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Jim Collins: Hello and welcome to the Microsoft^® Support WebCast. We would like to thank all of you for joining us. Our topic today will be "What To Do if You Cannot Receive Your MSN^®
E-mail in Microsoft^® Outlook or Outlook Express" and our presenter will be Jennifer Akeley. I am Jim (James) Collins, and I will be your host for today's session.

We will start the session with Jennifer's presentation and follow that up with a question-and-answer period. We only answer questions submitted during the live. The Microsoft Support WebCast is intended to encourage further the discussion of the Support WebCast topic, however, one-on-one product support issues are outside the scope of what we are able to address during the Support WebCast. If you need technical assistance, please submit an incident on the Web or call Microsoft Product Support Services and speak to a Support Professional.

I would now like to take a moment to introduce Jennifer. Jennifer is a Support Professional in the Messaging unit of Microsoft Product Support Services and has been with Microsoft Support since 1994. As one of the first members of the Outlook Support team, she has been involved with each release of Outlook from Microsoft^® Outlook^® 97 to the current Microsoft^® Outlook^® 2000 product. Jennifer currently works for PSS, as an Outlook Technical Lead. Thanks for joining us Jennifer.

Jennifer Akeley: Thank you, and thank you for joining us today. Our presentation will cover, what to do if you're unable to receive e-mail from your MSN account in Outlook or Outlook Express.

Overview (slide 2). There are a number of reasons that you may be unable to retrieve your MSN mail, many of which we will cover here today. Before attempting any of the following steps, make sure that MSN is working. Do this by double-clicking the MSN desktop icon and make sure you can log on and navigate to the MSN Web site. If you are unable to connect and browse, contact MSN Support at this time.

The main topics we will cover are SMTP Server name, Secure Password Authentication, and upgrading your MSN account to MSN^® Explorer, SMTP, and Secure Password Authentication, commonly referred to as SPA.

Our first screen shot (slide 3), shows where the server name and Secure Password Authentication information are located. The steps to navigate in this screen in Outlook 2000, Internet Mail Only mode, is as follows: on the Tools menu, click Account. On the Mail tab, select the Mail Account option, and then click Properties. On the Servers tab, please note that you have information for both your incoming mail server POP3, which for MSN is, pop3.email.msn.com, and your outgoing mail server SMTP, which for MSN is, smtp.email.msn.com. Also, this dialog box contains a check box for Log on using Secure Password Authentication, click Ok, and then Close to close all open windows. Restart Outlook for the settings to take effect.

Now, I'll overview some basic troubleshooting questions (slide 4). Is Secure Password Authentication enabled? Check to see if Secure Password Authentication is enabled. If it is not, the result will be an error message that Outlook is unable to log on to the POP3 server, pop3.email.msn.com. Once you have selected the Log on using Secure Password Authentication check box, you will have to restart your mail client for the setting to take effect.

Is Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express the default e-mail client (slide 5)? If you select Check your mail at the MSN site and nothing happens or another e-mail program starts, you may not have Outlook or Outlook Express set as your default e-mail program. To set the default e-mail clients, follow these steps: right-click the Internet Explorer desktop icon, and then on the Shortcut menu, click Properties. On the Programs tab, select Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express in the e-mail list, and then click OK to close the window. You have now successfully reset your default e-mail client.

Are you having problems sending and receiving mail (slide 6)? To check your account and log on information in Outlook 2000 Internet Mail Only mode, follow these steps: start Outlook. On the Tools menu, click Accounts. On the Mail tab, select your MSN account, and then click Properties. On the General tab, make sure your e-mail address is in the format of username@email.msn.com. The reply address is optional, but if you use it, and it is different than your e-mail address, you might not receive replies to your messages. For testing purposes, you would not want to have your reply address different from your e-mail address.

On the Servers tab, the incoming mail server should be set to, pop3.email.msn.com, the outgoing mail server should be set to, smtp.email.msn.com, and then select Log on meeting Secure Password Authentication. On the Connection tab, make sure your connection and modem settings are correct. If you connect by modem, click the Dial Up Connection Properties button. On the General tab, make sure you are using the correct MSN phone number and modem types.

