Need Outlook Express email account?

I need an Outlook Express email account. I had one before my computer crashed and now I cannot get it back. Also is there way I can check the old email messages? Can you please help me out?
Sharon

Unfortunately, this seemingly simply question does not have a quick and easy answer. I will first clear some common misconceptions and then offer possible solutions to Sharon’s Outlook Express woes!

Outlook Express doesn’t give you an email account

Outlook Express is an email client. In layman’s terms, it’s a program that lets you download, send and organize email messages and accounts. Please note that the software itself doesn’t supply an email account. You first need to get one either from an ISP or a free service (such as Gmail or Hotmail) and then set it up in Outlook Express.

Thus, the idea of an “Outlook Express email account” is incorrect and before you can start using the program here are the things you need to do:

1. Get an email address: It doesn’t take the brains of a rocket scientist to create an email. Free accounts are offered by many companies such as Gmail from Google, Hotmail (now known as Windows Live Hotmail) from Microsoft and Yahoo! Mail. If you want detailed step by step instructions, please search this website.
   Important: The internet connection which you use at your home/office comes from an ISP (Internet Service Provider). The company would have also provided one or more free email accounts – contact them for details. Email accounts provided by ISPs are generally compatible with Outlook Express and can quickly be set up in the program (read more below).
2. Make email account compatible with Outlook Express: Before you can use an email account in Outlook Express you need to confirm whether it will work with the email program. In technical terms, the email account should be POP3 or IMAP enabled. FYI, POP3 and IMAP are email protocols that are used by Outlook Express to connect to the machine (web server) that has the email account and download messages to your computer.
   Not all email accounts have free POP3 or IMAP support. For instance, to access Yahoo email messages using the popular POP3 protocol you need to upgrade the free account to Plus! which costs about $20 annually. Get a free Gmail account if you want 100% free POP and IMAP accessibility.
3. Add and setup your email account in Outlook Express: To download and store messages on your computer through Outlook Express, you need to set up the email account in the program. This is generally a simple process in which you need to provide the email account username, password and mail server information. Please refer the link above for step by step instructions along with screenshots.

Checking older email messages with Outlook Express

Now to answer Sharon’s main question – can she check email messages on a computer that crashed? Is there a way she can retrieve those emails?

Sadly, it’s not always possible to recover all data from a crashed hard disk. So keep your fingers crossed. You can either use software to salvage whatever you can from the the damaged equipment or take it to a specialist – a company that has a full-blown set up.

But you may not be require to go through the hard disk recovery process if the messages are still on the email server. Let me explain.

Email accounts are typically set up in Outlook Express through either the POP3 or IMAP protocol. If the latter was used, there is no need to worry as a copy of the messages would still be on the server. Sharon simply needs to set up the account in the email client and download the emails once again. However, if the account was configured as POP3, there is little hope unless Sharon had overridden the default option and made sure that a copy of the messages was left on the server once they were downloaded.

In conclusion: You don’t need an Outlook Express email account – what you need is an email account AND Outlook Express. Then setup the program to download the messages on your computer.

Finally, Outlook Express is outdated. Microsoft has stopped the development and support for this program. They have released Windows Live Mail which is free just like its predecessor.