One of the advantages of Outlook 2002 is that it combines the features of Internet Mail Only and Corporate/Workgroup mail modes from previous versions, making it easier to manage multiple Internet mail accounts. However, some of the options are not easy to find or use, so I thought it might be helpful to provide a step-by-step guide to cover at least the basics.

The first step, of course, is to get the necessary user name, password, and mail server information from your Internet service provider (ISP). The user name is usually the same as your email address, but it doesn’t have to be. You may have two different mail server addresses -- one for receiving (POP) and one for sending (SMTP).

Once you have that information, you can create each account. Follow these steps:

1. In Outlook, choose Tools | E-mail Accounts | Add a new e-mail account.
2. On the E-mail Accounts dialog, click Add.
3. For Server Type, select POP3, and then click Next.
4. Fill in the following information -- your name as you want to appear on outgoing mail messages, your email address, the POP3 and SMTP server addresses, and the user name and password for logging onto the mail account.
5. Click the Test Account Settings button. Outlook will go through the steps needed to connect to the POP3 account and send a test message via the SMTP server.
6. Click the More Settings button if you want to change the display name for the account or the SMTP authentication settings, as described below. Click OK when finished.
7. Click Next to complete adding the account.

You can repeat steps 2-7 to add any additional accounts, then click Finish to return to Outlook, where your new account should be ready to use. I'll cover some of the key settings accessed through the More Settings button below.

Outlook automatically uses the mail server name as the display name for a new POP account. If you have multiple accounts on the same server, it appends a number in parentheses to the account name. Since these account names appear on the Accounts list on a new message and on the Tools | Send/Receive menu, you’ll probably want to edit your account settings to give them "friendly" names.

While viewing the account settings, click the More Settings button. (To get to the settings for an existing account, choose Tools | E-mail Accounts, then select View or change existing e-mail accounts, and click Next. Select the account, then click Change.) At the top of the General tab for the account settings, you can replace the default name with one of your own choosing.

Some SMTP servers require you to authenticate before you can send a message, either by providing a password or by logging into the POP server before sending any mail. This is another option handled through the More Settings button for an account. Follow these steps:

1. While viewing the account settings, click the More Settings button. (To get to the settings for an existing account, choose Tools | E-mail Accounts, then select View or change existing e-mail accounts, and click Next. Select the account, then click Change.)
2. On the Outgoing Server tab, check the box for My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication.
3. If your SMTP server requires you to log in with the same credentials as you use to log into your POP account, you already have the right option selected -- just click OK.
4. If your SMTP server requires a different set of login credentials, fill in the user name and password, then click OK.
5. If your SMTP server requires you to log onto POP first, select Log on to incoming mail server before sending mail, and then click OK.
6. Click Next, then Finish when you’re done working with the account settings.

If you have multiple accounts in your mail profile, Outlook displays an Accounts drop-down list on each new message you create. The first account you added will be the default for new messages. If you want to send a new message by a different account, you will need to select the account from the Accounts list before you click Send.

When you reply to or forward a message you received, Outlook automatically sets the new message to use the same account as the incoming message. Again, if you want to send a new message by a different account, you will need to select the account from the Accounts list before you click Send.

Clicking Send places the message in the Outbox. Delivery from the Outbox to your SMTP server may take place automatically at a scheduled interval or only when you press F9 or use one of the options on the Tools | Send/Receive menu. This menu lists each account, plus an option for All Accounts. Pressing F9 sends and receives from all accounts, but as you'll see, you can change this.

"All Accounts" is actually the name of a send/receive group that Outlook creates by default. A send/receive group contains the settings that control when Outlook connects to the accounts in a particular group. By default, the All Accounts group automatically connects to all accounts whenever you press F9. If you want Outlook to connect to the All Accounts group automatically, you'll need to modify its settings.

To change the send/receive group settings, choose Tools | Send/Receive Settings | Define Send/Receive Groups. The All Accounts group will be selected. If you want to set up automatic send/receive on a schedule, check the box for Schedule an automatic send/receive ... under When Outlook is Online or When Outlook is Offline or both. You can set the interval to anything between 1 and 1440 minutes (= 24 hours).

If you want to set up automatic delivery for just one account and send/receive the others manually, click Edit. You'll be able to select each account and clear the Include account in this send/receive group box for each one that you want to omit. Click OK to return to the Send/Receive Groups dialog.

If you want to have different automatic delivery intervals for different accounts, click New to create additional send/receive groups. Each group can include its own set of accounts and update them at a different interval. Also, each group will have its own listing on the Tools | Send/Receive menu.

If you have multiple accounts, the biggest headache may be distinguishing which messages came from which account. One method is to create a By Account view that shows all the incoming messages in the Inbox, but grouped by account. Follow these steps:

1. Choose View | Current View | Define Views.
2. Click New.
3. On the Create a New View dialog, name the view "By Email Account," select Table as the type, then click OK.
4. On the View Summary dialog, click Group By.
5. On the Group By dialog, at the bottom left under Select available fields from, choose All Mail Fields.
6. At the top under Group items by, choose E-mail Account.
7. Click OK twice, then Apply View.

If you've already downloaded some messages from your accounts, you should now see a group in the Inbox for each account, with all the messages for each account in the correct group.

Another way to segregate information from different groups is to create rules that move mail into different folders. For example, you might want to keep mail from your main account in the Inbox but use a rule to move mail from a second account into a subfolder of the Inbox. Follow these steps to create such a rule:

1. Choose Tools | Rules Wizard.
2. Click New to create a new rule.
3. Select Start from a blank rule, then click Next to continue.
4. Select the condition through the specified account, then click the underlined word specified to select the account that you want this rule to apply to. Click Next to continue.
5. Select the action move it to the specified folder.
6. Click the underlined word specified to choose the folder. (You also can click New to create a new folder.) Click OK.
7. Select the action stop processing more rules from near the bottom of the list. Click Next twice to continue.
8. If you want to run this rule against messages already in your Inbox, on the last screen of the wizard, check the box for Run this rule now on messages already in 'Inbox.' Then click Finish.

When new messages come in from that account, Outlook should automatically put them into the correct folder.

Microsoft is conducting a detailed survey at http://is4.cc/take?i=2533&h=UMoqELb7GcHY0ivC4TPSlw this month to determine how developers use Exchange and related technologies, and how they find answers to their Exchange development questions.

Thanks to some great assistance from Microsoft, we're now able to offer web-based access to Microsoft's newsgroups for Outlook and Exchange through our new and improved Discussion Center at http://www.slipstick.com/discuss.htm. Click the + sign next to any group of newsgroups to see what's available -- even groups in various European languages and groups for specific versions of Outlook Express.

You’ll also find links to our own Outlook Developers and Outlook Users discussion lists and feedback pages where you can comment on the Slipstick.com web site, file a support incident with Microsoft, or make a suggestion for a future version of Outlook or Exchange.