On the Servers tab, select the HTTP, Internet, Windows NT Server, Windows 98, Enable Software Compression, and TCP/IP check boxes. Click TCP/IP settings, and then confirm the Server assigned IP address, Server assigned name server address, Use IP header compression, and Use default gateway or default network check boxes are selected. Click OK three times, and then click Close, to close all boxes. If you can log on to MSN, but can't go to the MSN site or receive e-mail, contact MSN Support.

MSN Explorer (slide 7). MSNs latest upgrade is the MSN Explorer. It is being marketed as the new all-in-one software. MSN Explorer consolidates your e-mail into a single Web page, but also contains your calendar, tasks, reminders, and contacts. The MSN Explorer download is available at explorer.msn.com/home.htm. You will also see MSN Explorer advertised at many popular Web sites, with the download link available. The MSN Explorer CD can be ordered from the MSN Web site as well.

Specifics of MSN Explorer (slide 8). Upgrading your MSN account will make the mail account a Web based account, very similar to a Microsoft^® Hotmail^® account. You will be able to access your MSN mail from any computer with Internet access. However, you will no longer have the POP3 e-mail functionality. It is also easy to move your Internet Explorer favorites in Outlooks Express Address Book to MSN Explorer. The disadvantage of not having the POP3 mail functionality is that you'll lose the ability to work offline.

How can I tell if I've installed MSN Explorer on my computer? If you check your MSN e-mail account with Outlook or Outlook Express, you may no longer receive any new e-mail messages, you do not receive any error messages, and you can successfully send e-mail messages from your POP3 account. You can determine if you're using MSN^® Explorer version 6.0 or later by searching your hard drive on the Msn6.exe file.

MSN Explorer version 6.0 has the following Properties. The file name is Msn6.exe and the file location is D:\programfiles\msn\msncorefiles. Msn6.exe is hidden by default. So you can only see it if you disable the Windows Explorer options that prevent you from viewing the files. To view this file, do the following: right-click My Computer and then click Explorer. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options. On the View tab, clear the Hide Protecting Operating Systems File and Hide File Extensions for Known File Types option, select the Show Hidden Files and Folders option, and then click OK.

If you want to use a POP3 e-mail client, such as Outlook or Outlook Express to check your e-mail messages for MSN, do not upgrade to the MSN Explorer at this time. MSN Explorer version 6.0 does not support POP3 e-mail accounts. Instead, MSN Explorer uses MSN Hotmail. You cannot use MSN Explorer version 6.0 with a POP3 e-mail client. When you uninstall the MSN Explorer version 6.0 software by using the Add/Remove Programs tool in Control Panel, your e-mail messages are not migrated back to your POP3 account on the e-mail server.

If your e-mail messages have been migrated to the new MSN Hotmail, MSN provides options for you to convert your account back to POP3 or configure Outlook Express to use a MSN Hotmail account. For more information about these options, see the articles listed at the end of this presentation or contact MSN Support.

MSN converts POP3 accounts to HTTP (slide 9). In the current screen shot, you are being asked which e-mail account you would like to use with MSN explorer. If you select the Yes, I already get e-mail at my Hotmail.com option, your MSN account will not be updated to an HTTP or Web based account. If you select the second Yes, I already get e-mail at MSN.com option, your MSN account will be updated to an HTTP or Web based account. The third No, please create a new e-mail address for me option, will allow you to create a new HTTP account that can only be accessed via a Web page.

MSN Explorer Inbox (slide 10). After completing the installation of the MSN Explorer, this is how your new inbox will appear. E-mail you receive will appear in the My E-mail tab. To compose e-mail, select the Write E-mail tab.

MSN Explorer Calendar (slide 11). The MSN Explorer Calendar contains appointments, tasks, and reminders, components very similar to what is seen on the Outlook Today page. The Messenger window has your online contacts.

For additional information, please see the following Knowledge Base articles (slide 12): Q268732 - OLEXP: Outlook Does Not Receive MSN E-mail Messages, which can be found at the following link. Also, we have Q196106 - OL2000: (IMO) Troubleshooting MSN E-mail with Outlook, which can be found at the following link.

This will conclude the slide portion of the presentation.

Jim: Okay, just a couple of quick notes before we move onto the Q&A portion of this Support WebCast. To access information on all upcoming Support WebCasts and all the archived contents of all past Web casts, an easy to remember URL is http://support.microsoft.com/webcasts. The Q&A portion of this Support WebCast is intended to encourage further discussion of this WebCast topic. One-on-one product support issues are outside the scope of what we are able to address during this WebCast. If you need technical assistance, please submit an incident on the Web or call Microsoft Product Support Services and speak to a Support Professional.

