I don't even know if I can phrase this question correctly.


My daughter has just taken a new job, and she needs to receive email at a work email address that she has to set up for herself. No one in her office knows how to do this.

Her office computer is a Mac, and she wants to route her incoming mail to the Mac equivalent of Outlook Express or Outlook. She wants to be able to set up the address as jane@thismagazine.com.

Now here's where it gets confusing. The magazine does have a web page -- thismagazine.com -- but they don't seem to receive mail at thismagazine.com -- the magazine's email address is thismagazine@earthlink.net.

As near as I can make out, the woman who had the job before her somehow had her mail routed through Yahoo. Is this making any sense to anyone? My daughter really needs an answer to this, and she doesn't have any computer experts of her own to turn to.

Before she sets up any kind of computer to receive mail at her e-mail address, she needs to HAVE an e-mail address.

Part of having an e-mail address is having information about how to pick up and send mail at that address--the server addresses used for incoming and outgoing mail, the port numbers, the protocols used--and, of course, the log-on information and the password associated with the e-mail account.

Every Mac comes with a program named "Mail"--and the setup software knows this kind of information about major e-mail address suppliers so often you only have to supply the address and your password. But of course that's not always the case.

So get the e-mail address first and whatever information is provided about receiving and sending mail, and then ask again.

By the way, Outlook and Outlook Express are Microsoft products. Microsoft included Outlook Express with earlier versions of Windows but required you to get Outlook as a separate program (part of Microsoft Office). There's a version of Microsoft Office for the Mac too, which comes with the "similar" program to Outlook which you ask about. Her office Mac may have that program already installed. For Macintosh Office 2011, the name of the program is, uh, Outlook. For early versions of Macintosh Office, Microsoft named the program Entourage.


Jeff/CompGuy