Microsoft Outlook 2002 Tutorial

How to configure Microsoft Outlook 2002 to connect to your email account

Microsoft Outlook 2002 is an email client for Windows users included as part of Microsoft Office XP. Outlook is primarily an email client but it also has some additional features such as a task manager, note taking, calendar and others. Office XP and respectively Outlook 2002 can be used on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and also on some of the older Windows operating systems. There is, however, a compatibility issue with Outlook 2002 running on Windows Vista and Windows 7: email account passwords are not remembered.

Outlook is not to be confused with Outlook Express; they are different email clients. Newer versions of Outlook are Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010. They come prepackaged with the respective Microsoft Office packs.

If you're not sure what version of Outlook you have, open the application, go to the Help menu and click on About Microsoft Outlook.

In order to configure Outlook to connect to your mailbox first you need to create an email account. You can do this from the Email section of the HostKnox control panel. If you don't know how to do it read the tutorial on creating an email account.

After you start Outlook, go to the Tools menu and select Email Accounts. A new window will pop out, mark the button Add a new e-mail account and click on Next:

On the next window (Server Type) select either IMAP or POP3 for incoming mail server type (IMAP in our example):

The main difference between them is that with IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) your messages are kept and managed directly on the server, while with POP (Post Office Protocol) the messages are downloaded from the server to your local computer. This makes IMAP more versatile since with it you can manage your mailbox from different locations.

After you select the one you prefer click on Next.

On the next window (Internet E-mail Settings), under User Information, you have to type your name and the full email address. The name can be anything that you want other people to see when they receive mail from you.

Under Logon Information be sure to type your full email address (e.g. username@yourdomain.com) in the User Name field, and the password for the email address in the Password field.

Under Server Information you have to provide the names for Incoming mail server and Outgoing mail server. You can either use your domain name (e.g. yourdomain.com) for both, as long as it points to your servers, or you can use the name or IP address of the HostKnox server hosting your account (the same for both incoming and outgoing). However, if you want your mail to be more secure and use encryption, you have to use the name or IP address of the server.

In our example we'll set it without encryption and we'll use the domain name (e.g. yourdomain.com):

After you fill in all the necessary information the More Settings button in the lower right corner of the window will become clickable. Click on it to configure some additional options. After you do it a new window will open. There click on the Outgoing Server tab and mark the checkbox for My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication:

Otherwise you won't be able to use your email account.

After that click on the Advanced tab on the same window. If you want to use encryption, mark the checkboxes for This server requires an SSL-secured connection for both incoming and outgoing server. Then change the port numbers. The correct port number for outgoing (SMTP) server with SSL enabled is 465; without SSL it's 587. The IMAP port number with SSL should be 993, and without SSL 143. The POP port number with SSL is 995 and without SSL it's 110. In our example we'll use IMAP and SMTP without SSL, so the port numbers are 143 and 587 respectively:

After that click on OK and the window will close automatically. Then click on Next back on the Email Accounts window, then click on Finish and Outlook will establish a connection with your email account. Now you can manage your mailbox using Outlook 2002.

In addition to adding email accounts that you have created from the HostKnox control panel (accounts that have your domain name in the address name), you can also configure Outlook to manage your web-based email accounts in Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, etc. To learn how to do this read the article on configuring email clients to connect to your mail accounts in Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail.