You either use Outlook Express or you don’t. If you do, you might be interested in some of the few new features Microsoft actually did add to the Windows Vista version, Windows Mail. If you don’t use Outlook Express, there’s no reason to start now. There are much better e-mail clients out there, including Microsoft Outlook, and if you’re looking for a solution that handles both e-mail and newsgroups, Mozilla’s free Thunderbird client is more secure and feature-packed than is Windows Mail. That said, there are some new features and secrets to be had. Let’s take a look.

Slightly Updated User Interface

The first thing you’ll notice when you fire up Windows Mail is that it’s been updated subtly to conform to the new Windows Vista look and feel. It still includes a classic menu bar, but the old bulky toolbar has been replaced by a smaller blue toolbar similar to those found in other Vista applications. That said, the user interface of Windows Mail is almost identical to that of Outlook Express. There is a new Contacts button in the toolbar that replaces the old Contacts panel from Outlook Express, and various icons used throughout the Windows Mail user interface have been refreshed. But that’s about it: Even the Windows Mail menu structure is virtually identical to that of its predecessor, with very few exceptions. This just isn’t a brand-new application, let alone a major update.

No More Support for Web Mail The biggest change in Windows Mail, unfortunately, is that support for web-based e-mail services, such as Hotmail and Gmail, has been eliminated. In Outlook Express, you could choose between POP3, IMAP, and HTTP mail server types; the latter was used for web mail accounts. In Windows Mail, that last option was eliminated. Only POP3 and IMAP accounts are now supported. Why is this, you ask? After reassessing its web mail strategy during the development of Windows Vista, Microsoft began evolving Hotmail into a new service called Windows Live Mail that includes both free and paid versions. Not coincidentally, the company is also offering a new e-mail client that is designed expressly for the new service. This new client is called Windows Live Mail Desktop, and it offers support for web mail accounts. Microsoft’s advice is to use this client, and not Windows Mail, if you need to access web mail accounts. We discuss Windows Live Mail Desktop in Article 19. A better option, we think, is to use Google’s free Gmail service. Gmail offers oodles of storage, and you can even access it via standard POP3 servers, which means that, yes, Gmail is fully compatible with Windows Mail even though it’s technically a web mail service. Interested in Gmail? Check out

www.gmail.com. You can find out more about Windows Live Mail from the Live.com web site at

www.ideas.live.com/.

Instant Search Like much of Windows Vista, Windows Mail is integrated with the operating system’s instant search functionality. This means that Windows Mail picks up a handy instant search box in the upper right corner of the main application window. To search the current view - be it an e-mail folder or online newsgroup - simply select the search box and start typing. Searching is instantaneous, so it will begin filtering down the list as you type. Also, instant search will search across all applicable criteria, including sender, subject line, and e-mail or newsgroup body. Interestingly, the old Find toolbar button from Outlook Express is still available in Windows Mail. Why would you need Find when Windows Mail includes instant search? Actually, there are some good reasons. When you click Find, you’ll see the Find Message dialog box shown in article 18-2. This dialog box enables you to search in a very finegrained way, where you can specify exactly the person, subject, or message you’re looking for. More important, perhaps, you can also specify where to look using the Browse button. Unlike instant search, Find isn’t limited to the current folder view. You can also search your Windows Mail-based e-mail from the Start Menu’s search box.

Contacts Integration Where Outlook Express integrated with the Windows Address Article used in previous Windows versions, Windows Mail naturally integrates with the new Contacts store found in Windows Vista. We examine Contacts at the end of this article, but you can access Contacts from within Windows Mail through the aforementioned toolbar button, from the Tools menu, or by tapping Ctrl+Shift+C.

Automatic Spell Checking Unlike its predecessor, Windows Mail includes built-in automatic spell checking. To get this functionality in Outlook Express, you would have had to have installed Microsoft Word or any other part of the Microsoft Office suite. That said, the Windows Mail spell checker is a bit less functional than the one included with Word or Office: It cannot suggest replacements for misspelled words.

