Outlook Express 6 settings for home users

Most people use Outlook Express since it is free and selected by Windows and most ISP's a default. Therefore if you are going to use it, you should make certain adjustments to the options. The following information is for home users and not for office or business users and consists of my own opinions. Whether you choose to adopt these suggestions is entirely up to you. I will give the reasons for you to analyze. If any reader has other suggestions, please feel free to E-Mail them to me.

Open Outlook Express. (These suggestions work in Outlook also). Click the Inbox if you are not already there. Click the View menu. Select Layout. You get this dialog box. By default the "Show Preview Pane" box is checked.

This is the default setting for "Show Preview Pane"	Deselect the Show Preview Pane box as shown here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The choices you make in the top section are not important. They just turn on various visible features. The Preview pane is critical to avoiding a virus. If you open Outlook and the first message displays automatically in the preview pane, you allow a virus to enter the computer. This can happen even though you don't open attachments and are running a current antivirus program.

The next recommended settings are in the Tools, Options menu. You will get a dialog box that has tabs at the top like this:

For faster loading I am using thumbnails for the images below.
If you need to look at the actual image, click the thumbnail.

General	Read	Receipts	Send	Compose
Signatures	Spelling	Security	Connection	Maintenance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In each tab, make the following settings: Settings not mentioned are not important to this discussion. Make your own selections.

General If you want the program to open directly to your e-mail, check the top box "When starting ..."	Read In this list, uncheck the "Automatically download ...>	Receipts Your choice	Send I uncheck the box to "Reply using format they were sent". If someone uses a really objectionable background, it messes up your message.	Compose Pretty much your choice. I like a larger font than the default 9 point.
Signatures You can add a signature to every e-mail here if you wish. Click here to see how I set up a simple signature.	Spelling Your choice also but having spell check on really slows down the send	Security If you get a message "OE deleted the attachment" when you really want one, uncheck the "Do not allow..." box	Connection Your choice	Maintenance Uncheck the "Empty deleted items on exit" Recommend doing this manually. If you accidentally delete messages in a folder and close the program, you cannot retrieve them.