Okay, great, we have had a couple of questions submitted. The first one is: How do you get Outlook Express to recognize the old POP3 e-mail if you're using the HTLM format of Microsoft^® Internet Explorer^® 6.0?

Mike Johnson: Hi, this is Mike Johnson. The whole access there is, that we're assuming that you had previous access to your MSN e-mail via the POP access and you've upgraded to MSN Explorer and you've told it to go ahead and migrate your account over to HTTP access. At this time, that's something that's done on the back-end of the server by MSN Support. So they do have some migration tools that you can access through the MSN Support Web site and off the top of my head, I don't have links for that for you. If you are adamant about moving back to POP access with your accounts, your best bet is to contact MSN Support and explain the process that you've already gone through and then explain clearly that you want to move from the HTTP access back to POP access.

Jim: Okay, thanks, Mike. The next question is: Is Outlook Express having problems printing regular size e-mail? The e-mails appear to be coming out using only a small amount of the paper and in a smaller text form.

Jennifer: That is not something that we've seen on a regular basis. I would have to investigate that more and get back with the user. That is not a known issue that we are having.

Jim: Is this a support question then?

Jennifer: Yes.

Jim: Okay, unfortunately, we are unable to address support questions in this particular format. We'd like to stress that the Q&A portion of the WebCast is more conceptual in nature and we want to stay on topic today.

Our next question is: I've been an MSN subscriber from day one and I rely heavily on my MSN POP3 e-mail account, however recently MSN seems to be almost forcing users to Hotmail. My account became inadvertently converted to Hotmail. I converted it back using MSNs utilities. Still, I'm concerned, what future do POP3 users have with MSN.

Mike: All the indications are that the plan for MSN, and I'm speaking from what they have instructed me, since I am not part of MSN Support staff, but their whole goal is to have all new users start out with Web access for their e-mail. In other words, new MSN subscribers would not have POP access in the first place.

Then moving forward, the goal would most likely be to move away from POP access. That doesn't mean that they're going to pull the plug on your POP account today, but the whole movement is to get away from POP access.

The best bet on that is, if you have concerns about that, is to give them feedback. There are several links on the MSN Members pages for giving feedback, as well if you go into the e-mail support area of the MSN Members Services pages. It actually tracks the frequently asked questions. It addresses this issue, as far as what are the key differences between POP versus HTTP and if I remember correctly, there's a button you can click on and send e-mail as feedback on your concerns there.

Jim: Okay, thanks, Mike. Great answer. Our next question is: What setup is necessary to use Outlook Express with TCP/IP settings?

Mike: We understand the question, but our basic communication is through TCP/IP. That's our basic connectivity protocol. I'm not sure if the question is directed towards, maybe there's some confusion on what's the difference between what we're calling POP access and TCP/IP access?

TCP/IP is just the network connection protocol versus POP is the back-end server where the information is stored and it's our means of accessing the server. If the user has an additional question about that, maybe they could clarify what they're really asking for us.

Jim: Yes, that's an excellent idea. Our next question is: We've seen that Outlook Express is not working at all after a customer has set up their Outlook Express with their ISPs. Is there anything we can do to fix this issue or do we simply have to have the customer reinstall Outlook Express?

Mike: It sounds like that question is more technical in nature. It doesn't sound like it's really related to MSN Explorer. Basically, if the user is using an ISP and they want to use Outlook Express as their e-mail client and it's not working, there's lots of reasons why it might not be working. It could be a configuration problem or it could be a set up issue with Outlook Express itself. So that would be more technical in nature, as far as the troubleshooting we have to offer.

Jim: Do you have any suggestions where to find the troubleshooting information on the Support site?

Mike: Other than going to our http://support.microsoft.com and browsing our Knowledge Base if you're getting specific errors and punch that into our Knowledge Base query, that's going to be the starting point. Without more specifics, I couldn't really suggest anything.

Jim: Thanks. I think the Knowledge Base is a very good resource. It's a very good suggestion.

Okay, moving onto the next question. What are the most common issues with MSN? Boy, that sounds like a really broad question. Can you come up with any specifics here?

