How To Set Up An Email Account

What you need to know about, and how to set up, a new email account. Every time you change broadband to a new supplier you usually receive a new email account.

Plenty of customers we see in our computer repair business have problems setting this up – some are even put off changing their broadband supplier because they think it will be too difficult to set up the new email. This does not have to be the case – we will walk you through the steps.

First, there are two options to use an email account – Webmail and via an email program. See our article here to decide which is best for you.

Webmail – means that you access your email and contacts/address book on a website – you do not actually download any email onto your own computer so there is no set up required.

To use webmail, open a web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer/Firefox) and go to the webmail site of your broadband/email provider – they should have told you the address of the website. You just need to log in to the webmail section to access your email – to log in, use the username (often all or part of your email address) and password that your email provider will have given to you.

Email Programs – Different email programs use different menu systems to add a new email account but the basic information you need to know is the same for all of them:

  • Username (often all or part of your email address) – your email provider will have given this to you.
  • Password – your email provider will have given this to you.
  • POP3 server name and SMTP server name – your email provider may have given these to you. If not, you should be able to find them on your email provider’s website e.g. under a Help/Email section or just contact your provider to ask.

Put simply, these server names are just the names of the computers at the email provider that handle your email when you send or receive it – POP3 is their computer that you receive email from and SMTP is their computer that you send email to. Sometimes both will have the same name (if both services are hosted on the same computer).

  • Secure Password Authentication (SPA) required or not required – for most email providers this will be ‘NO/not required’ (but check the Help/Email section of your provider’s website to make sure).
  • Specific (non-standard) SMTP and POP3 port numbers – for most providers these are not required as the default standard port numbers are used in the background without you needing to do add/change anything (but if your new email account does not work, check the Help/Email section of your provider’s website to make sure).

Armed with this information you can now configure your new email account.

How To Configure An Email Account

There are many free email programs like Outlook Express (XP), Windows Mail (Vista), Thunderbird and Windows Live Mail (the latter 2 can be used on any XP, Vista or Windows 7 computer) and there are commercial email programs like MS Outlook which are typically used by businesses.

We are not going to reinvent the wheel by illustrating the exact menu system for each and every email program as they all have different ways to add a new email account and this article would become too long to digest.

Instead, we have provided links below to the best illustrated guides on how to set up a new email account in each of the most popular email programs specifically – as long as you have all the information we listed above, you should have no problems following the relevant guide to set up your new email account.

Outlook Express (XP) – Microsoft guide here.

Windows Mail (Vista) – Vista Support guide here.

Windows Live Mail – Web Developers Notes guide here.

Thunderbird – Ghacks guide here.

MS Outlook (all versions including 2003/07/10) – Microsoft guide here.