My computer is currently experiencing two problems. First, when I try to move an email message in Outlook Express from the Inbox into another folder I right-click on the message and select “Move to Folder”. However, the folder into which I want to move the message does not appear, even though I have created the folder and it appears in the main Outlook Express window. At the moment the only way I can file away emails is to either leave them in the Inbox (which is not good, since I accumulate too many email messages) or print off a paper copy and then delete the email message! The second problem relates to some photos which have been emailed. I would like to save these photos but cannot figure out how this can be done. I have been opening the emails and then going to the “File” menu > “Save As”. However, the only options to save the photos are: Web Archive, single file (*.mht); Webpage, complete (*.htm, *.html); Webpage, HTML only (*.htm, *.html); Text File (*.txt). There does not seem to be a JPEG format, yet I believe that the photos are in JPEG image format.

If you are not familiar with the intricacies of how to use Outlook Express then it can be confusing, so these are good questions which are fortunately, relatively easy to resolve. Regarding your first question about filing and moving emails, if the folders which you have created are visible within the main Outlook Express window (presumably on the left-hand side of the window, in the listing of folders) then they have been created, so we just need to make them display within the Move window. When you right-click on a message and select “Move to Folder” in the Move window that appears, it is likely you are seeing two items: “Outlook Express” with “Local Folders” below. However, you will notice next to “Local Folders” there is a little plus sign. If you click this plus sign, it will disclose all the folders which are located beneath “Local Folders”. As you can see, all of these folders are children of the parent “Local Folder” entity, and thus the plus sign controls whether these child elements are displayed / disclosed or are hidden. The reason for these plus signs is, should you have a lot of folders in a fairly complex hierarchy, then you may wish to selectively show and hide certain parts of the folder hierarchy so it doesn’t look as complex and is easier to understand. In any case, once you have expanded the hierarchy, and can see all of the elements, you should be able to see the folders which you have created, allowing you to select and click OK so the relevant message(s) can be moved into that folder.

However, there is also a much easier way to move messages into folders. Instead of right-clicking on a particular message and selecting “Move to Folder” you can simply drag a message from the Inbox into another folder. You mention that all of the folders which you have created are visible in the main Outlook Express window. Therefore, to drag and move a message, simply highlight the message that you wish to move within the Inbox and then left-click, hold, drag the message onto the destination folder and then release onto that folder. The message should be instantly moved into that folder. Should you wish to move multiple messages, hold down the ALT key when you are selecting messages and you can select more than one message at a time. Then, simply drag one of the highlighted messages across into the destination folder and that will drag across and move all of the highlighted messages into that destination folder. Finally, if there are a number of consecutive messages that you wish to move then, instead of having to hold ALT and select each message, just select the first message, hold the SHIFT key and select the last message. That will select the first message, last message and all messages in-between. You can then drag and move the messages as per the previous instructions.

We will now move onto your next question about saving the photos which were sent to you in email messages. When selecting an email message and entering into the “File” menu > “Save As”, you are saving the entire email message including the body of the email (i.e. any written message within the email) together with all the information about the sender of the message, the time it was sent, and any attachments on the message. When someone sends images in an email they are generally sent as an attachment, meaning that they are additional to the email message itself. Therefore, in order to save such attachments (in your case, the photos) you need to specifically save the attachments rather than attempt to save the entire message. The formats which appear when you attempt to save the message will save the entire message in various different formats. This is not what we want. Instead, we just want to save the photo attachments.

When you read an email with an attachment you should see a section of the email message with the words “Attach”. Within that section will be several files. Each of these are an attachment on the email message. In your case, you should see a series of files with the file extension .JPG which indicate that they are image files. To save the attachments, simply right-click on the attached file and select “Save As…”. You can then select a location in which to save that attachment. For example, you may wish to save the photos into the My Pictures folder on your computer.

However, you may find that the pictures are actually within the email body itself and are not attachments. If you do not see the pictures listed as attachments, yet they are still present within the email message, then the sender embedded the photos within the email message itself rather than sending them as attachments. This is a bit more cumbersome for you, as it means you cannot immediately see the attached photos but instead need to read through the message to find the photos. However, it can be useful in situations where the sender wishes to write some kind of comment against each photo, as they can insert the photo into the email message and then put text around the photo, which would not be possible if they simply attached the photo, since attachments are treated separate to the email message itself. If you wish to save a photo which has been embedded within the email message, then right-click on the image within the email and select “Save Picture As…”. You should then be presented with a window allowing you to save the image to a folder on your computer.