To use Outlook as an email program, you need to configure it to work with one or more email accounts. The best option for that is to use a free Google Gmail account. In case you’re wondering, Gmail is a Web-based email account available through Google. If you have a Gmail account (or get one, which only takes a few minutes), you can connect Outlook to it. Once you have that connection set up properly, people can email you at your Gmail address, and you can read it in Outlook. Going the other way, you can use Outlook to reply to your Gmail messages, or compose new messages that get sent using the Gmail account.

Why should you choose Gmail? There are certainly lots of other free email accounts out there, for example Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail. But connecting them to Outlook for free is another story. Some Web-based email accounts are set up so you can view them using your Web browser, but they’re set up to prevent you from connecting to them with programs like Outlook. Others (Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, for example) allow you to connect them to Outlook, but only if you pay for your email account. Their free versions won’t help you at all. There’s only a small number of Web-based email accounts that allow you to connect Outlook for free. Google’s Gmail is the biggest and best of this select group.

Gmail gives you a huge amount of free storage for your email right on the Google computers. Gmail also provides powerful search capabilities (basically doing a Google search on your own email). It supports this service through advertising, but the ads appear only when you use your Gmail account with your web browser, not when you use Outlook. Gmail is definitely the free email service of choice for connecting to Outlook.

The steps required to make the Gmail Outlook connection are moderately difficult, but most people can make the connection on their own especially if they have access to someone more experienced should they get stuck. If you want to try setting up a Gmail account & connecting it to Outlook 2007, the instructions are posted here.

Configuring Outlook and Gmail to work together is just one of the things covered in Lesson 1 of the 6-week online course, Introduction to Outlook 2007. If strengthening your Microsoft Outlook 2007 skills in this time of uncertain job prospects makes sense to you, I suggest you visit http://IntroToOutlook2007.info to learn more.