Address Book Introduction

The purpose of the address book function is to store the email addresses of your contacts so that you don't have to remember them or look them up when you want to send a message. This means that the "contact's" email address is seldom seen. If it is important to you to remember addresses you may not want to use this function that much. However, for most of us, it is valuable to know that someone's name and their email address are automatically linked.

 

Outlook Express stores the names and addresses of people with whom you are in contact in two ways, the contacts list and the address book. The contact list is seen in the lower left corner of the message page (if you have enabled it). This contact list may be automatically maintained and added to if you wish. On the Tools menu click on options and then press the Send tab. Make sure the option "Automatically put people I reply to in my address book" is checked. If you do this you will have to go through your contacts list at intervals and thin it out.

 

An alternative is to select the names of contacts you would like to add to your address book. When a message from that person is open you can automatically add them to your address book by using the Tools menu item Add sender to address book

 

You can manually add people to your address book by opening the address book (Click on the icon) from either the message page or the send page. Then select "New Contact" from the file menu (of the address book) or click on New and then on New Contact

The dialog box is opened under the "Name" tab and you can enter names and email addresses (more than one if you want). On closing the box you will notice that the new contact is on the list in the address book and is in the contacts list box.

 

 

To send a message to a contact the easiest way is to double click on the name in the contact list (bottom left) This will open a "Send message" window with the contact's name on the "to" line. Alternatively, you can open a send message window and start typing the name. If the contact is in your list and you have enabled this function in the Tools/options /send menu, the name will be completed. Note that if you have more than one person called David on your contacts list you may still have to type more than the first name to get the right David.

 

 

Lastly you can send a message to a person in your address book by selecting the name the clicking on Action and Send Mail. Note that double clicking on the name sends you to the edit function for that name, it doesn't start a message as you might have expected.

 

One powerful function of the address book is to create Groups. This is done from the address book window - click on New then New Group. A dialog box is opened in which you name the group, then you can add contacts already in the address book to form the group or add new contact names and addresses. When you have completed this you will note the group name has been added to your address book list. This new "address" acts just like all other addresses except that selecting it for the "To" line of the message means that all members of the group get the message sent to them.

 

There are many other powerful functions that the email programs can undertake. The HELP file in Outlook Express is useful and should be used for further information about this program.