I'm using Windows 2000 and have recently started using a third party
Exchange host (mailstreet), so I now receive mail from both my
academic account and my business account in one place. However, when I
try to to email from the academic account, it only allows my corporate
address in the "from" field, which is not acceptable. Can someone tell
me how to configure my outlook client so I can easy swap to another
address. Thanks! (Also, any other advice about how to streamline and
organize the massive amount of mail I get at one address now--e.g.
filtering spam, using rules and such--would be appreciated.)

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Request for Question Clarification by cerebrate-ga on 03 Apr 2003 14:03 PST

Dear auntie-ga,

Could you clarify whether mail for both accounts is delivered to the
same Exchange mailbox, or whether your second account is collected via
POP3/IMAP by Outlook and placed into the mailbox?

Thanks,

cerebrate-ga

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Clarification of Question by auntie-ga on 03 Apr 2003 14:59 PST

Hi there. Not sure if this answers your question, but, mail from both
accounts is being sent to the same Exchange mailbox. One account is
forwarded from Jaguar PC, our virtual host, and the other is a POP
account from the university. Thanks.

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Request for Question Clarification by cerebrate-ga on 03 Apr 2003 15:16 PST

Dear auntie-ga,

Thanks for your clarification. What I'm really getting at is how the
POP account is handled - it could be done directly by Mailstreet, or
your Outlook could be configured to collect the POP mail and push it
up to your Mailstreet account.

If it's the latter, you should have two accounts listed in Outlook
(under "Tools/E-mail Accounts..." in Outlook 2002). Could you have a
look and let me know if anything's listed there apart from the
Microsoft Exchange Server entry for Mailstreet?

Thanks,

cerebrate-ga

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Clarification of Question by auntie-ga on 03 Apr 2003 15:36 PST

Hi there. The mail is coming from Mailstreet (forwarded from the
virtual host, and the mx record points to Mailstreet.) I told them I
was also getting my university mail in the same place (my inbox) and
asked they could set up another "from" address so I can "select
sender" in Outlook, but I don't think they can do it. And what you
described re: tools/email accounts, etc. is doable in Outlook Express,
but not Exchange. The thing that's really driving me nut is that I
keep getting the email notification alarm, but can't see anything
coming in! Thanks for any help with this.

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Request for Question Clarification by cerebrate-ga on 04 Apr 2003 01:47 PST

Dear auntie-ga,

Which version of Outlook are you using? I noted that Mailstreet
provide Outlook 2002 (XP) to their customers, in which you can find
your account details under "Tools"/"E-mail accounts..." as I
described. In previous versions of Outlook, the same information
should be under "Tools"/"Services...".

Just to double-check that I understand what you've said, I understand
that your business account mail is forwarded on to Mailstreet. What I
need to know is whether your academic account mail is also forwarded
to Mailstreet - via, say, a .forward file in your academic account, or
by forwarding it to your business account - or whether you're
collecting it via POP in Outlook and Outlook is storing it in your
Mailstreet inbox. (The potential solution differs in each case, you
see.)

Thanks,

cerebrate-ga

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Clarification of Question by auntie-ga on 04 Apr 2003 08:29 PST

Hi there. Yes, I am collecting my academic mail via POP in Outlook and
it is then stored it in my Mailstreet inbox. Thanks! Also, I already
had a version of Outlook, so simply made changes, did not re-install
the XP, as I thought they were referring to the operating system. I'll
go ahead and update, and maybe that will help us get close to a
solution. Thanks for all your work on this.

Dear auntie-ga,

No problem, all in a day's work!

Here's the trick. It's slightly roundabout, but does work. You see, in
Outlook, changing the "From:" field in a message is only really
meaningful for Exchange accounts, and then it only lets you change the
"From:" address to that of other Exchange mailboxes to which you have
"Send As" permission - the idea being that this is used in situations
such as the secretary who has to answer e-mails for their manager,
people who need to send mail "as" a mailing list, and so forth.

However, it is possible to do it in Outlook in your situation by using
a slightly different method. In Outlook 2002, one particular e-mail
account configured in Outlook is set as the default - the address that
appears in your "From:" field is the one belonging to that account.
You can change the "From:" address for all subsequent messages by
changing this default under "Tools"/"E-mail accounts...", or you can
change it for individual messages by changing the account you use when
you send a message - the "Accounts" drop-down on the toolbar when
you're composing a message to send lets you do this.

(This does require you to be able to send mail through your academic
account as well as receive it - i.e., you need to have an SMTP server
configured for it.)

Now to the second half of your question, filtering and organising your
mail. Well, to begin with, I should mention Outlook's own built in
spam-filtering, found through "Tools"/"Organize", which works
reasonably well. I would say that it's a good idea with this and other
filters to have them move the mail to a "Junk E-mail" folder than you
can flip through occasionally, as it will occasionally catch useful
mail.

One simple rule that you might want to consider is one to sort your
mail into two different Mailstreet inboxes, depending on whether it
came from your business or academic account. You can do that with a
rule like the following, after creating an "Academic Inbox" folder:

(I'm going to list these sample rules in the same format as the text
in the Rules Wizard.)

  Apply this rule after the message arrives
  sent to [your academic address]
  move it to [Academic Inbox]

Do you receive a lot of mail from mailing lists? You can apply the
same principle to separating out list-mail from your real mail, either
by sorting on the address it's sent from:

  Apply this rule after the message arrives
  from [the mailing list address]
  move it to [Mailing List Mail Folder]

(One hint is that it's easiest to create these by right-clicking on a
message and selecting "Create Rule...", which will correctly fill in
most of the conditions for you.)

Or by sorting it by the token many mailing lists leave in the subject
header:

  Apply this rule after the message arrives
  with "[list]" in the subject
  move it to [Mailing List Mail Folder]

Returning to spam-filtering, I find that a lot of my spam comes from
domains such as .cn, .tw, .kr, and so forth. As it happens, I don't
know anyone in those domains who would be sending me non-spam mail, so
I use this same sent-from technique to junk all e-mail that arrives
from those domains.

  Apply this rule after the message arrives
  with ".cn" in the sender's address
  move it to [Junk E-mail]

These pretty much sum up the most frequent uses of Outlook rules.
Other useful rules and rules advice can be found at:

Rules Wizard and Assistants in Microsoft Outlook and Exchange
http://www.slipstick.com/rules/

I hope this helps. If this answer isn't quite what you're looking for,
though, please feel free to request a clarification.

cerebrate-ga

Search strategy:
Personal knowledge as Exchange/Outlook admin.

Google search: "Outlook rules" -
://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Outlook+rules

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Clarification of Answer by cerebrate-ga on 04 Apr 2003 14:33 PST

To clarify that, the mail settings for earlier versions of Outlook -
"Tools"/"Services" - also included the selection of which account
would handle outgoing mail, although in a somewhat different form.

They don't include the "Accounts" drop-down when you're composing a
message, though, so for convenience's sake you're still better off
upgrading to Outlook 2002.

Thanks,

cerebrate-ga

A belated thank you for excellent research! Great stuff!

I'm no techie, so maybe that's why I was unable to achieve this goal
in Outlook. However, when I had a similar need to use different
addresses in the "from" field.  I trawled through all of the Outlook
help files, but was unable to figure how to do this.  I ended up
ditching Outlook and installing Eudora, which allows you to set up
aliases with different addresses.  When you send a message, you select
the alias you want. I have set up filters so that some types of
messages, eg from various mailing lists, are automatically sent into
subfolders.  I then am able to work through these at my leisure,
without having them clag up my main inbox.