Outlook 2010 Mail – Managing Multiple Email Accounts

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Outlook 2010 can manage all your email accounts. This gives you a single interface for working with all your messages. There are two aspects to making this happen. The first is knowing how to configure Outlook for Gmail or whichever service you are using. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough space here to cover how that works. The link at the end of this article will take you to a site that does have all the information.

The second aspect is knowing how to work with the different accounts once you have them set up. This article covers those basics.

When you Receive Messages

You can receive messages from various different types of accounts. Outlook 2010 automatically checks each email account for you, based on the settings in your Send/Receive groups. Messages end up in different spots depending on the type of account. Typically, messages from Gmail and Hotmail accounts will end up in their own mail folders, while messages from other types of accounts end up in the Inbox.

So how do you know which messages are associated with which accounts? The messages that end up in their own set of folders are easy. For other types of accounts, if you can’t tell just by looking, you can look at the To: field of the message. The email address the sender addressed it to appears on that line.

When You Send Messages

When sending messages, you control which account Outlook 2010 uses. Outlook always has a default account for sending messages, but you can tell Outlook to use a different account like this:

  • When you create a new message, Outlook 2010 assumes that you want to send the message from the email account you are working in right now. This is a change from earlier versions, which assumed you wanted to send from the default account.
  • When you’re replying to a message you received, Outlook uses the same account as the message by default. But you can always tell Outlook to send the reply using a different account.
  • When you forward a message, Outlook handles it the same way as a reply.

So how exactly do you tell Outlook 2010 to use a different account? You do it when you are working in the message window. Look for the “From” button next to the “Send” button (this only appears if you have more than one account set up). Click From and select the account you want to use.

Set the Default Account

If you want to change Outlook’s default account, here’s what you have to do:

  1. In the Ribbon, click the File tab.
  2. In the menu that appears, click Info to display the “Account Information” screen.
  3. Click the Account Settings button and select Account Settings… in the menu that appears. This opens the “Account Settings” dialog box to the “E-mail” tabbed page.
  4. In the box that contains the list of email accounts, select the account you want to use as the default account (the current default account has a checkmark in a blue circle next to it).
  5. If the account you selected is not already the default account, the “Set as Default” option (located above the box containing the email accounts) should now be clickable. Click Set as Default to change the default account.
  6. Click Close to return to the Outlook window.

You now have the basic information you need to work with multiple email accounts in Outlook 2010. All you need now is solid instructions for connecting accounts to Outlook.

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Source by Bill Mann