Updated: May 02, 2021 at 13:27 | Simply aim your newsreader at news.grc.com! |
Microsoft Outlook Express This page provides step-by-step instructions for anyone not familiar with the newsreading capabilities of Microsoft's Outlook Express. You are invited to read the entire page, or jump directly to any of the following sections for quick instructions performing the specific task:
Please note that this graphic-rich page may take some time to fully load since it contains many screen shots. Therefore, we designed this page to display "incrementally" and to be used before it has finished loading. |
![]() Configure your news reader for news.grc.com ![]() Before we begin configuring Outlook Express for our specific server we should set a few global options which will affect all servers. From the main Outlook Express menu, click "Tools / Options . . ." then select the "Read" tab . . .
![]() In the "Reading Messages" section you should enable the "Automatically download message when viewing in the Preview Pane" option. In the "News" section you should be sure to enable the "Get xxxx headers at a time" and change the default of 300 to 1000. Once you have subscribed to the newsgroups you wish, the most recent 1000 article headers will be downloaded to give you a nice starting point from which to move forward. Accept and save these changes by clicking the "OK" button to close the Options dialog . . .
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Begin by starting Microsoft Outlook Express and positioning it for comfortable use on your screen. From the main menu, choose Tools / Accounts ... |
This opens the "Internet Account" dialog box shown below. Click the "News" tab to show any newsgroup server accounts you may have: |
Chances are you will not yet have any News accounts set up, so the list will be empty as shown above. Lets take care of that right now!
Click the "Add >" button at the top/left to open the Add menu, and choose "News..." to open the Internet Connection Wizard for news configuration . . . |
The name that appears here will be shown as the author of your postings. While some people enjoy using a pseudonym of some sort, your questions and participation will be taken much more seriously if you use your real name. So set your "Display Name" to whatever you choose to have seen by people reading your postings. then click "Next" to advance to the Wizard's next page . . . |
It is traditional to avoid the use of your real eMail address out in the wild and wooly public USENET, and even though our news postings are not published to the Internet, it's usually a good idea to at least obscure your actual eMail address.
Many people will use an address like: ![]() . . . where it is clear to someone looking at the address that the "RemoveThis" should be removed before the address is used. But an automated eMail address "harvester" won't know to remove the extraneous text so they won't capture a valid address. So set your "E-mail address" to whatever you choose to have seen by people reading your postings. then click "Next" to advance to the Wizard's next page . . . |
In the "News (NNTP) server" field, enter the DNS name of our news server: "news.grc.com" as shown above.
The checkbox "My news server requires me to log on" needs to be checked if you wish to be able to submit your own questions and contribute to our groups. If you only wish to read without contributing you may leave it unchecked.
When you have set those two fields correctly, click "Next" to advance to the Wizard's next page. If you chose to logon to our server so that you have the option of contributing, you will be presented with the following page . . . |
Enter the same long and "impossible-to-guess" passphrase into both the Account name and Password fields. Note that you can easily copy the Account name field into the Password field by selecting all of the text in the Account name and pressing "Ctrl-C" to copy it to the Windows clipboard. Next place the typing cursor into the Password field by clicking the mouse there. Delete anything that might already be in the Password field then type "Ctrl-V" to paste the clipboard's contents into the Password field. This will assure that the two fields are exactly identical as required by our system.
This passphrase will never appear publicly, but it will securely "authenticate" you to our server. This will enable you to post your own messages into any of our groups, cancel anything you have previously posted at any time for any reason, and prevent anyone from "impersonating you" on our server. You should also check the "Remember password" checkbox, and you must NOT check the "Log on using Secure Password Authentication (SPA)" checkbox since we use our own secure logon system.
A note about remembering passwords:
When everything is set correctly, click "Next" to advance to the Wizard's next page . . . |
This dialog pretty much says it all: ![]() ![]() Click the "Finish" button to save these settings . . . |
The Internet Connection Wizard will close and you'll be returned to the "Internet Accounts" dialog. If all went well, you will now have an entry for "news.grc.com" like that shown below . . . |
Your "account" with the news.grc.com news server has now been established. However, DO NOT CLOSE this dialog box yet! Since HTML formatting should never be used with any news server, please continue with the next section "Modify your news.grc.com settings" to disable HTML in your public postings. This section will also show you how you can change any of your "account" settings in the future, such as your secret logon passphrase, etc.
