Outlook 2000 Setup Instructions

These directions are written to use Outlook 2000. These are generic instructions, written for a fictional company "XYZ", who owns the domain name "domain.xyz", and hosts their email on my "secure.jms1.net" server.

The first time you run Outlook, it may pop up a window asking for your name and initials- if so, fill out the information and hit the OK button.
It may also try to automatically walk you through a "wizard" to create your first email account. If so, press the Cancel button- the process it uses does not set up all of the settings correctly.
Pull down the "Tools" menu and choose "Account Settings".
Click the Add button on the right side of the window, and choose "Mail..." from the menu which pops up.
Enter your name, as you wish it to appear on your outgoing emails.
Click the Next > button.
Enter your email address, ending with "@domain.xyz".
Click the Next > button.
For "mail server type", choose IMAP.
For "Incoming mail (POP3 or IMAP) server", enter "secure.jms1.net".
For "Outgoing mail (SMTP) server", enter "secure.jms1.net".
Click the Next > button.
For "Account name", enter the full email address, ending with "@domain.xyz".
If you want the server to remember your password, enter it here and turn on the "Remember password" checkbox. If you don't do this, you will need to enter your mailbox password every time you run Outlook.
DO NOT turn on the "Log on using Secure Password Authentication (SPA)" checkbox. This is a proprietary Microsoft extension and is not needed or supported by the software running on the mail server.
Click the Next > button.
This option tells Outlook how you will connect to the Internet. If you choose the "Connect using my phone line" option, Outlook will trigger a dial-up internet connection every time it goes to check your mail- which sounds nice in theory, but it doesn't actually work very well.

If the machine is a desktop system which never moves, choose the "Connect using my local area network (LAN)" option.

If the machine is a laptop and you will be managing the connection by hand (which is what most laptops do), choose the "I will establish my Internet connection manually" option.
Click the Next > button.
This is the end of the E-mail account setup wizard. However, there are a few settings which still need to be changed.
Click the Finish button.
On the list of accounts, make sure the new account is selected. You may need to select the "Mail" tab across the top of the window first.
Click the Properties button on the right side of the window.
You can change the account name (at the top of the window) if you like. This becomes the name by which the account is known within your copy of Outlook, and has no effect on the server at all.
The "User Information" settings affect the appearance of your outgoing mail. You may change these if you wish, however there should be no need.
Make sure the "Include this account when receiving mail or synchronizing" checkbox is turned ON.
Click the "Servers" tab.
The "Server Information" and "Incoming Mail Server" sections should be correct. Do not change them unless you know they are wrong.
Under "Outgoing Mail Server", turn ON the "My server requires authentication" checkbox, and click the Settings... button.
Make sure that the "Use same settings as my incoming mail server" option is selected.
Click the OK button.
Click the "Connection" tab.
This is the same "how to connect to the Internet" option which was covered in the wizard. Again, the options relating to the telephone line generally don't work very well, I recommend you set this to something other than "Connect using my phone line".
Click the "Advanced" tab.
For "Outgoing mail (SMTP)", turn ON the "This server requires a secure connection (SSL)" checkbox. When you do this, you should see the port number (above it) change from 25 to 465 automatically. If this does not happen, change the port number to 465 by hand.
For "Incoming mail (IMAP)", turn ON the "This server requires a secure connection (SSL)" checkbox. When you do this, you should see the port number (above it) change from 143 to 993 automatically. If this does not happen, change the port number to 993 by hand.
Click the "IMAP" tab.
Make sure the "Root folder path" box is empty. (Technically, there is a value which could go in here, however leaving this box blank tells Outlook to automatically get this value from the IMAP server when it connects.)
Click the OK button.
On the list of accounts, click the Close button.
The first time Outlook connects to the server, you will see this warning. This is because the SSL certificate which handles encrypting the IMAP connection is not "signed" by a third party certification authority.
Click the OK button.
The first time Outlook connects to the server, it will retrieve a list of the server-side folders within your mailbox. By default you should see three, called "Drafts", "Sent", and "Trash". DO NOT delete any of these folders- they are used by various IMAP clients, including the webmail interface.

You can create folders as children of the "Inbox" folder in the new account. Those folders are physically stored on the mail server, which means they will be accessible through any other IMAP client, including the webmail interface. The contents of these folders will also be backed up on a regular basis.

You can also create folders as children of the "Outlook Today - [Personal Folders]" item. However, those folders are physically stored on your hard drive and will not be accessible from any computer other than the machine where you're running Outlook, or from any other email program (such as Thunderbird) on the same machine. In addition, these folders will probably not be backed up, so if something happens to your desktop computer, anything in those folders is gone.