Microsoft Outlook 2007 Tutorial

How to configure Microsoft Outlook 2007 to connect to your email account

Microsoft Outlook 2007 is a Windows email client that comes prepackaged with Microsoft Office 2007 (except for the Home and Student edition). Microsoft Office 2007, and respectively Outlook 2007, runs on Windows XP (with Service Pack 2 or higher), Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Window Server 2008.

During the installation process any older versions of Outlook will be upgraded and existing email accounts will be transferred to the new version of Outlook. It's possible to have only one version of Outlook installed on your computer.

To add a new email account in Outlook first you need to create it. You can do this from the Email section of the HostKnox control panel. If you're not sure how to do it, visit the tutorial on creating an email account.

To add the account in Outlook 2007, after you start the application click on the Tools menu and select Account Settings. A new Account Settings window will open. It will be set on the Email tab by default. To add a new account, click on the New button under the tabs:

On the next window (Auto Account Setup) you have to type your name. It can be any name that you want people to see when they receive mail from you. You also have to type your full email address (e.g. username@yourdomain.com) as you have created it from the Email section of the HostKnox control panel, and you have to type twice the password for the email account:

After that in the lower left corner mark the checkbox for Manually configure server settings or additional server types and click on the Next button.

On the next window (Choose E-mail Service) the button Internet E-mail should be marked by default. Leave it like this and click on Next:

On the next window (Internet E-mail Settings) there are three sections: User Information, Server Information, Logon Information. Under User Information, the fields for Your Name and E-mail Address should be automatically filled with the information provided by you earlier. In the section for Server Information from the Account Type drop-down menu select either IMAP or POP3.

The main difference between them is that with IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) you can manage your emails directly on the server which means you can do this from different locations. With POP (Post Office Protocol) the messages have to be downloaded on your local computer before you can read and manage them.

In the fields for incoming and outgoing mail server you can type either your domain name (e.g. yourdomain.com), as long as it points to our servers, or you can use the name or IP address of the HostKnox server hosting your account. If, however, you want your mail to be safer and to use encryption, you have to type the name or IP address of the server (the same for both incoming and outgoing).

Under Logon Information type your full email address (e.g. username@yourdomain.com) in the field for User Name and the password for the email account in the Password field. After you provide all the necessary information click on the More Settings button in the lower right corner of the window:

After you click on More Settings a new window will open. First, click on the Outgoing Server tab and mark the checkbox for My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication. This is a security, anti-spam setting. If you don't mark this checkbox you won't be able to use your email account:

Then click on the Advanced tab on the same window. If you want to use encryption select SSL from the drop-down menus labeled Use the following type of encrypted connection for both incoming and outgoing mail server. If you don't want to use encryption, select None. You also need to change the port numbers. The correct port numbers are as follows: 465 for outgoing (SMTP) server with SSL enabled and 587 without SSL; 993 for IMAP incoming server with SSL enabled and 143 without SSL; 995 for POP incoming server with SSL and 110 without SSL.

As you will notice, for an encryption protocol you can select either SSL or TLS. Whatever you choose the connection will be encrypted with TLS. However, if you select TLS from the drop-down menus, use the ports for non-encrypted connection (587, 143, 110).

In our example we'll use IMAP for an incoming server type and we won't enable SSL, so the port numbers that we set are 143 for incoming and 587 for outgoing:

When you're done configuring the options click on OK, then on the Account Settings window click on Next and then on Finish. You'll receive a test Outlook email message.

Now you can use Outlook 2007 to manage your email account.

You can also configure Outlook 2007 to connect to your accounts in Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail. Helpful if you want to use one email client to manage all your email accounts. To learn what settings you need to change in order to do this read the article on configuring email clients to connect to email accounts in Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail.