Outlook Express Troubleshooting

 Trouble-shooting outlook express involves following a logical series of steps.

These are three steps I take in trying to resolve problems/errors not just with Outlook Express but with Microsoft products in general.

 I use a three step troubleshooting procedure as follows:

• Step 1- Consult the product help
• Step 2 Search the Knowledge base
• Step 3- Ask Questions at the product newsgroups

Step 1-Outlook Express help

The first place to start is with is the built in Outlook Express trouble shooter which you access via outlook express help. Just go to the Outlook Express help select index and type in troubleshoot and click display. You will be presented with several options to choose from.
If that doesn't solve the problem and I must admit it rarely does except for simple configuration or setup issues then its on to step 2.
 

Step 2-Microsoft Outlook Express Support Site

Type http://support.microsoft.com into your web browser to go to the Microsoft support site. You should notice that Microsoft have support centres for their major products and Outlook Express is at the top. Select Outlook Express support site. Alternatively you can go there directly using this link

What we are going to do here is to search the Microsoft knowledge base for Outlook Express. The knowledge base is essentially a collection of known problems/questions and the solutions/answers.

In order to use this effectively we need to have a description of the problem or best of all an error message or error number. In order to follow this through to see how its works lets assume we get errors in Outlook Express when you click the send/receive tab. The error message displayed in the window is shown below.

The host 'mail1.onetel.net.uk' could not be found. Please verify that you have entered the server name correctly. Account: 'testuser1', Server: 'mail1.onetel.net.uk', Protocol: POP3, Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Socket Error: 11001, Error Number: 0x800CCC0D

You can see here that right at the end we have an error number. In this case Error Number: 0x800CCC0D. We now copy and then paste this error number into the field on the Microsoft support site where it says search KB Outlook express and then click the green arrow.

You will see a results tab listing the results shown below. You now need to go through the articles one by one until you find one that answers your problem. This is exactly what the Microsoft support would do if you contacted them for support.
 

What if none of the articles solves our problem ? In this case we need to repeat the procedure but this time we enter a description of the problem as our query. As we are having problems sending and receiving I will enter the query send receive error. I've listed the first few results below but here we see that we now have 25 articles to choose from.

Again if none of the articles solves your particular problem then you repeat the process but using different key words in the search query. In practise if you haven't found it after about 4 attempts then you're probably not going to find it so its time for step 3.

Step3 -Using the Public newsgroups:

Microsoft maintains a news server MSnews which hosts newsgroups covering all of its products. There are several groups dedicated to Outlook Express and they are frequented by very knowledgeable and helpful people. Here you can post a description of your problem with as much detail as possible and you should either get the problem resolved or be given ways to get around it.

The newsgroups are available either using a web browser or a newsreader; it just depends on your preference.
If you want access using the web browser the Outlook Newsgroups are in the section on Internet explorer just follow these links:

Outlook Express 6.0
Outlook Express 5.5
Outlook Express stationery
Outlook Express 5.0
Outlook Express 5.0 Stationery

To access the newsgroups using the Outlook Express newsreader then create a news account to connect to the MSnews server the name is msnews.microsoft.com. If you click on any of the links below it will automatically open up Outlook express and create the necessary links

MS News Server --- see notes 1 and 2
OE6
OE6 Stationery
OE5.0
OE5.5
OE5 Stationery
OE5.5 Stationery
OE Windows98
OE4 and MS Agent
OE4 Stationery

Notes:
1. If you use the above shortcuts then it automatically create links in Outlook Express but you still need to access the news account properties and fill out your email address etc before you do any posting.
2. If you access via the main link you will be given an option to download all the available newsgroups. You can then subscribe to the ones you're interested in other than the Outlook Express newsgroups. The shortcuts above will create links to the Outlook Express newsgroups.

 Other resources:

• Inside OE