Setting Up a Newsgroup Account

As with your e-mail account, the Internet Connection Wizard in Outlook Express makes easy work of creating a newsgroup account by walking you through each step.

1.	Start Outlook Express, and on the Tools menu, click Accounts.
2.	Click the Add button, and then click News to open the Internet Connection Wizard as shown below. News option from the Add button
3.	On the Your Name page of the wizard, type your name as you want it to appear when you post messages to a newsgroup, and then click Next.
4.	On the Internet News E-mail Address page, type the e-mail address that you are subscribed to Cutweb with, and then click Next.
5.	On the Internet News Server Name page, type NEWS.GMANE.ORG, and then click Next. Internet News Server Name box
6.	Click Finish, and then click Close.
7.	When asked if you want to download newsgroups, click Yes. (Be patient. Depending on the speed of your Internet connection, this could take some time.)
8.	In the Newsgroup Subscriptions box, click Cancel for now. (You'll come back to this later.) You're ready to use your news account!

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Find Newsgroups of Interest

Unless you have nothing better to do than browse through thousands of newsgroups, your first task will be to pin down the ones that intrigue you. Get the flavour of a newsgroup by sampling messages there.

1.	When you're connected to the Internet, click the news server name in the Folders list as shown below. Outlook Express Folders Click Inbox to return to your e-mail
2.	At this point. Outlook Express might ask you a couple of questions: If you want to use Outlook Express to read newsgroups, click Yes. To see the list of newsgroups, click Yes.
3.	Type a word or phrase you want that would characterize the newsgroup you're looking for as shown below. Best thing to type is canals As you type, Outlook Express zeroes in on just the newsgroups that feature the word or phrase you typed— you will see both the general list and the committee list click on: gmane.org.recreation.canals
4.	Select a newsgroup that intrigues you as shown below.
5.	Click Go to (as shown). Search Newsgroup Subscriptions
6.	To explore the newsgroup further, scroll through the message list. Click the + sign to see the message that started the conversation (or thread) and all its replies as shown below.
7.	Click any message you want to read as shown. Newsgroup message list
8.	Repeat steps 3 through 7 until you've explored enough. If there's a newsgroup you want to return to, your next step would be to sign up for it as described below.

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Sign Up for a Newsgroup

The benefit of becoming a newsgroup regular is that you get easy access to it in the Folders List. (When you view a newsgroup without signing up for (or subscribing to) it, its name appears there until you close Outlook Express—then it disappears.) To subscribe, a click or two of the mouse does the trick.

1.	After you've found newsgroups of interest, right-click the name of the newsgroup as shown below.
2.	Click Subscribe in the list as shown. That's it. There's no further notice. Subscribe option from newsgroup right-click

To cancel your subscription to a newsgroup, right-click the newsgroup in the Folders list, and then click Unsubscribe.

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Reply to a Newsgroup Message

Replying to a newsgroup message is as familiar as responding to e-mail.

In the message list, double-click the message you want to reply to.

Depending on how you want to reply, do one of the following:

•	Click the Reply Group button to send your message to the whole newsgroup—that's anyone on Planet Earth who has access to it.
•	Click the Reply button for a private response to the author of the message.
•	Click the Forward button to send the message to someone whose name is in your address book.

Type your message, and click the Send button when you're finished.

1	Excerpted from Faster Smarter Internet by Kathy Ivens

DONT FORGET TO SEND AN EMAIL MESSAGE TO CANALS-LIST-NOMAIL@YAHOOGROUPS.COM TO TURN OFF YOUR MAIL DELIVERY OTHERWISE YOU WILL GET THE MESSAGES TWICE