Using Multiple Accounts

Although many people still have only one e-mail account, it’s becoming much more common to have several. For example, you might have an e-mail account for work, a personal POP3 account with your ISP, and a Hotmail account. Although versions of Microsoft Outlook prior to Outlook 2002 sometimes made it difficult to use multiple accounts, Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 accommodate multiple accounts with ease, all in the same profile, which means that you don’t need to switch profiles as you use different accounts.

Setting up for multiple accounts is easy—just add the accounts, as needed, to your profile. However, working with multiple accounts in a single profile requires a few considerations, as explained here.

Sending Messages Using a Specific Account

When you send a message, Outlook 2007 will use the default account unless you choose a different one before sending the message, as shown in Figure 7-9. This can sometimes be a problem when you have multiple accounts in your profile. For example, you might want to send a personal message through your personal POP3 account, but if your Exchange Server account is designated as the default, your personal message will go through your office mail server. This might violate company policies or expose your personal messages to review by a system administrator. Additionally, the reply address comes from the account that Outlook 2007 uses to send the message, which means that replies will come back to that account. You might want to check your POP3 mail from home, for example, but you find that replies have been directed to your office account because the original messages were sent under that account.

Outlook 2007 uses one of your e-mail accounts as the default account for outgoing messages.

Figure 7-9. Outlook 2007 uses one of your e-mail accounts as the default account for outgoing messages.

Sending messages with a specific account is simple in Outlook 2007. When you compose the message, click Account in the message form, as shown in Figure 7-10, and then select the account you want Outlook 2007 to use to send the current message. Outlook 2007 then uses the reply address and other settings for the selected account for that message.

Select the account from which you want to send the message by using the Account button in the message form.

Figure 7-10. Select the account from which you want to send the message by using the Account button in the message form.

Separating Incoming Messages by Account

With the exception of mail for IMAP and HTTP accounts, Outlook 2007 delivers all mail to the default message store. (Outlook 2007 delivers IMAP and HTTP mail to the store associated with the respective accounts.) This can be a problem or an annoyance because all your e-mail could potentially wind up in the same Inbox, regardless of which account it came through. If you manage multiple accounts, it’s useful to keep the messages separate. For example, you might want to keep personal messages that come through your POP3 account separate from those that come to your Exchange Server account.

You can separate messages into specific folders or stores using message rules, which allow you to specify actions that Outlook 2007 should take for messages that meet specific criteria, including the account to which they were delivered. For a complete discussion of rules and automatic message processing, see Chapter 11.

Inside Out: Keep messages separate on a shared computer

If you share a computer with other users, you probably want to keep your messages separate from those of the other users. Although you could use the same logon account and create separate profiles or even use the same profile and set up message rules to separate the incoming messages, neither method is a very good solution. Instead, use different logon accounts on the computer, which keeps your Outlook 2007 profiles separate and therefore keeps your messages separate.

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