The Folders pane (on the left), which lists such email "folders" as the Inbox, Outbox, and Sent Items. You see a separate folder for each of your email and newsgroup accounts, including Hotmail, IMAP-based email accounts, or news servers.

The Inbox holds mail you've received, and the Outbox holds mail you've written but haven't yet sent. Sent Items holds copies of messages you've sent Deleted Items holds mail you've deleted, as described later in this chapter. Finally, Drafts holds messages you've started but don't want to send just yet.

Message list. When you click a folder in the Folders pane, you see, in the upper-right quadrant of the window, a list of the messages inside.

Contacts pane. Underneath the Folders pane, you may see the Contacts pane. As with the Folders pane, you can hide it by clicking the X in its upper-right corner. It shows a list of contacts in your address book.

Preview pane. Below the message list, you can read the currently selected message's contents. This arrangement is an extremely useful way to quickly read messages; once you've highlighted a message in the message list, you can scan your mail just by pressing the down-arrow key, watching the text of the messages flash by in the Preview pane.

Toolbar. Above all of these panes is the toolbar, whose buttons you can use for the most commonly performed tasks in Outlook Express.