Outlook Express email address – Email account compatibility

Daniel asks if the Outlook Express will work for my email account or do I need to create another one. As I have written in an earlier article, any email account that is POP or IMAP enabled will be compatible with Outlook Express – read on for details.

Outlook Express, for those who may still be confused, is an email program that helps you manage and organize your messages. With this program you can compose, send, sort and download email messages. The emails are actually stored on your computer’s hard disk and are available even without an internet connection. There are several advantages of using Outlook Express and other such email programs and the most important are local storage and instant accessibility.

However, you can download email from an account through Outlook Express only when it can “talk” to the email server (the online remote computer that first receives the email). The technologies that help programs like Outlook Express establish a communication with the server are known as protocols. There are many email protocols in use and the best known are POP (Post Office Protocol) and IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). For Outlook Express to work with an email account, the program requires that it’s either POP or IMAP enabled.

Setup and configure email account in Outlook Express

Once you confirm the availability of POP or IMAP on your account with your email service, you need to set it up and configure the different settings in the Outlook Express program. Step by step instructions with helpful screenshots can be found in configure new email account in Outlook Express article.

FYI, most email accounts that you create on your web site or those provided by your ISP will be POP enabled. All you need to know is the incoming and outgoing email server addresses and certain other configuration details which you can get from the respective company web site or support staff.

In essence, any email account as long as its POP or IMAP enabled will work with Outlook Express and you don’t need to create a new email address for the program.

If you use Gmail, you can configure your account in Outlook Express – details can be found in that link. Hotmail has also released POP settings for users of a few countries. Yahoo! email users need to upgrade to the Plus service to use Outlook Express with their email address. [FYI, you can download Yahoo email for free through the Zimbra desktop email program from Yahoo!]