How to see more information about e-mails before opening them

Knowing more about an e-mail before you decide whether to open it is useful even if you have minimised the privacy and safety threats by turning on the "View as Plain Text only" feature in MSIE v6.

To make Outlook show more information in the InBox (note that all mouse clicks are single clicks using the left button unless specified otherwise):

1. Open Outlook.
2. Click on "View"
3. then click on "Columns..." to get the window you see to right:
4. Select all the columns (by clicking in very small boxes) because you can decide afterwards which to see and how wide they are to appear visually in the InBox itself.
5. Click on OK.
6. You can now re-size the columns by holding down the mouse button when on the small bar at the right hand side of each column heading - see image below, note the cursor changes shape when you are hovering over the bars between columns. For now, make the Subject and any other very wide columns smaller until you can see all of them at once. This makes it easier to decide what to move where.
   

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7. Now you can decide which order best suits the way that you work but bear in mind that you may only be able to fit 60% of the columns into the visible part of your InBox. To move a column you hold down your mouse button while on the column heading text and then drag it over the right or left headings to suit you
8. Now re-size the columns (as described in 6 above) - to suit your normal use of your InBox
9. Two other learning points that may be useful in Spam management if you can take a little more!:
   • To sort any of your folders by one of the columns then double-click on the heading (as shown above). If the direction (ascending vs descending) is wrong then repeat the action.
   • The easiest way to deal with Spam in a folder is to sort it by whatever you find most useful. Then move any non-Spam entries into other folders by dragging them there. When all-done in a folder and you want to delete them all: (1) use the Ctrl and then A keys concurrently to select them all and then (2) use the Shift and then Delete keys concurrently to permanently delete them

Note that unless you have the "View all mail as plain text" option of MSIE v6 enabled it is strongly recommended that you disable the "Preview pane" (see Outlook Preview pane for instructions) which may be showing the first few lines of e-mails just below your InBox list.

I hope that has been useful. Any Comments, suggestions or corrections to: Contact us please. This would be especially useful if the software environment you have is different to mine and the headinds, text or prompts are different. Windows XP Remote Assistance now provides in-work training and assistance, as and when needed to more than a dozen customers

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