Mike: I can talk from the e-mail side, since Jennifer and I both support Outlook and Outlook Express, and we obviously mostly hear problems from customers all day. That's the reason they're calling in. It's mostly with connecting with their e-mail server.

Specifically with MSN, we hear the same problems that we hear from other ISPs. Usually it's, "How do I configure my account to access my MSN e-mail server?" It's possibly that several of our users are using a dial-up connection. As Jennifer said in the presentation, sometimes the user is actually not even connected to the Internet. In other words, they can't even browse the Internet. So they're asking us things like, "How do I get Outlook Express connected?" Basically, the things we hear are more along those lines and that's generally what we hear from most ISPs.

We do get more questions lately, since MSN Explorer released, because customers all of the sudden may have gone through the setup for Explorer and inadvertently migrated their POP account over to HTTP access. So then all of the sudden they go into Outlook or Outlook Express and they can send e-mail with no problem, but they never see any new messages. So we get a lot of customers confused as to what has actually happened. We step them through and show them what's going on there. Mostly referring them either back to MSN, if they want to migrate backwards to POP access, or we'll show them the tools for configuring Outlook Express to read the HTTP access e-mail.

Jim: Excellent answer. We have had a couple other MSN Explorer questions submitted. The next one is: If I remove MSN Explorer from my computer, can I then receive my mail locally?

Jennifer: No. Once MSN Explorer has been installed and you have indicated that you want to setup your MSN account to receive mail, your mail account has been migrated on the server. So at that point you would have to contact MSN to get your mail migrated back to your POP3 account.

Jim: Okay, thank you for that answer. The next question is: Are there different or newer versions of MSN and if so, what are the benefits of these versions? I think we sort of touched on that already.

Jennifer: MSN version 6, which we were talking about today, is the latest and greatest version. We covered what that encompasses.

Jim: Okay. The next question is: Is the MSN Explorer upgrade free?

Jennifer: Yes.

Jim: Okay.

Mike: Here is something, what I think is great about MSN Explorer is that, you don't have to be a paid MSN customer to use all of the features of MSN Explorer. When they're offering this, they're basically offering you two things, either a dial-up account that gets you on the Internet, or a second thing, and that's the rich content you get through MSN.

Whether you're a paying MSN customer, in other words, you pay MSN for your dial-up access, digital subscriber line (DSL), or satellite access to the Internet. Whether you do that or not, you can still use all the content and access via the MSN Explorer. So you pay for Internet access and you can use MSN Explorer, or you can have some other Internet access that you're using and you can still use MSN Explorer. You can still create Hotmail accounts, manage your addresses, store things up on their server, and other things of that nature.

Jim: All right, thank you, Mike. Our next question is: Are newer versions of MSN more compatible with Microsoft^® Windows^® Me, Windows Millennium Edition?

Jennifer: Not that we are aware of. MSN Explorer is not version specific as far as operating systems. Newer versions of MSN are not version specific and are compatible with Me as well as Microsoft^® Windows^® 98.

Jim: Okay. Our next question is: What does MSN consist of such as Hotmail, etc.?

Mike: Without you going to MSN.com for yourself and browsing through all of the content that's there, some of the key things, whether you pay for MSN access to the internet or if you're just using the content. Some of the features are, if you just go to MSN.com, you can create a Hotmail account that gives you a Hotmail address or it may even give you an MSN.com address. You've probably heard of the Passport features of MSN. Basically, a Passport stores some information about you, including you can actually log in your credit card information and things like that, so when you visit Passport friendly sites, they'll say, oh, you're already logged into Passport. Here's all of your information already entered. So, it makes things a little bit faster, more convenient, and saves you some time on having to re-enter information.

The key feature that we consider MSN, is a portal. You get things like the Car Point site, for researching information on new/used cars. There's the Home Advisor portion of MSN, if you're looking to do home financing, buy a house, or maybe get your house ready for sale. I use these things day in and day out, so I'm just going off the top of my head.

Then, of course, there is the electronic shopping. MSN partners with online retailers to offer easier indexing of merchandise, so that you can go shopping through MSN. I'm probably leaving off several other things too. The reason they market MSN as a portal is, so that any question that you have or any information you're looking for, you should be able to start at MSN.com and find the information from there. That's the whole goal.

