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• Outlook Express & Windows Vista

Outlook Express Vista

On Outlook Express and Windows Vista: Microsoft phased out Outlook Express with Windows XP; Windows Vista ships with the built-in email program called 'Windows Mail'. In most respects, Windows Mail is the same program as Outlook Express. Windows 7, Microsoft's latest operating system, does not even ship with an email client. You will instead need to download Windows Live Mail (or any other email program), unless it came pre-installed by your PC manufacturer.

Download Outlook Express 7 for Vista

Windows Mail (or "Outlook Express 7") is a full featured email program that includes in Windows Vista all the functionality that Outlook Express 6 brought to Windows XP and previous versions of Windows.

You cannot download Outlook Express 6 or OE 6 for Windows Vista: you can either use Windows Mail, or download Windows Live Mail, both made by Microsoft. If you are familiar with Outlook Express, you will need no training to start using Windows Mail or Windows Live Mail.

To learn more about the email application that ships bundled with Windows Vista in place of Outlook Express, please see our Windows Mail tutorial.

Windows Mail vs. Windows Live Mail

The "Live" in Windows Live Mail comes from the fact that it is built by the "Windows Live" team, a group at Microsoft that split from the Windows team (those who brought you Windows Vista); in part for legal reasons, the free programs you can download, including Windows Live Mail, do not ship with Windows itself. If your copy of Windows 7 does include Windows Live Mail, it is because it was bundled on there by either the computer manufacturer, your company's system administrator, or any Windows user who has access to your PC: see a detailed listing of email programs for Windows 7.

To download and learn more about this email program, please see our Windows Live Mail tutorial!

Using a webmail service as alternative to Outlook Express (or other email clients)

Note that if you are using a webmail service like Windows Live Hotmail, you can still access your emails from a web browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox simply by navigating to your Hotmail inbox (where all your emails arrive), without the need for email programs of any kind. You will of course first need to make a Hotmail account you can use as profile to send and receive emails. This is just one of many ways to make up for the absence of Outlook Express in Windows Vista, short of using Windows Mail or downloading another email client on your computer.