Electronic mail, better known as e-mail, has become the way most people communicate at home, at work, and even while travelling. The advantages are that it’s fast, easy, reliable, and usually cheap.

 

Like postal mail (aka snail mail), though, you need to have an address. Unlike snail mail (where you have to include your street address, city, country, and postal or zip code), an e-mail address is just one line of characters. You can also have more than one e-mail address; many people have one for home and one for work. E-mail accounts can be set up through the company that provides your Internet service (your ISP), through your work, or through a Web site.

 

One of the first things you will have to do (unless the person who provided your e-mail account set it up for you) is set up your e-mail account in Outlook, so Outlook knows which mailbox to get your e-mail from. The options discussed below are usually shown the very first time you start Outlook. We’re not going to get into the specifics of e-mail accounts in great detail, but it’s always a good idea to know where settings are stored. As well, different types of e-mail accounts affect Outlook differently, so it’s good to have a quick overview of those effects.