Email Problems Help

Wiseoldowl - I think this is something to do with the web based version of your mailbox being full. Sign into your ISP's website, find your email account and I bet it will be full of spam. Delete them and you should be back in business. I am sure this happened to me some time ago. I presumed that if my settings said 'do not download from server' that they just got deleted but they don't.

 

Couple of suggestions, couple of clarifications:

BT Internet / Yahoo normally allows you to also view your Email with an online-reader - i.e. using your Browser. You might be able to do that whilst you are sorting out your problems with Outlook Express - so that at least you can see any email folk are sending you.

Yahoo (who handle BTInterntet's mail) have a totally useless policy for barring Email. We send out bulk Email for schools (to parents) and lots of it is barred by Yahoo, even thought the parents have opt'ed in etc. Worth checking your "Dump" / Spam folder on BTInternet. Having said that I can't believe that ALL your received mail is being treated as Spam.

If you try the online mail reader you might find some issue that it alerts you to, which Outlook Express cannot detect (e.g. there is a setting on your mailbox that needs adjusting, or some Limit has been exceeded, or somesuch). Feathers has suggested similarly.

"Doesn't cost you a thing, woo. You already have it on your Windows as an alternative.

You just go Start > All Programmes > Microsoft Office (or what ever you have) > Microsoft Outlook. Like this ........"

Microsoft Outlook comes with Microsoft Office. You have to pay for that, unless it came with your computer or you have already bought it in order to get Word and Excel etc.

Outlook Express comes with Windows. Despite the similarities of name there is very little connection between the two. They don't look much like each other, they were developed by completely different teams at Microsoft and so on.

"[Linux] ... is an alternative to Internet Explorer"

Linux is an operating system, i.e. equivalent to Windows - that's the bit of software that talks to the disk, displays stuff on your screen, sends stuff to your printer, and so on.

Internet Explorer and Firefox are Browsers - application programs that you use.

Changing from Windows to Linux would be a major undertaking.

Outlook Express puts you at serious risk of viruses because it shows Emails in "preview" mode - so any programs, e.g. viruses, that are included in an email get run before you can stop them.

Outlook (from Office) doesn't do this, you have to tell Outlook which sites you consider are "safe", so you are less at risk.

But as you say, you would have to pay £89 to buy Office.

As your new computer appears to have Vista on it then the Email program included will be fine (I don't know if it is still called Outlook Express, but its similar). I also don't know if it has the same risks as the old Outlook Express, but given how new Vista is I sincerely hope that it is safe, or at least safer!

The other thing to do is to carefully check the settings in Outlook Express for receiving mail - its usually under Tools : Accounts.

Make sure that you have the TYPE of incoming mail server correct (I expect it should be POP3), and the NAME of the incoming mail server (which you will need to check on the BTInternet site; I had a quick look and it looks like it should be mail.btinternet.com (the Outgoing server name is probably the same). Double and Triple check that there are no spelling mistakes.

There are some examples here

http://www.btopenworld.com/faqs/manual_email_setup

but I think they are confusing - they don't indicate what "My Name" should represent - you account with BT, any name you choose to refer to yourself as, something else?

I set up my Father in law's BTInternet account a couple of weeks ago under Vista, and I still had to call the support line and get them to go through it. I think they did something to reset his account. I had already done a forgotten-password thingie online, and it wouldn't give me the password because it said my father-in-law had got his favourite-colour wrong, but when he gave the same colour name to BT over the phone they said it was correct - go figure!

Good luck!

 

In answer to your question, WOO.

Linux is an operating system, as is Windows. There are very many versions of Linux (mostly tailored to specialist uses). Ubuntu is probably the easiest and best to install (it doesn't allow you to log-in as "root" and by so doing you cannot accidentally change your system files and damage your system), it doesn't allow .exe files to work so most virus files cannot work on Ubuntu. There has always been a problem with "MS Office" reading "MS Works" files. The way to overcome this is to use Open Office (available for most systems including Windows). Open Office can read and write most files including MS Office and MS Works. It was originally Star Office produced by Star Division of Germany who were bought out by Sun Microsystems of the USA. Why pay £89 when Open Office is FREE!!!

 

In answer to your question, WOO.

Linux is an operating system, as is Windows. There are very many versions of Linux (mostly tailored to specialist uses). Ubuntu is probably the easiest and best to install (it doesn't allow you to log-in as "root" and by so doing you cannot accidentally change your system files and damage your system), it doesn't allow .exe files to work so most virus files cannot work on Ubuntu. There has always been a problem with "MS Office" reading "MS Works" files. The way to overcome this is to use Open Office (available for most systems including Windows). Open Office can read and write most files including MS Office and MS Works. It was originally Star Office produced by Star Division of Germany who were bough out by Sun Microsystems of the USA. Why pay £89 when Open Office is FREE!!!

Read this:- http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?reviewid=811

 

Ha, Ha!
Sorry for the double posting, must have double clicked on send.

Just a thought! Most people use a POP setting for email. This downloads the email to your computer. If you use an IMAP setting it only downloads the header, so the actual email message is not downloaded to your computer. It should avoid a virus, but not spam.