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YOU GUIDE to the Outlook Express address book
You can use your Outlook Express address book to make your life far easier. By TONY BRISCIANI.
Try as you may, it’s hard to avoid all your contact details getting scattered around everywhere – most people these days have everything from an email address to details like pagers, mobiles and faxes.
Outlook Express gives you a place to store all these contacts in a central hub, and you can even transfer these details to other computers and devices.
What can you store in the address book?
The address book in the most recent version of the Outlook Express email program that comes on most computers, version 6, has many fields for storing information about your contacts. These include the standard name, address, salutation, email address, business details, birthdays, anniversaries, phone numbers, Web site, MSN Messenger contact details. You can even store links to the contact details for other members of their family, if you have them.
You can be as detailed as possible with these fields or just use one or two sections. All the details you enter into these fields can be imported and used in other major mail programs like Microsoft Outlook, if you ever choose to change over.
How do I open the address book?
When you open Outlook Express by clicking the icon on your desktop that looks like an envelope with an arrow wrapped around it, the contacts will by default be listed in a section in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. You simply double click on a contact to automatically address an email to them. If you don’t see this panel, you can open the address book by clicking the Address button from the top menu or by pressing Ctrl, Shift and the letter B on your keyboard at the same time.
How do I add a new contact?
Simply open the address book and click on the New button, or click the Contacts dropdown list from the Address panel in the bottom left-hand corner and select New Contact. This will open a blank contacts template where you enter the person’s details. When it comes time to enter their email address, be sure to click the Add button so it is saved into the window below.
Take your time going through the entries so you get the details right, and don’t forget to click on the tabs that line the top of the window as they contain areas to enter extra information. Once you have finished entering the details, click OK to save and close the window.
How to quickly add a contact from an email
When you get an email from someone new, you can add them to your address book by simply right clicking on the email and clicking "Add sender to address book". This adds the person’s email address and whatever name is in the email to your contacts, but there is usually a lot of information left out. It is a good idea to check the details you have added to your address book after you have done this and edit any mistakes you see or add more information manually.
How to edit a contact
To edit a contact to make changes or update information, simply open your address book and right click on the name of the contact you wish to change and select Properties.
How to use your address book to send a group email
You can use your address book to send an email to a big group of people.
Open Outlook Express and click Create Mail. In the new mail window, click on the word "To" in the left hand side of the address field. This will open your address book, listing all your contacts on the left and three separate fields on the right.
To address your email, select the person from the left and click either the To, Cc or Bcc button to place that person’s address into the email. You can do this with as many email addresses as you choose. This allows you to send the one email to many people in one go. These fields mean:
To: Used to simply address an email. Use it if you are emailing one person or a small group. No matter what you put in the other fields like Cc and Bcc, there must always be an email address in this field.
Cc: Cc means Carbon Copy. Placing an email address in this area means that person gets a copy of the email. It’s often used as a courtesy in workplace emails to indicate that the receiver doesn’t need to action the email but they are just being alerted to its contents.
This is another way of sending a group email but adds one difference to the way people reply to the email. If you look along the top of an email you receive, you will notice two reply buttons. One is the standard Reply button and the other is the Reply All button. If you get an email that has some addresses in the Cc field, then by hitting Reply you won’t send a response to the people in the Cc field. However if you hit Reply All, then everyone in that email will get your response.
Bcc: Bcc, or Blind Carbon Copy, works in the same way the Cc field works in that it sends the one email to multiple people. The difference is that anyone listed in the Bcc field cannot be replied to and their email address is not shown to the recipient. This makes the Bcc field perfect for newsletters or addressing emails to a group of people and keeping their details private.
How do I back up the address book?
Backing up your address book is very important. This allows you to move your contacts to another computer and also to protect yourself from losing all that information in case something happens to your computer.
It is a good idea that you either have a CD writer, Zip drive or some other form of removable storage to back up the address book, so you can keep your copy away from your computer in a safe place.
- From the top menu bar click on File, Export then Address Book.
- Select "Text file (Comma Separated Values)" and click Export.
- When the "Save exported file as" box opens, click the Browse button and locate your desktop from the dropdown menu. In the file name area enter a name for your address book. We suggest something like Addressbook_ddmmyyyy, with those letters representing the date you backed up for future reference. Click Save when done.
- Click Next and make sure all boxes are ticked in the next window, once this is done click Finish.
This will make a file on your desktop with the name you gave it. You now need to copy this file to a safe location off your computer. You should either copy the file to CD or store it elsewhere. For more on how to copy files to CD, see the January issue of NetGuide.
How do I retrieve my contacts from my old email program?
Outlook Express is able to import (bring across) address books from other mail programs, but there are some limitations. Firstly Outlook Express can only import address books from Eudora, Netscape, Internet Mail (an old Windows 3.1 email program), Microsoft Exchange and from a text file (Comma Separated Values), just like the one we made in the back up above. To do this:
- Click on File from the top menu, then Import.
- Select "Other address book" and then select the mail program you wish to get the address book from.
- Outlook Express will then detect the address book and import it. During this importation you will be presented with a box with checkboxes of the details you want to import. We suggest you tick all boxes so you do not lose any data.
Useful tip
One thing that can cause some problems in your address book is that by default, everyone you reply to will be added to your list. This can cause your address book to fill up with hundreds of unneeded email addresses.
To turn this feature off:
- Click Tools then Options to open the Options page.
- Click on the Send tab at the top.
- Untick the "Automatically put people I reply to in my Address Book" box, then click Apply and OK.
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