No More Identities Because Outlook Express was first designed to work with Windows 95 and subsequent consumer Windows products that had no real concept of individual user accounts, it used a construct called identities to allow users to create two or more pseudo-user accounts within the application. You could use identities in various ways. First, multiple users accessing Outlook Express from the same PC could maintain separate identities so that their e-mail accounts wouldn’t comingle. Second, individual users could set up multiple identities within Outlook Express in order to separate them. Identities no longer exist in Windows Mail. Now, users are expected to each maintain their own user account, each of which has a separate desktop, configuration settings, and so forth. If you upgrade an older computer to Windows Vista and were using Outlook Express with multiple identities, Windows Mail will run a wizard the first time it’s launched that lets you import identities into your user account. You can run this wizard on each account to ensure that the correct identities are matched to the correct user accounts in Vista.

New Mail Storage

Windows Mail, finally, uses an entirely new storage engine for e-mail that is more reliable and offers better performance than that used by Outlook Express. Anyone who’s been frustrated by antiquated storage issues of Outlook Express - seen most frequently when the application slows to a crawl when accessing large e-mail folders or newsgroups - will appreciate this change. On a related note, it’s now much easier to move the Windows Mail storage around because Windows Mail keeps everything - its e-mail and newsgroup folders, account information, and settings - in a single, easily accessible folder. Now, when you move the Windows Mail storage folder, everything else moves with it. This also makes Windows Mail much easier to back up. All of the Windows Mail data files can now be found in

C:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail by default. To back this up, simply copy this folder to a different location, like a rewriteable optical disk or removable hard drive. If you are backing up Windows Mail, back up your contacts as well. Contacts are stored in

C:\Users\[User Name]\Contacts by default. Registry buffs should know that Windows Mail’s Registry structure has changed as well. So if you’ve been using a favorite set of Registry scripts for Outlook Express, beware: They won’t work anymore in Windows Mail.

Security Features In keeping with the push for better desktop security in Windows Vista, Windows Mail picks up a couple of useful features that make it marginally safer than Outlook Express. (Note: You’re still better off using a full-featured mail client like Microsoft Outlook.) The first is a new Junk Mail filter, which is very similar to the Junk Mail filter found in Microsoft Outlook. You can access Junk Mail options from the Junk E-mail Options dialog, shown in article 18-3. Here, you can choose a level of automatic junk e-mail protection and set up Safe Senders, Safe Recipients, and Blocked Senders lists. There’s also an International tab for automatically blocking mail written in languages you don’t understand and e-mail from certain top-level domain names. If you’re familiar with Junk e-mail protection in Microsoft Outlook, you’ll be right at home here. If you do want to move the Windows Mail storage folder to a new location, it’s actually quite simple.

1. Navigate to Tools -> Options -> Advanced, and then click the Maintenance button.

2. Click the Store Folder button.

3. In the Store Folder dialog box, click the Change button and browse to the new location. Unlike with Outlook Express, the new Browse For Folder dialog box in Windows Vista enables you to create a new folder as well, so you don’t have to do that ahead of time as you did previously. Windows Mail moves all of your data to the new location automatically after you shut down the application. There’s one major exception. Junk e-mail protection works only for POP3 accounts, and not IMAP accounts. While IMAP email is typically superior to POP3, you wouldn’t know it by running Windows Mail. In addition to not providing junk e-mail protection to IMAP accounts, Windows Mail also does not support message rules with IMAP. In addition to its Junk Mail feature, Windows Mail also includes a Phishing Filter, which can prevent certain e-mail–based scams. Here’s how a phishing (pronounced like fishing) attack works. A malicious user sends out junk e-mail to random recipients that appears to come from a bank, online retailer or auction site, or other trusted institution with which you might do business. These e-mails, which are often written in such a way to suggest that there might be something wrong with an account you may have, try to get you to click embedded links and visit malicious web sites. These web sites are also masquerading as legitimate locations. They try to get you to provide valid logon information that you might use at the actual institution and then use this information for identity theft. Each year, millions of people fall victim to phishing scams. To help prevent this, Microsoft has added antiphishing technology to both Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Mail in Windows Vista. In Windows Mail, the Phishing Filter is on by default. You can view two Phishing Filter options from the Phishing tab of the Junk E-Mail Options dialog box if you’re curious, but our advice here is simple. Don’t turn this feature off under any circumstances.

