Newsgroups

[Jeff T]

Is there any way to get newsgroups in Outlook 2000, like Outlook express?
Jeff

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Is there any way to get newsgroups in Outlook 2000, like Outlook express?

No. No version of Outlook has ever been able to function as a
newreader.

However back in the Windows XP days, if you ran Outlook, you could
"sort of" get it to do newsgroups. Or rather it *said* it was the
"Outlook Newsreader," but it was really just Outlook Express running
with Outlook's name on the Title Bar.

And by the way, although many people want to have a single program
that functions both as an e-mail client and a newsreader, I personally
never see any value to that. I want to have the program that I think
functions best as a newsreader and the program that I think functions
best as an e-mail client. There's no particular reason why one program
should be just as good at one of these as at the other. So my
preference is Outlook 2013 for e-mail and Agent 6.0 for a newsreader.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Jeff.

NO. This is another example of Microsoft's sad habit of assigning
confusingly similar names to quite different programs.

Except for the confusing names, Outlook and Outlook Express are unrelated.
As Ken said, Outlook does only mail, never news.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2012 (Build 16.4.3508.0205) in Win8 Pro


"Jeff T" wrote in message
Is there any way to get newsgroups in Outlook 2000, like Outlook express?
Jeff

 

[VanguardLH]

Is there any way to get newsgroups in Outlook 2000, like Outlook express?

No version of Outlook supports NNTP (network news transfer protocol).
Never has and never will. Not only has Microsoft abandoned Usenet when
they killed off their own NNTP servers (and went to crappy HTTP-based
flat forums) but their corporate customers of Outlook (the largest
revenue group for that product) do not want their employees wasting time
in Usenet.

Outlook EXPRESS is a *personal* e-mail client and not considered (by
Microsoft) a professional or enterpise-grade e-mail program. OE is not
a derivative or "light" version of Outlook. Outlook and OE are
completed disjoint programs. Microsoft acquired the "Internet Mail &
Newsgroups" (hence the msimn.exe file name) and eventually renamed it
Outlook Express to pretend it was a lite version of Outlook. They were
never related to each other despite Microsoft's stupid choice in
renaming IMN to OE. If you look at Microsoft's history of naming e-mail
clients or services, they seem deliberately bent to confuse their users.

As I recall (but then it has been a decade since I used Outlook 2000),
there was a link in one of Outlook 2000's menus that made it look like
Outlook 2000 did newsgroups. It was merely a link to whatever was
currently designated the default NNTP client. If Outlook Express was
the default newsgroups client then Outlook would start that program.
Outlook didn't do newsgroups. It just passed it off to another program,
something you could easily do yourself with a shortcut (on the desktop
or in a toolbar in the Windows taskbar) to start that other program.

There are add-ons for Outlook that provide their own NNTP support, like
Newshound; however, most long-time Usenet users found it was weak mostly
because of having to conform to the structure of Outlook's message store
and GUI display. Newshound is not free. It costs $30. There are a lot
of FREE newsgroup clients that are much better than Newshound so don't
waste your money. Shorelinesoftware.com makes Newshound but their web
site doesn't mention it (to find out if it supports the old Outlook 2000
version that you have). In fact, their web site is so terse and vague
that I suspect they aren't a real company any more. That is, it is just
a placeholder site.

Outlook users use a separate NNTP client to do Usenet.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

If you look at Microsoft's history of naming e-mail
clients or services, they seem deliberately bent to confuse their users.

YES! The latest is their new web-based e-mail service, which they call
Outlook. Ugh, ugh! and double-ugh!.

 

[R. C. White]

Oh, NO, Ken!

"their new web-based e-mail service" is Outlook.COM! So it isn't confusing
at all, right?

I'll see if I can get my tongue out of my cheek now. :>(

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2012 (Build 16.4.3508.0205) in Win8 Pro


"Ken Blake, MVP" wrote in message

If you look at Microsoft's history of naming e-mail
clients or services, they seem deliberately bent to confuse their users.

YES! The latest is their new web-based e-mail service, which they call
Outlook. Ugh, ugh! and double-ugh!.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Oh, NO, Ken!

"their new web-based e-mail service" is Outlook.COM!

Yep!


So it isn't confusing
at all, right?

Yes it is. Many people in the Microsoft forums ask for help with
Outlook when they mean Outlook.com (but you knew that, right?)

I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but most Americans seem to
like to shorten the names of things, often terribly inappropriately.
Many people also called Outlook Express "Outlook." Another example
that pops up in my mind is calling caffelatte "latte." Ask for "latte"
in Italy and you will get a glass of milk, which is what "latte"
means.

 

[Jim S]

There are a lot of FREE newsgroup clients that are much better than
Newshound so don't waste your money.

I would argue that there are a *lot* of newsgroup clients that are much
better than - well anything really.

I want to killfile by sender or by subject; I want to assign as 'score';
I wany to 'catchup' and go to the next newsgroup and so on and so on....
I am posting this from Xnews which is decidedly odd to the conventional
email user, but my main one is 40tude Dialog which is long since
abandoned and needs lots of tweaking to do the things I listed above.
I know of no newsreader that fulfils those requirements 'out of the
box' which is a pity.