March 17 2009
Introduction to Outlook 2007 – Getting an Email Account
Tagged Under : gmail, gmail outlook, introduction to outlook 2007, outlook 2007, outlook training, web-based email
If you want to use Outlook 2007 as an email program, and you’re not connected to a corporate Microsoft Exchange server, you’ll need to connect Outlook to a Web-based email account. Lots of big companies, like Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google offer free web-based email accounts, as do hundreds of smaller companies. But not all of them are suitable for use with Outlook. Let me save you a lot of research. The top choice for most people is to connect Outlook to a free Gmail account from Google. Once you have a Gmail account, it only takes moments to configure the Gmail Outlook connection. This allows you to use Outlook to read messages sent to your Gmail account. It also allows you to send messages from Outlook using your Gmail account.
Why use Gmail? There are certainly lots of other free email accounts out there, for example Yahoo! Mail & Hotmail. But connecting them to Outlook for free is the rub. Some Web-based email accounts are set up so you can view them using your Web browser, but they’re set up to prevent you from connecting to them with programs like Outlook. Other email accounts (Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, for example) allow you to connect them to Outlook, but they charge you a fee for the privilege. Their free versions won’t help you at all. There aren’t that many Web-based email accounts that allow you to connect Outlook for free. Google’s Gmail is the biggest and best-known of this elite group.
With Gmail, you get a massive amount of space (measured in Gb) of mail storage right on Google’s servers. Gmail also provides powerful search capabilities when you search your mail through the web interface (basically doing a Google search on your own email). Google supports the Gmail service with advertising, but you only see the ads when you view your Gmail account using your Web browser, not when you use Outlook. This is definitely the free email service of choice for connecting to Outlook.
The directions for making the Gmail Outlook connection are moderately difficult, but most people can make the connection on their own especially if they have access to someone more experienced should they get stuck. The instructions are posted here if you want to try it yourself.
Configuring Gmail and Outlook to work together is just one of the topics covered in Lesson 1 of the 6-week online course, Introduction to Outlook 2007. If strengthening your skills with Microsoft Outlook 2007 makes sense to you in these uncertain economic times, I suggest you visit http://IntroToOutlook2007.info to learn more.

