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Tutorials - Setting up a news account in Outlook Express

Usenet Overview Please Read First  >>>

1. Open Outlook Express, on the menu bar select Tools->Accounts

2. After clicking "Accounts" select the "News" Tab then "Add" and Click on "news"

3. The next box will ask for your name, do not use a real name use a nickname. Type a name in the box then click      "next"

4. The next part asks for an e mail address, do not use a real e mail address, robots scan Usenet for e mail addresses and use them to spam you. Either use my example or you can "munge" your e mail address by adding text to it which fools the robots but not human eyes, for eg if your e mail is "fred@yahoo.com" to munge it you would do this "fredremovethis@yahoo.com"

5. The next box asks for your NNTP server address, NNPT stands for News Network Transfer Protocol.
For Cable & Wireless the address is news.cwgsy.net, for most ISPs the name will be similar, it will always start with the word "news" followed by the ISP name followed by the .net, .com, . If you are not on Cable & Wireless call your ISP and ask for the News Server Address. When you have put in the server address click "Next" then "Finish".

6. You will be back to the Internet Accounts dialogue box from Step 2 above, now it is not blank it has your news server information set up and ready to go, click the "close" button.

7. After clicking on "Close" you will see the following dialogue, click "Yes" and Outlook Express will go on line and download a list of all the Newsgroups on your ISPs server

8. You will end up after a short interval with a list of Newsgroups.

9. This box looks more complicated than it is, all we have here is a list of all the individual newsgroups there are thousands of them, you can see what the subject matter is from the title mostly. What you need to do is select a newsgroup to read by scrolling down the list and single clicking the group you want, then select "subscribe" on the top right. If you know what you are after type a search word into the "Display newsgroup which contains" box and it will narrow the choice down. To make things easier for your first group we will find and subscribe to a general Microsoft newsgroup called "microsoft.public.windowsxp.general"

Click in the ""Display newsgroup which contains" (Search Box) and type "microsoft.public.windowsxp.general" notice as you type each word the list changes to reflect what you have entered in the search box. When you complete the full text there will only be the newsgroup you want in the window, single click on it then click on "subscribe" this tells Outlook Express that you want to read this newsgroup, you can add as many newsgroups as you wish by clearing the search box and finding another group to subscribe to. When you have finished select OK.

10. The next thing to do is download the headers (titles) of the posts in the newsgroup(s) you have subscribed to. Look on the left hand side of Outlook Express and at the bottom of the Folders list you will see an icon marked "news.cwgsy.net" Click on this and it will open the list of Newsgroups you have subscribed to. Double Click on the group you want to read and Outlook Express will go on line and get all the headers (titles of thread subjects )currently in that group then display them top right box in a long list. From here its easy to figure out, click on any header and you will see what has been posted, clicking the + button reveals all the replies to the subject just click on them to read the contents.

11. To post a new subject or ask a question select "New Post" from the menu bar. The important bit is to make sure your title is informative then type your post and hit "Send". To see your post click on refresh the headers list by clicking "Headers" in the menu bar. To Reply to an existing post is a bit more obscure, you have to Right Click on the post you want to reply to then select "Reply to Group" type your reply then "Send"; again you have to refresh the group after a few minutes by clicking "Headers" in the menu bar in order to see your reply. This "refresh" is the same thing as it is in a normal web browser, it just updates the headers list.