The biggest issue facing today’s society is data security. This is mainly because our information is available to everyone, and it is important that we select an email host that can provide the security and services that we require.
In this chapter, we will discuss what you need to look for in a host and what Outlook provides for you. Then, we will discuss setting up your domain name, the best practices for selecting it, and how to connect it to your email ID within Outlook.
In this chapter, we are going to discuss the following topics:
Knowing the different email platforms that are available to you and how to set them up in Outlook is an important topic to address, and you will gain that insight in this chapter. You can set up one account or multiple accounts using the automatic and manual settings provided. You can use these techniques on multiple devices as well, such as computers, tablets, and various mobile devices. Understanding these terms will make account installation simpler for you.
Reading email is the first morning activity for many people and has increasingly become an important method of business communication. Email is fast, inexpensive, easily accessible, and has become an efficient and effective way to communicate.
There are several reasons why a person would want to have multiple email accounts. To separate your online presence, I would encourage you to set up several email accounts according to the activities that you encounter in your sending and receiving of emails. Some of these categories can be the following:
This list could go on and on for every individual person. Before you jump in and start creating these various accounts, I would recommend taking inventory of the emails you currently receive and then looking at the current activity that you have in each of your accounts.
The main purpose of creating multiple email accounts is to streamline the various types of communications you have consistently. It can get very overwhelming to keep up with incoming emails and reply to them in a timely manner. Having multiple email accounts can help you to stay ahead of this task or, as I like to refer to it, stay ahead of the game. In Chapter 16, Managing Your Day System, I will provide you with some ways to manage your accounts.
Email is crucial to businesses in today’s fast-paced environment. No matter how much you may want to get away from this, it is here to stay, which makes choosing a host very important. The email host that you select will handle the technical details of day-to-day operations, such as allowing you to send emails from your own domain, spam filtering, phishing scams, storing files, or it may provide a whole suite of tools, such as, in the case of Outlook, calendars, contact management, and to-do lists.
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A simple way of defining an email host would be to say that email hosting is a service where a hosting provider, such as Microsoft, Yahoo, or Gmail, rents out email servers to its users to allow them to send and receive emails over networks.
There are three main ways to host your email:
Most businesses are steering away from running in-house email servers due to the lower costs associated with third-party hosting. Third-party hosting such as Outlook and Microsoft 365 now can manage the large number of accounts needed in large corporations and schools while still offering the latest security protocols, not to mention the simplicity of connectivity and distribution to end users.
Here are the questions to ask when looking for an email host:
Knowing the answers to the previous questions will help you feel confident that if something goes wrong, you can get help quickly from the host provider.
Don’t confuse an email host with an email service provider (ESP). As indicated, the email host is what allows you to send and receive email across all networks. The ESP is a provider that allows users to send email campaigns to a list of email users/subscribers. As email marketing becomes more and more popular, more email service providers are entering the market. To date, Outlook does not provide those services.
A protocol in computer science is a set of procedures and rules for transmitting data between electronic devices, such as computers. Without a set of protocols or rules, the sending and receiving computers would not be able to communicate if they were transmitting data differently.
Protocols that run your emails through the host are typically grouped into three categories, Exchange, IMAP, and POP3. Before you can install a new email account on your computer, you must know which of these three platforms you intend to use. It’s also important to understand the differences between these platforms before choosing your desired method. The three protocols that we will discuss here, used for setting up an email account, will be POP3, IMAP/SMTP, and Exchange.
POP3 is used only for downloading emails from a server. POP stands for Post Office Protocol, and the number is the version. With POP3, you can choose to either delete the copy of the email on a server or retain it. The default is to delete the copy, which means the downloaded emails will only be on the device that you downloaded them to.
Once emails are downloaded, any changes made on the device, such as marking emails as read/unread and deletions, are not communicated back to a server. This means that each device that has the downloaded copy has its own standalone copy of those emails. This protocol does not work well in collaboration with others. The following figure illustrates the steps used in the retrieval process:
The advantages of POP3 are as follows:
We also have a few disadvantages with POP3:
IMAP stands for Internet Access Message Protocol, and it mainly deals with managing and retrieving email messages from the receiving server. IMAP works together with SMTP, which stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and is the standard for sending outgoing emails. Together, these two protocols receive the emails with IMAP and send the emails via SMTP.
When manually setting up an IMAP/SMTP account, you will need to provide imap.domain.com for the incoming server and smtp.domain.com for the outgoing server. The following figure illustrates the IMAP/SMTP relationship with the server:
This protocol is used when you are retrieving and sending email from multiple devices, such as a desktop at home or work, a laptop, a tablet, or a mobile phone. With IMAP/SMTP, all changes will be copied between all devices, so if you delete an email from your tablet, it will be deleted across all the other devices. An internet connection is required to access your emails using this method, and because the emails are retained on a server, limited space is required on all your devices.
A disadvantage to this protocol is that because emails are stored on a server, storage limitations can be an issue. Once your inbox is full, emails will get rejected.
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One important note is to not mix POP3 and IMAP.
Exchange is a Microsoft protocol and offers all the same functions as you would get in IMAP. It also has added features to synchronize tasks, contacts, and calendars and view them on multiple devices. If you rely heavily on collaboration among your coworkers and often work remotely, then you will benefit from using Exchange. There are no negative effects of using Exchange instead of IMAP.
The organization that provides you with a work or school email account is generally on a Microsoft Exchange server or on Microsoft 365, which uses the Microsoft Exchange server to provide you with an email account. Google also incorporates Exchange into their Gmail app for Android and with their Google calendars and meeting rooms. Large organizations can benefit from Exchange because it can support an extremely large number of users.
