Outlook Express Email Address Book

Using the built-in address book that comes with most Email programs is an easy way of storing your favorite Email address, and it will make the task of addressing your Email messages easier.

This Address Book can be used to store all your address and phone number information, in addition to your Email addresses. You don’t need to restrict it to only those people that have Email addresses.

The first step to making your Email addressing easier is to save the Email addresses of all your friends and contacts in the address book.

You can open the address book in one of two ways. You can choose “Address Book” from the “Tools” menu, or you can click once with your left mouse button on the toolbar button labeled “Address Book”, as shown here.

This will open your Address Book and display any existing addresses you may have already saved. The example on the following page shows an empty Address Book. This is how it will look if you’ve not saved any addresses.

To add a new entry to your address book, click once with your left mouse button on the toolbar button labeled “New Contact”, as shown above. This will open a new window, as shown below, where you can enter information about this person. On the first tab, labeled “Personal”, you will enter the person’s name and Email address. Notice as you enter the name the Display field will fill in for you. You can leave it at the default, or you can change it. This is the name that will display in your Email when you address it to them.

You will enter this person’s Email address in the field titled “Add new”. Make sure you enter the correct address, and that it contains all the components of a valid Email address. After making sure the address you have entered is correct, click once on the “Add” button to the right

of this field. This will place this address in the Email address list for this person.

If this person has more than one Email address, enter the others in the same manner, clicking on the “Add” button after each one. If there are multiple addresses for one person, you can select which one will be the default address by clicking on the appropriate entry and then clicking on the “Set as Default” button.

On the “Home” tab are spaces where you can enter physical or mailing addresses, as well as phone numbers for this person.

The “Business” tab has spaces where you can enter information regarding this person’s business if this is a business contact.

On the “Other” tab is a place where you can enter any notes or information you wish regarding this person.

The only entries that are required in order to store your Email addresses are the entries you make on the “Personal” tab. All others are optional, but they are available to you for storing any other information you might want on this person or business.

When you are satisfied that you have entered all the information you want for this person, click on the OK button. You will then be returned to the complete Address Book listing, and the new listing that you just entered will then display.

If you receive an Email message from someone and you want to save his or her Email address, you can let Outlook Express do it for you. With the message you received open, select “Tools” from the menu, then select “Add to Address Book”, and then select “Sender”.

This will open an Address Book Properties window for that sender with the information already filled in that was available from the sender’s address information. At this point you can add any other information that you want to this record.

When you are satisfied that you have all the information entered that you want to store for this person, click the OK button.

You can search the Address Book for personal information by opening the Address Book and clicking on the “Find” button on the toolbar.

You can enter any information that you know into the appropriate fields in this “Find” window. If you know part of the name, or only part of the Email address, enter what you know, then select the “Find Now” button.

In the example shown on the following page, we have entered part of an Email address. After pressing the “Find Now” button, Outlook Express found an entry with an Email address that contains the information that was entered.

If more than one address matches the entry that was made, all matching addresses would be displayed in the lower portion of the screen.

This feature would be most useful when storing names and addresses of people that do not have Email addresses, or if you are only looking for a phone number or physical address for someone.

To use your Address Book to address an Email message, open a new message composition window. Click once with your left mouse button on the “Address Book” button on the toolbar, as indicated here.

This will open the “Select Recipients” Address Book window. This will allow you to search for the desired recipient(s) and then place their address(es) in either the To, CC, or BCC area of your message. That window is shown here.

As you type the name as it is displayed in the Address Book into the field titled “Type name or select from list:”, Outlook Express will try to match entries according to the letters you have typed. You may not need to type the entire name. As you can see from this example, only the first few letters were needed to locate the desired entry. That entry is highlighted in the list of

names.

Once the desired name is highlighted, click with your left mouse button on either To, CC, or BCC. That name will be placed in the area to the right of the button you selected.

If you have additional people that you wish to send this Email message to, locate their name by repeating the process described above, then with their name highlighted, click on the appropriate addressing area (To, CC, or BCC).

When you have located all the desired recipients for this Email message, press the “OK” button. The “Select Recipients” window will close and you will see the selected recipients shown in the address area of the Email message you are composing

You can then complete your message and send it.

If you know how the name of the person you want to send a message to is displayed in the Address Book, you can let Outlook Express get that information for you. Open a New Message Composition window. In the address section of the message, begin typing the name of the person you wish to address the message to. As you type, Outlook Express will try to match your entry to an entry in the Address Book. As soon as it finds a unique entry based on the letters you have type, the name that it found will display in the address area or your message. As you can see from the example shown here, we only needed to type a few letters for Outlook Express to find the matching entry in the Address Book.

You can then complete your message and send it.

This document covers the basics of saving and using Email addresses with your Address Book.

Please plan to attend the next session where we will be discussing Email Attachments.

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