University Computer Help Desk

Checking email in Outlook 2003

Check your university email account using Outlook 2003.

To check your university email account using Outlook 2003, follow the directions below.

  1. Open Outlook.
  2. Click the Send/Receive button.
  3. Enter your password if you're prompted for it.
  4. You may see a window labeled Outlook Send/Receive Progress, which indicates when Outlook is downloading mail and how much more there is to download.
  5. Your email downloads into your Inbox. If you are using IMAP, you may need to expand your mailbox list underneath mail.ilstu.edu located on the left side of the window.
  6. Open your Inbox to view your email.

Off-campus users: To check your email from off campus, you need to first establish a VPN connection using either the Cisco VPN Client or Network Connect in WebVPN. After you are connected through VPN, you can check and send email using Outlook 2003. If you check email primarily from off campus, you can configure Outlook 2003 to use MailVPN settings instead, which eliminates the need for an independent VPN connection.

Here are a few tips:

  • Unread messages appear in bold.
  • Click once on an email message to view its contents in the preview pane.
  • Double-click on an email message to read it in a new window.
  • Click the Arranged By: column header to sort your messages (for example, click Arranged By: and then click on From to sort alphabetically by sender).
  • When you are using your Inbox, the total number of messages in that mailbox is shown in the lower-left corner of the window.
  • The total number of unread messages in your Inbox is displayed immediately after your Inbox in your mailbox list on the left side of the window.

Article Information

  • Article ID: 1016
  • Last Review: Oct 21, 2009
  • Type: Instructions

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