for work, home, or mobile, e-mail addresses, regular addresses, and other information. To open the Address Book, you can do either one of the following:

1.) In the Folders side of your screen, locate the Contacts drop down menu (if this is available), and click the down arrow next to it. Then select New Contact, or

2.) Click on "Addresses" icon

Once you perform one of those two tasks, you will see the Address Book window appear. There you will see a menu bar with the menus File, Edit, View, Tools, and Help. Below that there will be a toolbar with the following buttons: New (Contact), Properties, Delete, Find People, Print, and Action.

The screen itself is similar to the main screen in Outlook Express. There is a left side of the screen, where the folders are located, and the right side, which contains the contents of those folders. A new address book will contain two folders: Shared Contacts, and Main Identity's Contact.

Creating Folders in the Outlook Express Address Book:
You can create a folder in the Address Book in one of the following two ways:

1.) Click on the File Menu in the menu bar, Select New Folder, or
2.) Right-click on a folder on the left side of the screen in Outlook Express, and Select New, and click New Folder.

At this point, you will see a Create Folder Dialog Box. It will have a field for entering the name of your folder. Type in a name for your new folder, and be sure to enter a name that will be appropriate for the e-mail you will have in it.

Now, you have a new folder to go along with the other local folders in your Address Book directory structure. At this point, you may want to alter the structure of your folders so that your new directory is a subdirectory of your Main Contact List. This will make organizing all your contacts easier. Folders let you group contacts, such as "Work" or "Friends."

Creating A Contact in the Outlook Express Address Book:
Now that you have opened the Address Book, and created some folders, you can start creating contacts. You can create a contact in several ways:

1.) Go to the File Menu on the menu bar, and Select New Contact, or

2.) Right-click on a folder in the Address Book, Select New, and click on New Contact.

3.) In the main Outlook Express Window, go to the left side where the folders are located, and click on the Contacts drop down menu, and click on New Contact.

When you choose to create a New Contact, you will be given a Properties Window that is opened to the Name tab. Other tabs in the Contact Properties Window are: Home, Business, Personal, Other, NetMeeting, and Digital Ids.

· Home-is for entering home-related contact information such as Street Address, City, State, Zip, etc.

· Business-has much of the same information as home, but also has such things as Job Title, Department, Company, Office, and Pager.

· Personal-has personal information such as Name of Spouse, Children, Birthday, and Anniversary.

· Other-has an area reserved for notes about a specific contact.

· NetMeeting-has information on available NetMeeting server IP addresses that the contact can be reached at.

· DigitalIDs-contains digital ids that are associated with particular contact e-mail addresses.

For the purpose of this tutorial, you will just fill in the contact's home information. Most importantly, enter the e-mail address of your contact so that you can use it at a later time.

Now, that you have entered a contact with an e-mail address, you can use that to place into an e-mail. So, if you have already gone through the portion of the tutorial that deals with Creating An E-mail in Outlook Express, you can create another e-mail message, but this time click on the Address Book icon next to the To field.

At this point, you will see a Select Recipients window; here you will see your contact list, which by this time should have the contact that you just created. Below the contact list, there are two buttons: New Contact and Properties. The New Contact Button is for creating a new contact for your list, and Properties gives the detailed contact information on contacts you already have in your list.

On the right side of the window are three buttons followed by fields. These are for the message recipients, or those who will be receiving your e-mail message. For the purpose of this e-mail, click on the To: -> Button to move your newly created contact into the To recipient field.

After moving the recipient into the To recipient field, click OK. At this point, you should see the new contact appear in the To field in the e-mail that you are composing. Type in the Subject and the Message of your e-mail in their appropriate fields, and then click the Send Button to send out your e-mail to the new contact you've created.

Now, you can create additional contacts and use them in the same manner. Perhaps, you can go a step further by making additional contacts, and Cc or Bcc (Blind Carbon Copy) them in another e-mail message.

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