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![]() ![]() Modify your news.grc.com settings This section will help you to complete your initial account setup and also demonstrate how you may modify your news.grc.com news server "account" settings at any later time. If the "Internet Account" dialog box is not currently being displayed, from the main menu, choose Tools / Accounts ... then click the "News" tab shown below to display any currently defined news server accounts . . . |
If the "news.grc.com" entry is not already highlighted (as shown above), first click the mouse on "news.grc.com" to select it. With news.grc.com highlighted in the list, click the "Properties" button to open the "news.grc.com Properties" dialog . . . |
As shown above, the first "General" tab of the properties dialog allows you to change various names. You can change the name by which this account is known (like "GRC", "Gibson Research Corp." or perhaps "Security/Privacy") if you prefer that to "news.grc.com" The other fields determine the name and eMail address which will be used to identify you in any of your newsgroup postings. You can change them at any time, though it's rather confusing to everyone who gets to know you if your "identity" keeps hopping around. And, again, you will find that your postings earn (and probably deserve) more respect if you present yourself by your real name as you probably do in the non-Internet physical world.
Next, click the "Server" tab to display the server properties . . . |
As illustrated by the sample above, the server name must always read "news.grc.com" and the "Log on using Secure Password Authentication" must never be checked.![]() Since you will probably want the option of replying to articles you read and posting your own comments, questions, answers or suggestions, you will probably want to have the "This server requires me to log on" box checked and both the Account name and Password fields filled with the same long and secure passphrase. This will "tag" every article you post with a unique signature which allows only you to cancel the article and prevents anyone from impersonating you on our server (since there's no way for anyone to know your secret passphrase in order to generate the same article signature.) When everything is set the way you wish, click the "Advanced" tab to display the advanced properties . . . |
The Advanced properties should be set as shown above:![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Once everything is set correctly, click "OK" to save your changes and close the news.grc.com Properties dialog box. You will be returned to the "Internet Accounts" dialog which you should also close by clicking the "Close" button. If you have just finished creating a new news account for the news.grc.com server you'll receive this question . . . |
Click "Yes" to Open the "Newsgroup Subscriptions" dialog. Then proceed with the next section. . . |
![]() ![]() Manage your newsgroup subscriptions Whether you have just created a new account for the news.grc.com news server, or you're looking for new newsgroups that may appear on the news.grc.com news server from time to time, you'll want to manage your newsgroup subscriptions. To open the "Newsgroup Subscriptions" dialog (if it's not already being displayed), right-click the mouse on the "news.grc.com" folder in the left-hand pane, then choose the "Newsgroups..." selection from the pop-up menu . . .
![]() The "Newsgroups Subscriptions" dialog will be displayed . . . |
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![]() ![]() Immediately after subscribing to a group or groups Since most of our newsgroups are "archival", the number of messages in each group has grown quite large over the years but this also means that they contain a huge body of knowledge, experience, and wisdom. Since you probably won't want to read every message back to the dawn of time (in several cases more than 100,000 article postings) the steps you take immediately after subscribing to a group or groups is critical.
![]() Outlook Express will connect to our server and update the article counts for every subscribed group. Click "OK" on the pop-up complaint about there being nothing to synchronize that's exactly what we want for now.
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![]() ![]() Your first test posting We have created a special "grc.test" newsgroup specifically to receive any experimental postings. Articles posted there appear immediately and self-expire after a few days. So it's the perfect place for you to experiment to see how your own postings appear. PLEASE restrain your experiments to the grc.test newsgroup to keep the other groups clear of extraneous postings. We will immediately remove "debris" postings from the other groups, and you won't be making a great first impression if you post tests other than in grc.test. This is also a perfect place to experiment with cancelling your own articles, which is something we all need to do from time to time. Thank you! |
![]() ![]() Interacting with the newsgroups With your account established and newsgroups subscribed, you are ready to begin reading and, if you choose, posting your own messages into our newsgroups.
newsreader, the grc.test group is also a great place to carry on such "off topic" conversation.
Welcome to the terrific "CyberSpace Community" |
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Last Edit: Jun 13, 2005 at 10:32 (7,257.32 days ago) | Viewed 5 times per day |