Setting up an email account can, at first, seem like an overwhelming event or task. It, however, does not have to be difficult, and Outlook has a wizard to walk you through the process step by step for most setups. If you find yourself switching between different platforms to read your emails, then you will find this to be a very efficient process.
Let us now understand how to setup the email account.
The next page will give you options for setting up different types of email. The options are as follows:
If you choose the first option, Office 365, Outlook will take a moment to automatically complete the process of adding the account. This is a big advantage of having a Microsoft 365 account. This will likely take a few moments to process, and you will see a We’re getting things ready message on the screen. Prior to this, you will also be prompted to enter a password for the account.
With this, you will have Outlook email installed on your devices.
There are times when you must manually set up an account because Outlook cannot detect the setting that you need for an automated setup. This would be the case if you are setting up an account outside of the Exchange network.
The steps to complete this manual setup are as follows:
Your email account will now be displayed in the navigation bar on the left side of the email window.
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Some apps, such as Microsoft 365, require a separate, one-time password to sign in. Go to the settings in your email program, such as Yahoo, to generate this password. Once it's generated, you will use that one-time password to sign in through the Account Settings password box, not the password to open the Yahoo email.
Changing your email settings is easy inside Outlook; just follow these steps to access these settings:
You have the option to send email from Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or other accounts. You will need to know your provider’s POP3, IMAP, and SMTP settings, as defined previously in this chapter. The following is a list of those settings for Microsoft’s providers:
*For providers not listed, you must reference your provider’s information on their website or contact them to have them provide this information to you.
Have you had an event or meeting occasionally missed because of email overload? Managing several email accounts can be overwhelming. If you learn how to manage your email, this won’t happen again.
Once you have added all your desired email accounts to Outlook, you can switch between them through the navigation pane on the left side of the Outlook window. This is a convenient way to scroll down and look at each email account in one location.
By setting up your individual email accounts and managing them in one location, you won’t have to switch back and forth between your multiple accounts. You won’t have to worry about forwarding your emails to another account or linking accounts together. You won’t have to find an app. With this method, you can easily manage them in one location inside Outlook.
What is a domain name? A domain name is like your digital street address. A domain, however, is a web address consisting of a website name and a domain name extension. The name is your choice if it is available and not registered to someone else. The extension is a few letters that identify the type of domain. The domain extension is like your zip code, and it gives a little more information about your website. Extensions used to be somewhat limited, but more and more extensions are now available.
Once you have purchased your own custom domain name from a domain name registrar, you can add it to Microsoft 365. You must have a Microsoft 365 subscription, which is not available in the trial version of Outlook. Once connected and verified, you will be able to have the domain accept email through your Microsoft 365 account. You can purchase your domain name through several providers by using https://www.godaddy.com/; the procedures to connect your accounts will be simplified through the Microsoft 365 interface.
Anyone can buy a domain name through a domain name registrar. However, you can’t buy just any domain – only names that are not registered by another person or business. Domain name registration is typically done on a yearly basis. However, you can prepay for up to 10 years if you want to guarantee that you will have a name for at least 10 years.
With over a billion websites registered to date, it’s important to find the right one for your business brand. The following are my recommendations for choosing a domain name:
The following are some examples of the top extensions:
Adding a custom domain to your Microsoft 365 account will not only give you email with your domain but also let your users sign into Microsoft 365 services such as Exchange Online, Office 365, SharePoint Online, and Skype, using a personalized email address that matches your domain.
When you initially sign up for your Microsoft 365 subscription, Microsoft assigns your account or tenant with a default domain name. It will be a name that you choose and will look like name.microsoft.com. If you are in business, you will most likely use your domain for this name.
To add a custom domain, sign in to your Microsoft 365 account and ensure that you are signed in as the administrator of the account because only they have permission to add a custom domain:
If you are using a GoDaddy.com domain name registrar, the next screen will automatically detect whether you will see the screen asking you to verify your domain with your host/registrar. If you are using GoDaddy, simply select that option, and it will prompt you to sign in to your GoDaddy account with a username and password. Click the Connect button to authorize Microsoft to enable the services. Microsoft can add the DNS records if your domain name was purchased from one of the following registrars:
If you are not using one of these registrars, you can continue by selecting the option you want to use to verify your domain. This step is necessary to ensure that you do own your domain. It is a security measure put in place to secure who is setting the domain up for sending and receiving email.
I am using a third party for this setup, so I am going to select Add a TXT record to the domain’s DNS records. Click on the Learn more about DNS record link to learn more about this option from Microsoft. Once you are done, click on Continue.
The information you need to have available is as follows:
The following figure demonstrates the steps necessary for this to happen:
These steps are as follows:
Once these steps are complete, you can click on Verify, and the records show as complete in Microsoft 365 portal. You can set up a user account for email and begin sending and receiving emails using the new domain email ID.
Note
Up to 5,000 domains can be added to one subscription of a Microsoft 365 business account. You cannot add a domain that you are already using in another cloud service.
Many people struggle with keeping their personal and business emails together. Reducing the places where you read messages is a benefit of using Outlook. In this chapter, we discussed the benefits of using multiple email accounts within Outlook. We discussed the difference between Exchange, POP3, and IMAP/STMP accounts. We then discussed the advantages of using a domain with your email account to make your business look more professional. Outlook makes all these tasks easy and helps organize your day and save you time.
In the next chapter, we will discuss how to manage all the emails that you receive throughout the day, and we will teach you different ways to organize your personal environment inside Outlook by setting your option preferences, using color to identify important emails quickly, using flags, categories, and Quick Steps. These are some of the must-know tools for incorporating best practices into your day-to-day routine using Outlook.