From the main menu, choose Edit / Preferences ... to open the "Preferences" dialog shown below. If the "Mail & Newsgroups" item is not already open (as shown below) click the [+] plus sign in front of it to open and display its sub-items. Select the display of Newsgroup Servers by clicking that item as shown below:

Any existing news servers will be displayed in the list near the center of the dialog box. Netscape Messenger seems to insist upon creating an entry for a bogus server called "news" for no apparent reason. Since it returns after it's deleted the only solution is to simply ignore it.

To add the news.grc.com news server, click the "Add..." button near the top/left to open the Newsgroup Server Properties dialog:

Fill-in the name of our server "news.grc.com" as shown above.

Leave the port set to its default of "119" and leave both checkboxes not checked, also as shown above.

Click "OK" to accept these settings and close the Server Properties dialog. The "news.grc.com server will now be added to the list of defined news servers.

Next, click the "Formatting" item under "Mail & Newsgroups" to display the message formatting preferences:

In my opinion, and that of many other well-informed users of the Internet, promoting the use of HTML formatting in eMail and Newsgroups is one of the worst things Microsoft has ever done. Due to the SERIOUS security and privacy risks associated with HTML eMail, it is a sure way to flag yourself to the world as a "newbie" or junk eMail spammer. Due to the recent HTML-based virus and eMail-tracking problems associated with this never through-out technology, many corporate firewalls and personal eMail clients are blocking and rejecting HTML-based eMail.

The good news is that turning it off is easy. On the "Formatting" page shown above, select the "Use the plain text editor to compose messages" and "Convert the message into plain text" options.

Next, click on the "Disk Space" item under "Mail & Newsgroups" to display the Disk Space preferences:

Your choices here are very much a matter of personal preference. However we suggest the settings shown above. The removal of all newsgroup messages older than 28 days corresponds with their expiration from our main newsgroups and the removal of message bodies — which can consume significant storage space — after 5 days prevents their endless accumulation in your system.

You will next need to establish your initial newsgroup subscriptions. So continue with the next section "Managing Your Newsgroup Subscriptions".