• Identities.
• Settings.
• Address Book.

The program also offers options to restore backed up details if required. Paid for versions with some more functionality are also available.

What happened was not just 1 but a few of my main email addresses ended up on my Outlook Blacklist and any email sent to them was deleted straight away because of the way I had the junk mail setup. The following procedure applies to my version of Outlook (2007) but should be similar for other versions:

• In Outlook, go to Actions – Junk Email – Junk Email Options.
• On the first tab ‘Options’ make sure the line “Low: Move the most…” is ticked. All other options can be left unticked.
• On the ‘Safe Senders’ tab add your own email addresses and any of your most important contacts. Make sure the 2 options at the bottom are ticked too.
• On the ‘Blocked Senders’ tab, make sure no legitimate emails are on the list.
• Click OK and you’re done.

When junk email comes in in future go into the Junk Email folder and check for legitimate emails once in a while. If you find one, right click on it and choose ‘Junk Email – Mark as not Junk’. Also, if a spam email comes in and is missed by the filter, right click on it and choose ‘Junk Email – Add Sender to Blocked Sender’s List’.

The process is similar for Outlook and Outlook Express:

1. In Outlook Express go to ‘Tools – Options – Signatures’.
2. Click ‘New’ and in the ‘Edit Signature – Text’ box type in your details, eg Business name, phone, web address etc..
3. If you’d like your web address to be a clickable link then be aware that a simple www.mysite.com should suffice but whether its clickable or not might depend on whether the receiver has html turned off in their email client or not. Otherwise you’d have to choose the ‘File’ option instead of ‘Text’ and this is a bit complicated.
4. Make sure to tick the box ‘Add signatures to all outgoing messages’ to initiate the new signature.
5. Click ok and you’re done.

One workaround for this is to open Internet Explorer and go to ‘Tools – Internet Options – Probrams Tab’ and in the ‘E-mail’ field make sure the name of your email program, whether it be Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express or some other, is listed.

Alternatively, if you use Outlook go to ‘Tools – Options – Mail Format Tab’ and make sure it says ‘HTML’ in the ‘Compose in this message format’ section.

My own personal feelings at this stage are that spam is slowly but surely killing email. Email is almost unuseable due to the hassle of sifting through spam or the anguish of missing potential opportunities when a legitamate email is blocked by necessarily super efficient spam filters/blockers.

There exists nowadays better methods of communication than email. Instant Messaging clients such as Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Skype are capable of much faster communication than email and you can also send attachments, talk in real time via voice or text chat and even see who you’re talking to via webcam! These IM programs basically combine most of the forms of communication we have into one excellent method of information exchange.

Spam exists in the IM world too but not to such an extent as email. If you need to use email which I do then heres a few tips for reducing (you can never completely block it!) spam:

• Ask your ISP or Web Designer if theres any spam protection at the email source/server, this is the best place to block it.
• Get hold of a good spam filter for Outlook or Outlook Express, I use Bullguard.
• If a spam message comes in make sure to block it or add it to the black list so the same sender can’t send to you again.
• Add your contacts to your while list so you’re guaranteed to not miss their emails.

Checking a few different email accounts can be a bit cumbersome, you have to visit different addresses, login each time, remember different passwords and this all takes time. With Outlook, Outlook Express and Windows Mail for Vista you can add all your email accounts to one program and it will automatically go and get all your email at the same time.

Heres how to add email addresses to Outlook Express. Instructions are similar for Windows Mail and Outlook:

• Open Outlook Express and go to ‘Tools – Accounts – Add – Mail’.
• Display Name is the name you wish to be identified by.
• Email Address is the full email address we wish to add.
• Incoming Mail & Outgoing Mail settings are usually the same and can be found from your internet service provider, eg – for eircom email addresses its mail1.eircom.net or webmail.eircom.net. For addresses linked to your website its usually in the form mail.yoursite.com.
• Account Name is usually your email address again or the first part of it before the @.
• Password is the password you used when signing up for the email account.
• Finally click Finish and that should do the trick. Click Send/Receive to check for new messages.

For people with a Hotmail account, it can’t be used with Outlook Express so you’ll have to stick with webmail for that. People with Gmail or Yahoo accounts may have to login to their webmail and go to the settings/options section to allow email to be downloaded.