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To use Outlook as an email program, you need to configure it to work with one or more email accounts. The best option for that is to use a free Google Gmail account. In case you haven't encountered it yet, Gmail is a Web-based email service available through Google. If you have a Gmail account (or get one, which only takes a few minutes), you can use it to connect Gmail and Outlook. Once you have that connection set up properly, people can email you at your Gmail address, and you can read it in Outlook. Going the other way, you can use Outlook to reply to your Gmail messages, or compose new messages that get sent using the Gmail account.

Why use Gmail? There are certainly lots of other free email accounts out there, like Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail. But connecting them to Outlook for free is another story. Some of the email accounts you can get for free are set up so you can view them using your Web browser, but they don't allow you to connect to them with programs like Outlook. Others (Yahoo! Mail & Hotmail, for example) allow you to connect to them with Outlook, but they charge you a fee for the privilege. With those services, the free versions of the email account need to be upgraded to a paying version to enable the connection. There's only a small number of 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. It 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. Google's Gmail is clearly the free email service you want to use to connect to Outlook.

The steps required to make 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. If you want to try setting up a Gmail account & connecting it to Outlook 2007, the instructions are posted here.

About the Author:

Configuring Gmail and Outlook to work together is just one of the topics covered in the first lesson of the 6-week online course, Introduction to Outlook 2007. If strengthening your skills with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 makes sense to you in these uncertain economic times, and you like the idea of a structured class with the ability to interact with your instructor, I suggest you visit http://IntroToOutlook2007.info to learn more.