To use Microsoft Outlook Express to read Newsgroups from the Netscape Online Newsgroup server, you must configure the software.

Click on the 'Tools' menu and select 'Accounts'

Click on the 'Add' button and select 'News'.

First of all you will need to enter is your name as you want it to appear on any e-mail or Newsgroup postings that you send.

Next, type in your email address i.e.

yourname@netscapeonline.co.uk

The next screen asks for some information about the Netscape Online Newsgroup Server.

Enter the address Newsgroup Server:

newshost.netscapeonline.co.uk

Next, you will be asked for a 'Friendly Name' for this account. This will help you identify your Netscape Online News from any other Newsgroups that you have access to, so enter something appropriate like; 'Netscape Online'.

Click 'Next' and choose a connection type. For most home users, selecting 'Connect using my phone line' tells the program to use your modem to establish a connection.

Office users who are connected to a network should select 'Connect using my Local Area Network [LAN]'. Be sure to ask your network administrator first.

Next you will be asked if you want to download a list of Newsgroups from the Netscape Online Newsgroup server. Click 'Yes'. Outlook Express will then retrieve a list of the available Newsgroups, this will take several minutes, but you only need to do it once.

When the list of available Newsgroups have been retrieved, you will need to find some areas of interest to you.

In the 'Display Newsgroups which contain' box, enter a subject of interest. You will see that the list now contains only Newsgroups that contain the word that you typed in. Select any of these Newsgroups by double clicking on one, then click 'OK'.

In the left-hand pane of Outlook Express, click on the small plus (+) symbol to the left of the Netscape Online Newsgroup. This will display all of the Newsgroups that you have subscribed to.

Double click on any of these entries and, after a short pause, you will be able to see a list of message headers in the main Outlook Express Window.

To view any of these postings, either click once [displays the message in the Preview Pane], or double click [displays the message in its own window].

If you should choose to reply to any of these postings, you can do so in one of 2 ways. Either reply to the author of the message...

...or reply to the whole Newsgroup.

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