Jim: Okay thank you, Mike. Our next question is: Is dial-up networking used if MSN is the ISP?

Mike: Well, dial-up networking is, if you have a computer that you want to connect to the Internet. You can use several things to connect to the Internet. One of those would be dial-up networking. That's where you have your computer act as a telephone and it dials into an ISP or whatever, and then through authentication, it connects you with the Internet.

Now with Outlook Express, Outlook as e-mail clients, as well as MSN, they can connect either through a dial-up connection. If you're on a network already, such as like a corporate network, a local area network, you can configure it just like Internet Explorer. You can use it to use your existing connection. You can use it with cable modems, with DSL connections, things like that, so you're not limited to dial-up networking.

Jim: Thank you, Mike. Our next question is: Is there a separate browser that can be used with MSN?

Mike: I'm not exactly sure what the direction for the question is. But you can use, if you upgraded to MSN Explorer, and maybe that is the actual question, Can I use a separate browser other than the MSN Explorer browser? The answer is, yes. You can continue to use your Internet Explorer. You can use, if you have Netscape Navigator or some other browser. You don't have to use the MSN Explorer to browse Web pages, but you do have to have Internet connection. So if you don't have an MSN account for accessing the Internet, you'll have to have some kind of account that gets you on the Internet if you want to use the other browsers. Or if you do have your MSN Internet access account, you can choose whatever browser you want.

Jim: Okay, excellent. The next question is: Can I install MSN Explorer, convert my MSN e-mail back to POP3, but then continue to use MSN Explorer?

Mike: I think the question is, if I upgrade to MSN Explorer and I convert my account to HTTP, and then I ask MSN to convert it back to POP, could I continue to use the MSN Explorer? The answer on that, unless I am not aware of something specific on the technical side of that, is that you can continue to use MSN Explorer, as long as you don't configure or access the MSN account that is POP3 accessible. In other words, the one that was just converted back. Because once you go through, and if configure that again through MSN Explorer, it should migrate back to HTTP again. So that would be something we'd need to probably either have MSN step through with a customer or do some kind of test.

Jim: Okay, thank you, Mike. I just wanted to take a moment to encourage all of you to submit some feedback. We are very interested in your feedback regarding the Support WebCast program. You can send us your feedback using the e-mail alias feedback@microsoft.com. If you use that alias, please be sure to include "Support WebCasts" in the subject line. We're interested in any information you can give us. Any suggestions for future topics you'd like to see and any comments on this session specifically.

Our next question is: When the server is down, what is the MSN customer told?

Mike: It depends on who the customer is talking to. If the MSN customer contacts, whether it's Outlook Express or Outlook Support, or it could be any other e-mail client that may have POP access to the MSN mailbox. We're basically going to do some tests to see if we have connectivity through the Internet to the mail server. If we see that we don't have connectivity there, we most likely will test another server that we know is up and functioning and test from the e-mail client side. If we discover that the second server is functioning properly, in other words the non-MSN e-mail server, we often refer the customer over to MSN Support.

At that point, MSN Support normally will do some checks to see if they have a known issue, where the MSN e-mail, maybe there's a specific e-mail server that is down for a certain region of the country, or maybe there is some problem with the specific users account. They'll do some checking on the mailbox for the user. So it could be several things, depending on what the nature of the issue is.

Jim: All right, thank you for that answer. Our next question is: Where is the best place to go to get online support for Hotmail and Passport questions? This user is particularly interested in news groups and/or an e-mail address.

Mike: I cannot remember off the top of my head. I know that Passport Support and Hotmail Support is all e-mail and Web based. So, if the customer goes to www.passport.com or www.hotmail.com, there should be at least some support link there that allows them to choose an e-mail address to submit questions.

Jim: Okay, our next question is: Do Internet Explorer and MSN Explorer conflict with one another on the same system?

Jennifer: No, there are no reported conflicts with the current versions of Internet Explorer and MSN Explorer. This has not been regression tested with previous versions of Internet Explorer.

Jim: Okay thank you, Jennifer. The next question is: Do you see the industry moving away from POP3 or is this just particular to MSN?