Advanced Windows Mail Options Amazingly, if you navigate through the Windows Mail menu structure and Options dialog box, you’ll discover that very little has changed since Outlook Express 6 (the version that shipped with Windows XP). There is one major addition to the Windows Mail Options dialog box, however: A new Advanced tab replaces the Maintenance tab that appeared in previous versions. On this tab, shown in article 18-4, you can access various advanced options, as you’d expect, but you can also access the contents of the old Maintenance tab through a new Maintenance button. Clicking that button brings up a new dialog box that is identical to the old Maintenance tab.

Managing Contacts with Windows Vista Unlike Windows Mail, the system for managing contacts has changed dramatically in Windows Vista. In previous Windows versions, Microsoft utilized an application called Windows Address Article (commonly referred to as WAB) to handle contacts. WAB was a simple application, and it integrated nicely with Outlook Express, predecessor of Windows Mail. But few other applications took advantage of WAB. So in Windows Vista, a new Windows Contacts mechanism has been architected to take advantage of new technologies that developers are more likely to embrace. Indeed, Microsoft expects Windows Contacts to eventually replace all other personal contact storage systems used in Windows, Microsoft or otherwise. Under the covers, Windows Contacts utilizes a well-respected and widely used open technology called XML (eXtensible Markup Language). XML is also used in other places within Windows Vista. For example, the system’s integrated support for RSS utilizes XML technology. To the user, Windows Contacts are typically accessed through the new Contacts special shell folder called the Contacts Explorer, which is specially formatted for managing contacts. You can access this folder through the Start Menu as Windows Contacts. The Contacts Explorer is shown in article 18-5. If you upgraded to Windows Vista from a previous Windows version (or ran the Windows Easy Transfer utility) and were using WAB for contacts, you should see all of your contacts in the new Contacts folder. Otherwise, Contacts will be empty.

Adding a New Contact To add a new contact to Windows Contacts, simply click the New Contact toolbar button. This brings up a blank Contact Properties window, 18-6, which is roughly analogous to a similar window in the old WAB application. One feature that’s new this time around is that you can add a picture to each contact. To do so, click the picture well in the upper right of the Contact Properties window and then select Change picture from the drop-down menu. You can then browse to the picture you want. Pictures are a nice way to customize your contacts. In article 18-7, you can see how a few photos really spice things up, especially if you play with the Contacts Explorer’s view styles.

Viewing and Editing Contacts By default, the Reading pane is enabled in the Contacts Explorer, a rarity in the Windows Vista shell. So as you select individual contacts, you can preview much of their information directly in the Reading pane, without having to open each one in a separate window. If the Reading pane is not enabled, you can enable it by clicking the Organize button in the Contacts toolbar and selecting Layout and then Reading pane. To edit a contact, simply double-click it. This displays the Contact Properties window described in the previous section.

Organizing Contacts If you have enough contacts, you might want to organize them into logical collections called Contact Groups. To do this, you must first create a Group. For example, you may want to place your family members in a group called Family. Here’s how you do it:

1. Make sure the Contacts Explorer is open and no contacts are selected.

2. Click the New Contact Group button in the Contact Explorer toolbar. This brings up the Contact Group Properties dialog box shown in article 18-8.

3. Pick the contacts you want to add to the group by pressing the Select Members button, or simply press OK to create the group and then drag the appropriate contacts into the group.

4. To view the contents of a group, double-click it. The Contact Group Properties dialog box now displays whatever contacts happen to be part of that group. Any contact can be a member of one or more Contact Groups. And if you delete a Contact Group, you won’t delete the contacts it contains. Contact Groups can be accessed as a group in applications that utilize Windows Contacts, like Windows Mail. For example, if you created a Contact Group called Family, you could address an e-mail to Family, and it would be sent to every contact in that group.