Silver Surfer Guide
Lesson 11: Accessing Newsgroups With Windows Live Mail
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Newsgroups are communities where people can express their opinions or ask for advice regarding specific topics. Not all are particularly friendly beasts and, sadly, some user's can be particularly argumentative. However, before you can post a question, or maybe an answer, we need to discuss how to set up Windows Mail to accept Newsgroups. For this lesson I will just concentrate upon Microsoft Newsgroups. Obviously thee are other newsgroups available from other providers and the principle fro accessing them are very similar to what will be described here.
While newsgroups are a great source of information they do have their own set of Rules and Regulations and also ways of posting questions. A quick Google search for the term 'netiquette' should bring up sufficient information to give you an idea of what you should and should not be doing on the newsgroups.
So to begin follow the instructions below:
1/ Open Windows Mail
2/ On the Main toolbar, Click the Tools option
3/ From the drop own menu, Click Accounts
4/ The Internet Accounts window will now open. (see fig: 1)
Fig: 1 Internet Accounts Window
5/ Click the Add button.
6/ The 'Select An Account Type' window will now open
Fig: 2 Select and account
7/ Highlight 'Newsgroups Account' from the list provided and Click the Next button.
8/ In the Display name dialogue box, Type in the name you wish to be known by and then Click the Next button.
Fig: 3 Type in your display name
9/ The 'Internet News E-mail Address' window appears
Fig: 4 Type in an e-mail address (preferably a fictitious one)
10/ Type in the e-mail address you are planning on using fro the newsgroups. I suggest you don't use your real e-mail address but, instead, use a fictitious one.
Warning
UserNet newsgroups are open to the public and, as such, are regularly scanned (or trawled) to gather e-mail information for the purpose of 'spamming'. For this reason 'never' use your real e-mail address; always use a false address. If you make the mistake of allowing your real e-mail address to be published on any newsgroup you can expect to get a whole load of unsolicited 'spam' e-mail. A good alternative to your real e-mail address could take the following format:
<yourname>@invalid.invalid, where <yourname> represents either your first name or a nick-name.
11/ Once you have typed in the e-mail address you are going to use, Click the Next button
12/ The next window to appear is the 'Internet News server Name'
Fig: 5 Internet News Server name window
13/ In the Internet News Server Name dialogue box you need to type the server name of the newsgroup you wish to use. As we are going to be using Microsoft's own newsgroups simply type news.microsoft.com and then Click the Next button
14/ If you're using an alternative news server and it requires you to log in then make sure you tick the 'My news server requires me to log on' box. Another window will appear to enable you to insert any relevant log in details such as name and password. If your newsgroup server does not require a log in, then leave this option unticked.
15/ Once you press the Next button Windows will attempt to connect to your newsgroup server and then, if all is successful, the congratulations window will appear. All you need do now is Click the Finish button.
Fig: 6 Congratulations you have now completed your task
16/ You will now be returned to he Internet Account Window (see fig: 1) When you return to this window press the Close button
17/ You will now be advised that you have not yet subscribed to any newsgroups nd would you like to view the list of newsgroups. Just click the Yes button.
Fig: 7 Press the Yes button to start downloading the newsgroups
18/ Assuming you have entered the Server name (and any user name and password, if required) correctly the list of newsgroups should now begin to download.
Fig: 8 Downloading Newsgroups
19/ Once the newsgroups have been downloaded (incidentally this may take a few minutes) scroll down the list and select any newsgroups you are interested in.
Fig 9 Select the newsgroups you are interested in
20/ With the selection highlighted, Click the Subscribe button to subscribe to the newsgroup. You can select and subscribe to as many newsgroups as you wish.
Fig: 10 Click the Subscribe button after highlighting the newsgroup you want
21/ After you have finished subscribing, Click the OK button to Close the window
Fig 11 The Windows Mail main window appears now showing the new newsgroups in the left hand pane of the window
22/ Under the Synchronise settings option to the Right of the Windows Mail main Window you will see a small box next to each subscribed newsgroup. Right click the mouse on the first box and, from the drop down menu select the 'headers only' option. (see fig: 11). Do exactly the same for all your subscribed newsgroups
Fig: 12 Synchronising the newsgroup header settings
23/ After you have finished changing the synchronisation settings for each newsgroup to 'headers only,' Click the Tools option on the main toolbar and then, from the drop down menu, Click the 'Synchronise Account' option to start downloading the newsgroup posts.
Fig: 13 Downloading post headers
24/ Once the newsgroup posts have downloaded you can then read the posts and, if you so desire, reply to a post.