The Malaysia Email Hosting Blog

You are using email clients such as Outlook or Outlook Express. Your notebook is not with you, and you have some old email to retrieve from your Webmail. The default setting in Outlook Express download all messages from the incoming mail server and remove them from server. That means, it leave no copy of messages in the server. If, you have huge space and you might run into some similiar case above, check ‘Leave a copy…’. It can help!

Just one thing, keeping too many email in your email server, might slow down your Outlook Express. Everytime when you download the message from the server, it takes some little longer time to initiate.

If you are upgrading from Outlook Express to Windows Mail, you might need this helpful instruction posted by JAF.

1. Create a directory under the current user’s Documents, such as Documents\OEMail. This directory needs to be within the user’s space, such as under Documents, in order to prevent possible access permissions problems.
2. Copy all the dbx files from one Outlook Express Identity into this directory, ensuring that folders.dbx is included.
3. Go to Edit | Select all in Windows Explorer and select all the dbx files. Then right click on the selection and choose Properties and ensure that the read only attribute of the files is unchecked.
4. In Windows Mail go to File | Import Messages and choose Outlook Express 6 format and choose to import from a directory.
5. Then use the Browse button to browse to the directory of dbx files. Make sure that when you set the directory that what is listed in the path is correct (NOTE: Vista can put the wrong path in here sometimes, so instead of c:\mypath it puts c:\mypath\mypath, so check the path to verify that it is correct, and if it is not correct then fix it by clicking the Browse button a second time and then leave the selection blank and clicking Okay.).
6. Then select the files from which you wish to import messages and click Import.

“I tried to delete email from Outlook Express but fail. It says Messages could not be moved”

The email folder where you want to delete the email was corrupted. This happens to users with Outlook Express with many emails all kept in the Inbox, or when your PC is not formated and used for quite a while.

Outlook Express keeps all email in DBX format. This file get corupted easily. Go to the Tools > Options > Maintenance > Store Folder to know where is your DBX file. Delete the DBX, but make sure you have turn off Outlook Express and move your message to different folder. Open Outlook Express again and it will generate the new DBX. Now, move the email back to Inbox.

If you are moving from Windows XP to the latest Vista, Microsoft rebrand and remove Outlook Express and call it Windows Mail now :)

Outlook or Outlook Express are both email clients that allow you to download your email from the mail server to your computer, instead of browsing it online using Webmail.

Email to you are stored in the mail server. Email clients connect to this mail server (we call it Incoming mail server, eg pop.emailsrvr.com) and download the email. After downloading, the email will no longer available in the mail server, unless you have enabled the option ‘Leave copy of email in mail server for xxx days’.

Sending out email works slightly different from receiving email. Theorically, you can use any outgoing mail server (or, you can call it SMTP server) to send out your email as long as it allows you to do so. That means you can switch around SMTP servers in your email clients if for some reason the one you are currently using is down.

Few things you need to understand while setting up the SMTP server in your email clients. Most SMTP mail servers require authentication. Examples:

Streamyx SMTP: smtp-proxy.tm.net.my, running on port 25
Streamyx check if you are using their broadband before allowing you to use their SMTP. Therefore, you don’t need to activate any authentication in your email clients.

1.com.my’s SMTP: smtp.emailsrvr.com, running on port 25
You need to login to use. The login info is the same as the one you use to check your email. Therefore you need to select ‘use same setting as Incoming mail server’.

Gmail SMTP: smtp.gmail.com, running on port 465
Gmail SMTP is a secure mail server. Your email client will send your composed email to Gmail SMTP using a secure connection with encryption. Again, Gmail SMTP require authentication too. Enter your Gmail login info in the Authentication settings. You need to indicate that your SMTP is running on secure connection, look for ‘This servers require a secure connection (SSL)’.

By understand how your email client works, you will have no problem to setup your Outlook or Outlook Express quick!

Few things to take note, most of email service provider use your email address as username. Also, if you have change your password (usually done via Webmail), you need to update your password in email clients too.

More tips about using Outlook Express

If you are using Outlook Express and you have lot of email to manage daily, you should really try to enable the Conversion View! It sorts your messages in thread orders. No doubt, this can be sometimes kinda confusing because some new incoming message jump to nowhere hidden in the thread, but when you have used to it, it will become a Must-have!

Give details. Please remember that you’re the one seeing the error and many times, you’re the only one seeing that error. Folks can’t read minds or else they would be in Vegas playing cards instead of trying to help other folks on the email support :)

We do understand how bad is, when the email is down. Few questions that I would ask as a Email Support people:

1. How do you access your email? Outlook Express or Webmail?

2. You can’t send out email, please tell us what is the error message you are seeing?

Cool down….

Never bogged down by email! Lily, our admin in the office, used to receive more than 50 emails a day. Most of the email, are forwarded message because her email was in those lists.

After some serious clean up and removal of unnecessary email aliases, she is left out with only 2-5 emails a day!

Less operation, more time for marketing!

I have came across friends who subscribe to third party Spam filtering service by routing their email to a Spam filtering server before arriving at one’s mailbox. Why one should pay more when this is actually part of email hosting service providers’ responsibility to keep Spam away? And, you have just created a new bottleneck between sender and you!

More than 500 Spam mails come to my mailbox everyday. Out of this, 80% of them are filtered automatically before even reaching my mailbox. The rest of them are moved to the Spam folder in my Webmail.

On and off, I login to my mailbox and Whitelist’ those emails which are not Spam. After weeks of whitelisting, I hardly find any legimate email landed in this Spam folder.

I am a Outlook Express supporter. I use and live with Outlook Express after my first email. Before downloading my email from the mailbox server, I have practised a habit to login to Webmail and Blacklist’ those email which could be Spam! In fact, after few weeks of blacklisting, I have getting lesser Spam mails nowadays!

Outlook Express stores messages in a folder, location defined in Tools > Options > Maintenance > Store Folder. It converts every folder to respective .dbx file, for example inbox.dbx. Large dbx files turn Outlook Express to load slower.

Create New folder under Inbox. The format of the folder name should follow ‘Inbox-yyyy-mm’. Use the same format for your Sent box too. After you have created the folder, move all messages to their respective folder.

Close Outlook Express now. Go to the Store Folder, delete the file inbox.dbx and start Outlook Express again. The new inbox.dbx will be clean once again!