Outlook Email Problems

One of my newsletter subscribers wrote me about problems with accessing his emails using Outlook:

WOULD YOU PLEASE CHANGE MY E-MAIL ADDRESS THAT YOU CURRENTLY HAVE: [address removed]--- to -- [address removed]. I AM USING MICROSOFT OUTLOOK AS MY E-MAIL, BUT RECENTLY (2-3WKS) I AM UNABLE TO OPEN MY MESSAGES, (well, it won't allow me to download my messages). THANK-YOU FOR YOU COOPERATION WITH THIS MATTER. HOW DO I CHANGE TO MAKE YAHOO MY PRIMARY E-MAIL SERVER?
I had a couple answers for him. First, the one he really didn't want. If you really want to change addresses, I need YOU to make the change in order for me to comply with my advertisers requirements. Just subscribe the new address and unsubscribe the old address. You can unsubscribe the old address by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the end of one of the older emails.

I saw that he was using Cox.net as your ISP. In that case, he can access his email using his web browser (I.E. Firefox, Opera, etc.) via Cox's webmail at http://webmail.cox.net . Many Internet Service Providers offer email access via your web browser, often in the same format -- http://webmail._____.___.

Regarding changing Yahoo to be your primary email server: I'm not sure exactly what you mean.
1) I don't think that Yahoo will allow you to send outbound from Outlook through Yahoo's SMTP server. It certainly will not if you just have one of the free Yahoo email accounts.
2) If you have the PAID upgrade on Yahoo Mail, you can set up your email program (Outlook) to use Yahoo as your POP3 (inbound to you) mail server. But, this option has not been available for free Yahoo mail accounts for several years.
3) Yahoo Mail has excellent help screens on how to configure your email program to use Yahoo (if you have the paid Yahoo Mail service -- they've got instructions for several different email programs, including Outlook.

However, at the more basic level, Outlook should not be preventing you from downloading emails. If it is blocking access to links, there is a known issue with Outlook 2003 with Office 2003 Service Pack 2, where it blocks links in emails. You can fix this.

Another thought, you might want to compress/compact the Outlook email files -- see my article at: Deleting an Email Completely

Basically, when you delete an email, it really isn't deleted -- it is still in the huge Outlook data file. When you compact the file, that actually gets rid of all the deleted emails.

If Outlook really is misbehaving and not allowing you to download your emails, check your settings first. Make sure that you have it set for the right POP3 and SMTP servers. Tell it to forget your password, and then re-enter your password.

Ultimately, your fix might be to back up your Outlook emails and address book and then uninstalling, rebooting and reinstalling Outlook.

Or, switch to Eudora, the email program I use.