Web-based email providers such as Yahoo and Hotmail have many uses beyond the obvious. Among them is remote access to your messages from an email account, such as Outlook Express, enabling you to read emails bemoaning the latest British cold snap from the comfort of an internet cafe beside a tropical beach. Another less obvious advantage is to prevent spam cluttering your computer's inbox.
Step by step
1) Having set up a Hotmail or Yahoo email account, click on the Options link near the top of the main page. This leads to long list of options. On the new page, choose the link that with Hotmail says POP Mail Retrieval Settings, and with Yahoo Check Other (POP) Mail.
2) Hotmail now invites you to enter the details of your POP3 email account into a series of boxes. Yahoo does the same after forcing you to negotiate an additional hurdle of clicking a button labelled Add Mail Server. The details required are the same but each provider uses different terms for the same information.
For POP Server Name (Hotmail) or Mail Account Server (Yahoo) enter your POP3 name for incoming mail. This can be found by opening Outlook Express and clicking though Tools| Accounts|Properties|Server, looking for the entry in the Incoming Mail (POP3) box. For Freeserve accounts, it is pop.freeserve.net. Most ISPs use something similar.
3) Complete the Pop User Name (Hotmail) or Mail Account User Name (Yahoo) boxes by inserting your POP3 account name. This again can be checked by clicking through Tools|Accounts| Properties|Server and looking for the account name listed under Incoming Mail Server.
4) The next box asks for POP User Password or Mail Account Password. Here, enter your usual email password (do not make up a new one). The remaining boxes are already filled with default settings for Port Number and (with Hotmail) Server Time Out, which can be left as they are.
5) When you check your email at home, your desktop email client removes the messages from the remote server (your ISP) and deposits them in your inbox. If you still want to be able to access messages in this way after downloading them, ignore the next box, labelled Leave Mail on POP Server, which is already ticked.
However, if your POP3 account also carries its share of spam, you can prevent it reaching your desktop by unticking this option. Any valuable messages among the unsolicited dross that reaches your web-based account that you would prefer to have in your desktop inbox can be forwarded to your POP3 email address.
6) Keeping the tick in the subsequent box for Download New Messages Only (Hotmail) or Retrieve New Messages Only (Yahoo) prevents the same messages being repeatedly downloaded into your web-based account.
7) Finally, select your favourite from the choice of symbols that will indicate the presence of downloaded POP3 mail in your web-based inbox.
8) Having ensured that the information entered is correct, click on OK. To check that the set-up is working, send a test message to your POP3 account. After allowing time for it to arrive, click Pop Mail (in the right-hand column on Hotmail pages) or Check Other Mail (alongside the Go To Inbox option with Yahoo). Your POP3 message should appear in the inbox.
* By repeating the above steps, more POP3 email accounts can be accessed from web-based providers, up to four with Hotmail and three with Yahoo.
* If some of your POP3 email addresses are aliases, you need only enter the details of the original address to download from each alias account.
* Remote downloading of your work emails from a company network is possible using the same procedure but check with your system administrator as a network firewall may block access.