Mike: It's actually the industry's moving away. If you look at ISP's such as America Online (AOL), they've actually never had POP e-mail as an e-mail standard for their e-mail system. If you look at other larger portals like Yahoo, they're default is Web accessed, in other words, HTTP access where you can get to your e-mail via Web browsers.

I think as we move forward, we're seeing that the technology, as far as moving away from POP access and limiting how we can access our information, I think that's what's driving this change. When you have Web access and you keep everything stored on your server, it does make it more convenient. So that whether you're traveling and you're using a laptop on the road, or you're going to a friends house and you want to check your e-mail, you want everything to be there and not limited to your e-mail being back on your home machine or maybe you even want to get to your contacts readily.

As we move forward to more hand-held devices, you can currently connect and do some synchronization with your addresses on the MSN site via Hotmail and MSN Explorer, more and more of that synchronization will be enabled, so that we can actually get to our information anyplace, anytime.

Jim: Thank you, Mike. Our next question is: Why is there so much spam on Hotmail accounts, even after Passport sign out?

Mike: I'm not clear exactly on the question, but in general as far as spam, I know that we have a lot of tools built in to Outlook and Outlook Express, as far as trying to intercept spam e-mail. I know that MSN tries to implement things like the Inbox Protector to block spam e-mail as well. So it's a constant battle. The whole industry attempts to help customers to deal with spam situations.

I'm not quite sure, as far as the way the question is worded, about after you log out of Passport. Passport is just like logging into Hotmail or even to an MSN account. The e-mail still is sent and received on the back-end, whether you're logged into the account or not. So I'm not quite sure about the question there.

Jim: Okay, thank you. Our next question is: I just signed up for MSN via Dell Support after many years of MSN dial-up. Customer support indicated that I need to install MSN Explorer to be able utilize the DSL connection, but I had difficulty believing this to be so. I guess I'll find out soon, since I don't intend to install MSN Explorer. Do you have any comments?

Mike: I don't have any direct experience there and I'm not aware of any documentation that states that. Other than just checking with MSN specifically, going up to the Web site for MSN Member Services, and then going to the DSL links, I won't even comment further on it. I don't know that that's a policy that I've seen written anyplace.

Jim: Our next question is: Can customer service reactivate an old account?

Jennifer: Mike and I are here to address MSN Explorer, Outlook, and Outlook Express. Outlook and Outlook Express are our areas of expertise and reactivating via MSN is really way out of our field. So that said, I'm not sure how old accounts are being reassigned to someone else. I have no way of knowing.

Jim: Okay thank you, Jennifer. Can Hotmail be accessed through Outlook and/or Outlook Express?

Jennifer: At this time you cannot access Hotmail accounts via Outlook. But via Outlook Express, when you're setting up a new e-mail account, you have a choice of a HTTP account and Hotmail is one of the defaults. It's like other HTTP accounts, where Hotmail is one of our defaults in Outlook Express 5.0 and later.

Jim: Thank you, Jennifer. Our next question is: How do you link Outlook Express to your e-mail icon on your browser?

Jennifer: That would be, back during the presentation, we were talking about setting your default e-mail client. We went over the steps of that by going to Internet Explorer and selecting Programs. You can select your mail programs by, on the Tools menu, click Internet Options. On the Programs tab, you have several, as you can see there, HTML editor, e-mail, newsgroups. E-mail is where you want to select your default e-mail. When you click there, you will have the Recognize e-mail clients on the system option is in the drop-down menu, select from that list. Once you click OK to that, you have at that point reselected your default e-mail client.

Jim: Thank you, Jennifer. Our next question is a follow up with the future of the POP3 and MSN question and it is: HTML based e-mail is fine, but what about storage limits? My POP3 account local file size is many megabytes. Can you address that at all?

Mike: I know that through MSN and I'm really speculating somewhat here, but I know that if you're paying for your storage with MSN, in other words, you have a paid MSN account, they do allow you to have more storage on the back-end. With MSN Explorer, you can still create a local file system that you can access from within the MSN Explorer interface.

So you do have what you consider a home base machine. Maybe there is some items you want to archive that you still want access to them, but maybe it's just something you only need occasionally. Or maybe it's some pictures or something you want to keep track of, but you don't need them available to you from every system that you might want to log onto your account. So what will happen there is, you create those local file folders, and it's just like having Outlook Express at that point and having a local storage of those files. You can move and organize your messages by either leaving them up on the server from the interface or putting them in those local folders.

