Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 23: Using StarOffice Email and Newsgroup Features

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Hour 23
Using StarOffice Email and Newsgroup Features

In this hour you'll learn how to use other Internet-aware features of StarOffice. Specifically, you'll learn how to configure your email system within StarOffice to send and receive email, and how to read and post to Internet newsgroups.

The features described in this hour go beyond working with Web documents, as described in the previous hour. Using email and reading newsgroups are two other important sources of information sharing on the Internet. StarOffice provides access to these resources for anyone with an Internet connection. This hour describes how to use those features.

Configuring Email Accounts


Before you can send and receive email in StarOffice, you must configure the incoming and outgoing email accounts so that your email can be located and routed properly.

The mailboxes that you set up in this section define specific email accounts. You can create multiple inboxes for different accounts you have, as well as multiple outboxes to hold messages sent through those accounts. Each of these accounts can use any of several protocols, such as POP3, VIM, or IMAP. To use an account, you must define the server on which the account resides.

Don't confuse these accounts with the default SMTP servers for outgoing and incoming mail that you define in the Internet Options dialog box (opened from the Tools menu). For example, you can have a separate POP3 account through an ISP, in addition to the email arriving on your local SMTP mail server.

Tip - Email accounts can use any of several formats, including POP3 and IMAP. Check with your ISP or system administrator to see which protocol you need to use to retrieve email.


Tip - As you work with email accounts in StarOffice, you'll see VIM as an option in several places. VIM is a protocol used by cc:Mail and Lotus Notes. This option isn't discussed in this book, however.

Setting up a POP3 Account

Before you can work with your email, you must create both an incoming (POP3 or IMAP account) and an outgoing mail account. These two accounts can refer to the same server or to different servers, but StarOffice requires both.

To set up a POP3 incoming email account, follow these steps (the steps to create an IMAP account are almost identical; just choose IMAP instead of POP3 on the menu):

1. Make the Explorer visible by clicking the Hide/Show icon or selecting Explorer in the View menu.

2. Right click on the word Explorer, the top icon in the Explorer window. A pop-up menu appears.

3. From the pop-up menu, select New, and then POP3 Account. The Properties of POP3 Account dialog box appears (see Figure 23.1).

Figure 23.1
The Properties of POP3 Account dialog box enables you to define an email account.

4. On the Receive tab, enter the server name, username, and password to be used to retrieve email from your POP email account.

For example, if you have a PPP connection to the Internet and your email address is nwells@ix.netcom.com (NetCom is a popular nationwide ISP), your POP3 server is popd.ix.netcom.com. The name varies, however, depending on the ISP.

5. On the General tab of the Properties of POP3 Account dialog box, enter a name for the incoming email account. This might be something such as Netcom Email or Incoming mail.

The name that you enter in the General tab is the name you'll select to read your email after setting up the email accounts.

6. Next, choose the Send tab in the Properties of POP3 Account dialog box.

7. In the Private box, choose SMTP as the Default Protocol.

8. Select the User-defined Settings radio button.

9. Choose the User Defined Settings button. The Properties of Send Protocols dialog box appears (see Figure 23.2).

Figure 23.2
The Properties of Send Protocols dialog box enables you to define how email messages are sent from this POP3 account.

10. Enter the mail server for outgoing email messages from your Linux computer. (This might be the same server name as for the incoming POP3 email in the Receive tab mentioned previously.)

11. Enter the username and password of the account on the server listed here, if required.

12. Choose OK to close the Properties of Send Protocols dialog box.

Tip - You can explore the Rules, View, and Contents tabs if you want. They provide options for managing your email account. These include filtering, marking and updating your mailbox, and can be very helpful tools if you receive a lot of email.


13. Choose OK to close the Properties of POP3 Account dialog box.

After you finish defining a POP3 Account, StarOffice checks to see if you have an outbox already set up. If you don't, a message prompts you to create one, as described in the next section.

The email account icon for your POP3 Account as it appears in the Explorer is shown in Figure 23.3.

Figure 23.3
An email account icon in the Explorer indicates that StarOffice has been configured to use your Internet email account.

After you've created an email account, you can drag the POP3 Account icon to a folder in the Explorer, if you want to.

With an email account icon in the Explorer, you can begin using email immediately by clicking on that icon. An email window appears with your messages ready to read. The use of this window is covered later in this hour.

Setting up a Separate Email Outbox

If you need to specify an outgoing email account that is different from the incoming email account, you can create a separate Outbox for sending email. For example, you might have a sendmail mail server running on your Linux computer, so you can use your own hostname as the outgoing SMTP email server.

To create a new Outbox, follow these steps:

1. Make the Explorer visible by clicking the Hide/Show icon or selecting Explorer in the View menu.

2. Right click on the word Explorer, the top icon in the Explorer window. A pop-up menu appears.

3. From the pop-up menu, select New, and then Outbox. The Properties of Outbox dialog box appears (see Figure 23.4).

Figure 23.4
The Properties of Outbox dialog box enables you to define a separate outgoing email account.

4. On the SMTP tab, enter the server name, username, and password to be used for sending email from your computer.

For example, if you have a PPP connection to the Internet and sendmail running on your Linux computer, the server might be localhost or your machine's hostname. Or, the server might be something such as popd.ix.netcom.com if you're using a popular ISP account for outgoing email.

5. On the General tab of the Properties of Outbox dialog box, enter a name for the outgoing email account. This might be something such as local account or ISP Outgoing mail.

Activating Your Email Settings

After you have defined an email account in the Explorer, you have to tell StarOffice to use it because you can have multiple email accounts set up in the Explorer, each using a different server, username, email filters, and so forth.

As part of the Internet options, you define which server to use for incoming and outgoing email messages. StarOffice then uses that server to send out messages. This enables you to use the New Mail icon on the Desktop or Start menu to quickly send a new email message.

To define an email server, follow these steps:

1. Choose Options from the Tools menu, and then choose Internet from the Options submenu. The Internet Options dialog box appears.

2. Choose the Mail/News tab (see Figure 23.5).

Figure 23.5
In the Mail/News tab of the Internet Options dialog box, you define the servers to be used for email.

3. Enter a server name in the Outgoing mail field.

4. Enter a server name in the Incoming mail field. (This might be the same server as the Outgoing mail field.)

5. Enter the User ID and Password for the servers that you entered.

Tip - You'll also need to define an NNTP protocol News server before you can use Internet newsgroups. This is described later in this hour, but you can enter the NNTP server name immediately in this dialog box.


Finally, you must have your personal email address entered in the StarOffice configuration before you can create email messages. Because an email address is required as part of the StarOffice installation process, you have probably done this already.

You can review your email address by choosing Options under the Tools menu, selecting General, and viewing the User Data tab.

Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 23: Using StarOffice Email and Newsgroup Features

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