General Chat

My husband thinks that if you have the preview on, messages are in bold until you click on them. While they are bold they are unread. But I would like to find out - I've just spent several minutes reading the Help section and am none the wiser! On the subject of OE, does anyone else have my problem? I get lots of junk, and I also like to move anything I've read and responded to the deleted items. Quite often when I'm in the middle of deleting, the programme freezes. Driving me nuts! nell

Hi Everyone Thanks ever so much for all your suggestions - Paul seems to have solved it for me - it looks like Mr Gates is to blame - I have Windows XP with OE 6 and the option that I want isn't there! My work OE which is version 5 has got it. Don't understand why this is an improvement. Saz NB - I don't have my Preview Pane on & all my Spam gets stopped by the XP Service Pack 2 spamfilter - sounds like I know what I'm doing, but it's all just bluff;-) Thanks again everyone.

Saz. I know just what you mean. You open an email, and when you close it the next one automatically opens. I'm pretty sure this is a setting within OPTIONS, it would be something along the lines of "open next item on close" or something ike that. I'm running Outlook Express 6 on XP, and this option seems to have been removed in this version, presumably for security reasons. Paul

Babz - if you select it without the preview pane you are just highlighting the title and can then click on the X in the toolbar and it goes in the trash. I don't understand any of it - can only tell you that this is what I do and it works for me! Still better though to delete them before they get to OE by going to ya hoo or hot m ail websites direct. Maz. XX

my problem is the delete button,ime on windows 95,old,i know...but quite often,when i click on delete,the button just bobs up and down..and wont delete the mail uuggghhh. bryan.

Hi Maz Tell me this then...to delete an email you first have to select it, by clicking only once. How do you and hubby select the email to delete it? ...Babz

In my experience ... (and according to hubby who works in IT ) if you do NOT have the preview pane on, then you have to double click to open an e-mail. If you DO have it on, then you have already opened the e-mail - you only have to do more clicking if you want to open an attachment too. I have had problems with viruses from e-mails that have only been 'opened' by the preview pane - not all viruses are in attachments. Since I have turned off the preview, I have had no problems. Maz. XX ps have you seen any of these replies yet Saz - is anything working for you ??

Philip Thanks for that. I had an argument with my daughter re the preview pane as I insisted that "I'm not opening them if I click on them once" She was warning me not to open emails if they look sus' and the way you explain it, well....I will show her your reply. Thanks :o)))) ...Babz

Hello Saz, I have OE, although I no longer use it as my default. I'm not sure what you mean by OE automatically opening each new message, although Maz suggested that you might have been referring to your preview pane. I've got my preview pane set on, which means that I can see the preview of the text in the individual e-mail I've highlighted in the inbox, by default the first one in the list. However, this is not the same as opening an e-mail, you have to double click on it to open it. So it's safe to use the preview pane, and if you see that an e-mail or its attachment are marked as unsafe, you can easily delete it without opening it. Equally, as Maz suggests, you can switch off your preview pane. To do this, or to turn other OE screen features on or off, click on View, then on either Current View or Layout, and you'll see listed the various things you can choose to do. Philip

When in Outlook - at the top of the screen, click on Tools, then Options, then Read. Tick the box which says "Mark message read after displaying for......." and add the number of seconds you would like to delay the envelope icon opening. I have mine set at 9 seconds. Finally click on OK. Hope this helps! Dee x

p.s. Hope that made sense!!!

When you are in Outlook if you have a look at your toolbar at the top, just under the word reply, there is a picture of a page of text. If you hover your mouse over this it should say 'preview pane'. Click on this and you should no longer have a split screen and you should have to double-click to open each mail. To be on the safe side, I now open my mail in ya hoo web site - then I can delete them before going into OE and clicking send/receive to transfer them across. Takes a while to get into the swing of it, but I prefer the security of doing it this way. Maz. XX

I have Windows XP and my OE automatically opens my next email message as soon as I delete/move the email I've just been reading. This is driving me nuts - does anyone out there know how to just make OE return to the Inbox each time. This is what my previous Windows 98 SE used to do. I'm worried that i will open something that i shouldn't and am surprised that nothing obvious in the toolbar indicates how to change this. Sarah