Inside Outlook Express
Tips and Ideas
Make Links to Newsgroups
How to Create Hyperlinks to Newsgroups
Here is a step-by-step process to create a list of hyperlinks for all your subscribed newsgroups on a news account. Though news hyperlinks can be stored in a Word document, a HTML file, or even as regular Windows shortcuts, this article will lead you through creating hyperlinks in an Outlook Express (OE) mail message.
- Open a new Mail message in HTML format. Click Format| Rich Text (HTML) if necessary. For Subject, enter something like "Newsgroups Hyperlinks"
- Click View| Source Edit. Notice that there are now 3 tabs at the bottom of the message window: Edit, Source and Preview.
- For each newsgroup you wish, type a news hyperlink using this format:
news://name.of.news-server/name.of.newsgroup
If you don't remember the name of your news server, click Tools| Accounts| News| <account> Properties| Servers. You can copy the name to the clipboard by highlighting the full name and pressing Ctrl-C. You can then paste the name into your hyperlinks by pressing Ctrl-V.
To easily enter the names of newsgroups, which can often be quite long, open a new News Message by clicking File| New| News. Click the Newsgroup button next to the Newsgroups field and add the groups you want. Then highlight the full contents of the Newsgroups field and press Ctrl-C to copy them to the clipboard. Use Ctrl-V to paste the entire list into the body of your "Newsgroups Hyperlinks" message where you can edit as needed.
- To use the hyperlinks immediately, click on the Preview tab at the bottom of the message window.
- Click File| Save (or press Ctrl-S) to save the message to your Drafts folder. To ensure you can access the links at all times, click File| Save as.. and save the file as type *.eml. You can then double-click the *.eml file to open the message even if OE is closed, or if you are logged on as another Identity.
Note that you can also open the news server itself by omitting the name of a newsgroup in the hyperlink:
