Most
of us have both the Outlook programs on our computer:
the Microsoft Outlook and the Outlook Express. On the
face of it, both look more-or-less the same, and few of
us actually take the trouble to find out their plus and
minus points. But I did examine both of them carefully
with surprising results, and I would like to share my
findings with you. You will certainly be able to get
more out of both of them with this information.
Recently my Norton Anti-Virus (NAV) detected a virus
coming through email. This happened as my preview pane
was open in the Inbox and it opened the virus email
automatically as soon as it was downloaded. The NAV
could not repair the file so I had to delete the
infected file. I found to my utter horror that deleting
the file disabled my browser. It also disabled my CD
writer. I had to save my data using Iomega 250MB zip
drive which fortunately worked but only in the slow SAFE
mode of Windows! Ultimately I had to Quick Restore my
Compaq computer. It took me 2 days to reload various
programs and data! This could have been avoided if I had
taken a few simple precautions. I have written out these
precautions towards the end of this article.
Differences between the two Outlooks:
1. Outlook Express (OE in short) comes with Internet
Explorer browser, whereas MS Outlook (MSO in short) is a
part of MS OFFICE. 2. OE can download news from
newsgroups. MSO cannot. 3. OE uses “identities” to
configure mail account. Identities allow multiple people
to use OE without sharing a common inbox. The messages
are saved separately for each identity. When you input
your identity it opens a full and separate OE program.
When you switch identities, the program is closed
(exited), and again a full and separate OE program is
opened. This feature allows multiple users to have their
own password-protected email program on one single
computer. This feature is not available with MSO. 4. MSO
has IPM features such as calendar, tasks and notes.
These features are not present in OE. 5. MSO can
activate the feature “don’t download messages larger
than ----KB” Sets a maximum size for messages that
will be downloaded. Large messages can take a long time
to download and can increase your connection time. If
you use a local area network (LAN), this setting is
ignored. It’s a shame that the setting is ignored for
LAN. I find this is very useful to firewall virus file
attachments, which are usually above 100KB in size. 6.
In MSO as well as OE, you can select all the messages in
a folder by opening the folder and clicking Select All
from the Edit menu. But its only in MSO that you can do
a Save As. With more than one message selected, the Save
As feature is de-activated in OE. Thus when you Save As
in MSO, you can save all the messages in the folder in
one text file. This not only makes it quick to save the
messages, but they can then be opened in notepad,
WordPad or MS Word, which all have find or search
feature which makes locating of any message a very
simple task 7. MSO can use any of the MS OFFICE formats
to New Send mail. MS OFFICE Access, Power Point, Excel,
or Word. This is not possible with OE.
Similarities:
1. Both OE and MSO are very similar to their mail
receiving and filing function. 2. Both OE and MSO do
offer backgrounds through “new mail using…” menu.
3. Preview pane could be kept shut when inbox is opened
in both OE and MSO 4. Configuring accounts is very
similar. 5. Both programs can disable automatic download
of emails. 6. Both can have multiple accounts in the
same user or identity.
OE is better for: 1. Multiple users using the same
computer. 2. For news from newsgroups on news server.
MSO is better for: 1. Large volume of emails to be
saved in text format for easy accessibility. 2. For
sending emails in MS OFFICE formats.
Tips for configuring both OE and MSO to block viruses
1. Switch off the preview panel in the INBOX. This
prevents any virus getting into your system by automatic
opening. 2. Switch off the “include this account when
receiving mail or synchronizing” for every account you
have. You can do this by disabling (no tick mark) on
this feature, which you will find by menu chain: Tools,
Accounts, account-name, properties, General. This will
ensure that the mail is not flowing-in automatically. 3.
Before downloading mail, access the mail on the net.
Most of these webmail sites show the size of the files,
which unfortunately is not a feature with either OE or
MSO. Any mail over 100KB is suspect should be deleted.
Also delete any junk mail. Only download and receive
mail that you want to save on your computer. 4. To
download and receive mail, don’t click on Send/Receive
on the mail Tool Bar, but go into Tools, and move the
curser on “Send/Receive” and move right to get a
sub-menu where you select the precise account, with
which you want to send or receive. 5. Send by clicking
on the small arrow next to “Send”, and selecting the
precise account by which to send. The mail will wait in
the Outbox till you send through the Tools, Send/Receive
menu as given in 3 above.
I hope you find this article useful. And let’s hope
no virus hits you like it did to me.
Keywords: Outlook Express Email Prevent virus
save+email data files
