Using Outlook for reading newsgroups...

[Ben Fidge]

How do you use Outlook to read newsgroups? For some reason I can only read
them with Outlook Express.

Thanks

Ben

 

[Gordon]

How do you use Outlook to read newsgroups? For some reason I can only read
them with Outlook Express.

Thanks

Ben

That's correct. Outlook doesn't "do" newsgroups. OE does.

 

[Baxter Tocher]

-----Original Message-----

From: Ben Fidge [mailto:[email protected]]
Posted At: 23 September 2004 16:59
Posted To: microsoft.public.outlook
Conversation: Using Outlook for reading newsgroups...
Subject: Using Outlook for reading newsgroups...

How do you use Outlook to read newsgroups? For some reason I
can only read them with Outlook Express.

Ben, you would need to add some additional software to do this.
MAPILab's NNTP for Outlook works nicely:

http://www.mapilab.com/outlook/nntp/

A single user license costs US $24.00.

Regards

 

[Joshu Cohen]

You can only read newsgroups in Outlook Express, but you can add a newsgroup
link to the Outlook 'go' menu (in Office 2003 at least). Search the built
in help on 'newsgroups' and it will tell you how. It's a bit annoying...

 

[John C. Bunnell]

That's correct. Outlook doesn't "do" newsgroups. OE does.

Well, yes and no.

Outlook uses the OE newsreading engine to deal with newsgroups, but -- at
least in my installations of Outlook 2002 and 2000 before it -- it labels
the engine as if it were a part of Outlook itself (so that one sees
"Microsoft Outlook Newsreader" in the menu title bar). Thus one can specify
"Microsoft Outlook" as one's news-handler in the Tools/Internet Options
dialog of Internet Explorer, for instance. The engine is still OE -- as a
look into "Help/About" proves -- but going in through Outlook creates a
unique entry point.

Except....

I just got my computer back from the shop, where it had gone to recover from
a severe case of WinXP/Service Pack 2 disease (cured, but SP2 reapplied),
and am now dealing with an oddity.

Tools/Internet Options in Internet Explorer still says I'm using Outlook --
not OE -- as my newsreader. And clicking on "Read News" from the relevant
IE menu/button takes me to the "Microsoft Outlook Newsreader" iteration I've
been using all along. But since it came back from the shop, when I'm in
Outlook (2002) itself, clicking Go To... News explicitly starts up a session
of Outlook Express (6), and wants me to log into various and sundry servers
as if I were using OE separately. The computer did *not* do this before --
Go To...News launched the same Outlook iteration of the OE engine that I am
still getting via IE. And I can find no setting in Outlook 2002 that I can
identify as the one to toggle things back to what I was laughingly calling
normal before.

Which is just weird -- IE is calling the Outlook newsreader, whereas Outlook
is calling OE directly, exactly backwards of what you'd expect. And I can
find nothing in either IE or Outlook 2002 that seems capable of toggling
Outlook back to "normal".

--
= John C. Bunnell
= (e-mail address removed)
= http://www.sff.net/people/jcbunnell/
= http://www.livejournal.com/users/djonn/

"It's only fair to warn you, I've been trained by one of
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lay a hand on me I'll have to club you with a rubber fish."
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