Jim: Okay thanks, Mike. The next question is: I'm using MSN Explorer. Are my favorites stored only on my computer or are they also uploaded and stored somewhere else?

Mike: With MSN Explorer, you are able to import your favorites from, say for instance, Internet Explorer. If you have all your local favorites for Internet Explorer there, when you do the import via MSN Explorer, it's going to keep them up on that server. So if you go to another machine and log into the same account, like a Passport MSN.com account or Hotmail account, when you log in with that specific account and you go to Favorites within MSN Explorer, it's going to access the ones stored up on the MSN server for you. So they're going to be portable.

That means that if, say for instance, my home machine I'm using Internet Explorer and I have a set of favorites and I import them to MSN Explorer. Then I come to work and log into the same MSN Explorer account, I'm going to see those same favorites that I imported from my home machine, because they are stored up on the MSN server.

Now at my work machine, if I switch to my Internet Explorer, I'll have a different set of favorites, because there is no synchronization. It's a one way import.

Jim: Okay, thanks, Mike. The next question is: I am not receiving e-mail using Outlook Express. It just flashes a screen and does not indicate that I am having a problem. Do you have any ideas on that?

Jennifer: The question doesn't indicate if this user is using MSN, so we're not sure if this may be out of the realm of what we're doing. It sounds like she installed MSN Explorer and her account has been updated to an HTTP account, therefore, it's not going to allow her to pull the mail locally. She's going to have to go up to the MSN Explorer Web site to retrieve her mail each morning. But the question is a little open ended. I'm not sure whether her ISP is MSN. So we might have to look at some other troubleshooting as well. There are a lot of different possibilities of what the issue could be. But it does sound like her mail is going up to an HTTP server.

Jim: Okay thank you, Jennifer. The next question is: MSN Explorer supposedly supports multiple user accounts and apparently multiple Hotmail e-mail accounts. Can you elaborate on this? What are the space limitations for Hotmail accounts?

Mike: Hotmail accounts are 2 megabytes (MB) of storage. If you're browsing inside MSN Explorer and you tell it to view folders, and then you go to organize folders, it will tell you what your current storage is and the size of each of your folders. In the user interface, it will say 2000 kilobytes (KB) instead of 2 MB. When it gets up to about 1,900 KB, it will actually send you a message saying you've reached the maximum for your Hotmail account.

The same thing actually happens for the MSN.com e-mail addresses, if they've been migrated over from POP access, or if you've created one of the free MSN.com e-mail addresses. The key difference there is that if you have a paid account, the last time I checked, you get an additional 0.5 MB of storage. So if it's free, it's 2 MB, if you're a paid MSN user, it's 2.5 MB per account.

Jim: Okay thanks, Mike. The next question is: There don't seem to be any links or refresh buttons in MSN Explorer as in Internet Explorer. Am I overlooking them?

Mike: Actually, yes. If you right-click on the Web page that you are currently viewing, you'll get pop up, a context menu, and one of the choices is Refresh. You won't have a large button, like we're probably all accustomed to with Internet Explorer. There is, towards the upper right corner of the MSN Explorer window, there is a drop-down button that says, More Choices or More Options. You click on that, it'll actually give you a Refresh menu item.

Jim: Okay. Our next question is: What happens when the mailbox is full? Is incoming mail returned as undeliverable?

Mike: I am not specifically sure about that. I know that the times that I have reached the maximum for my mailbox, that as soon as I clear some messages and come beneath the 2 MB limit, I do receive more messages. I've never had a report that a message was not deliverable.

I believe, and this is more speculation than anything, like most ISP e-mail servers, if you do reach some kind of capacity, if you go over the maximum storage size, they will cache and hold those messages for a certain amount of time, assuming that you are going to come in and clean up the mailbox or delete some of your messages. Then, of course, after that, I guess you call it a grace period, after that period, then those messages would eventually be deleted.

That's the same thing that Hotmail and MSN will do for inactive accounts. After so many months of no activity, in other words, you don't access your Hotmail account, they assume that you decided to abandon it and they'll go in and actually remove the messages.

Jim: Okay thanks, Mike. We have answered all of the questions that were submitted. So that is going to wrap up our session. I want to thank all of you for listening and I hope this information was useful to you.

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