Managing multiple e-mail accounts with Outlook Express Identities
By: Sam Ehlers
Outlook Express is very good at keeping track of multiple e-mail accounts,
but the number of choices you have for organization grows exponentially with the
number of e-mail accounts your managing. Identities are handy for keeping
e-mail accounts separate on your computer. Each Identity has it's own set
of local folders (Inbox, Outbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items) and it's own general
and account settings. Using Outlook Express on a different Identity is
similar to using it on a different computer.
Organizing e-mail accounts should be a four step process.
1. Gather information about the accounts
All the information you need for a DoorPI account is on the
connection confirmation we sent with your first billing. Ask you e-mail
account provider for this information, it should be readily available.
2. Decide how you want it organized
Do you want your teenage daughter's e-mail coming into the
same inbox as you important work-related e-mails? Do you want your spouses
boring hobby newsletters coming into the same inbox as your careless
delete-happy son? Sometimes it helps to draw simple diagram.
Notice here I've divided the computer somewhat like a pie. This is to
account for Operating System Level User Accounts (or just OS Users for short).
If you have to log in when you start your computer that would be an OS User
account. This applies to computers with Window NT family of OS's (NT,
2000, XP), Macintosh OS X or better, and Unix (although you can't run Outlook
Express on Unix). Operating Systems that don't support OS User Accounts
(or not with enough separation between accounts) include Windows (95,98,ME), and
Mac OS 9 or less. OS User Accounts should be taken into consideration when
setting up the e-mail accounts because logging in as a different user is (for
our purposes) similar to having a different computer.
Be sure to discuss this with the people you share a computer with before
settling on a certain organization scheme, and make sure they understand how to
access their accounts.
3. Set it up!
This step is more repetitive than difficult, I'll cover how
to manage identities. Go to our
Outlook Express Setup Page
if you don't know how to set up an e-mail account.
Here we have Outlook Express, mine says "Personal E-mail" that's the
"Identity" that I'm currently using.
Click File -> Identities -> Add New Identity...
Type a name for the Identity. They ask for your name but I use more
than one identity for myself.
4. Maintain it!
As time goes on and accounts are created and deleted your
information may become outdated. You can delete an account from the Tools
-> Accounts menu without loosing any information, but deleting an identity will
delete all e-mails and address book entries stored under that identity.
