A very easy to use and quick to set up desktop email program is Outlook Express. It will allow you to configure all your email accounts to let you read and send mail from your desktop. This tutorial is going to show you how to setup an Email Account in Outlook Express. NOTE: There are several versions of Outlook. Make sure which version you are using, as they are all a little different.

The first thing you need to do before you can configure any email program is create an email account in your web hosting account. This is usually done through your cPanel, and if you have any questions on how to do that, please view the tutorial "How to Create a POP EMail Account".

Now, we have our account, and we are going to open the Outlook Express program on our desktop. Once the program opens, you will see a top menu bar. Click on the Tools link. Then click on Accounts. The Internet Accounts window will now appear. Click on the Add button, on the right hand side. Then click Mail. This takes you to the Internet Connection Wizard window. On the first page, enter the Name as you would like it to appear in the From field of your Outgoing emails. Now click on Next on the bottom of the page. The next window is for your new Internet E-mail Address. Enter your complete email address in the box. Then click on Next.

This takes you to the E-mail Server Names screen. Now you need to enter your Incoming (POP3) and Outgoing (SMTP) server names. Choose POP3 for the incoming server in the drop down menu. In the first box enter the Incoming server name. The second box is for the Outgoing server name. These server names will have been provided to you in your welcome email from us, those settings are "mail.mydomain.com" - without the quotes, and mydomain.com being your actual domain. (Example: mail.123abc.net). Once you have done that, click next.

Next is the Internet Mail Logon screen. In the top box, enter the email username it will be the entire email address. The second box is for your email password. Click Next. Congratulations, you have now entered all of the required information to set up your account. Click Finish to complete the Wizard. This will take you back to the Internet Accounts screen, where we need to do one more thing to complete the configuration.

Select the email account you just created in the list of accounts. Now click on the Properties button in the right-hand column. On the pop-up property screen, on the first line, you should change the name of the account to something more recognizable. (Example: work account, home account, friends email, etc.) Enter an organization name if applicable, on that line. Then enter a Reply To address in that box.

Now click on the Servers tab at the top. At the bottom of the page, check the box for "My server requires authentication". SMTP Authentication means that Outlook will logon to your mail server when sending email as well as when receiving to make sure that you are the only one that can send email from your account. Now click on the Settings button. Most SMTP servers use the same username and password as the incoming (POP3) servers, so mark the radio button that says "Use same settings as my incoming mail server". Then click OK. Now click Apply so that the changes will take effect. Then click OK. This returns you back again to the Internet Accounts window. Click on the Close button You are ready to start receiving and sending email from that account in Outlook Express. Remember, that you must always first create your accounts in your hosting cPanel, or they will not work! This is the end of this tutorial.