Office X for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

chapter 8: entourage email and newsgroups 363

• Stay on topic. Most mailing lists are devoted to a particular subject, and your

messages should be reasonably “on topic” for that list. It wouldn’t be appropriate

to discuss sports cars on a mailing list dedicated to acoustic guitars, or ask ques-

tions about Apple’s latest Mac models on a mailing list devoted to 1970’s televi-

sion sitcoms. On the other hand, there’s probably an appropriate mailing list for

almost anything you want to talk about!

• Keep private conversations off lists. There are times it’s more appropriate to re-

ply to a particular list member privately rather than the entire list. In those cases,

just write a private email message to the person.

• Trim the quoting down to the essential. When you send a reply to somebody’s

posting, trim out all of the >quoted >portion except the part in question. No-

body needs to read the entire treatise again.

Finally, as tempting as it may be to send out flurries of advertising about your prod-

ucts or business using the Internet, it’s a bad idea. Spam is not only illegal in many

jurisdictions (meaning you can be sued), it’s guaranteed to get your Internet ac-

count shut down without notice. It’s fine to keep in contact with current customers

via email if they’ve given you permission, but quite another to use the Internet as a

means to harass others.

Newsgroups

Newsgroups don’t necessarily contain news; in fact, they’re Internet bulletin boards

collectively referred to as Usenet. There are well over 60,000 newsgroups on every

conceivable topic: pop culture, computers, politics, and every other special (and

very special) interest. Well over 100 of them are just about the Macintosh. Fortu-

nately, in addition to being an email and calendar program, Entourage is also a

newsreader. You can use Entourage to read and reply to newsgroup messages almost

exactly as though they were email messages.

sions going on, and newsgroups are great places to get

help with troubleshooting, exchange recipes, or just see

what’s on the minds of your fellow Internet users.

Although using newsgroups is like using email in Entou-

rage, it’s important to remember that anything you see or

post in a newsgroup is public, and will probably remain so

for years to come. (Sites like Google maintain searchable

newsgroup archives going back to the mid-1980s, com-

plete with email addresses!) Think before you post, espe-

cially if you have aspirations to run for Congress someday.

Newsgroups (also known as Usenet) started out as a way

for people to have discussions via a bulletin-board-like sys-

tem, in which a message gets posted for all to see, and

anyone can reply to that posted message. These public

discussions are divided into categories called newsgroups,

which cover the gamut from miscellaneous photographic

techniques to naval aviation.

These days, newsgroups have a certain reputation as a place

to exchange questionable pictures, pirated software, and

MP3 files with doubtful copyright pedigrees. Even so, there

are tens of thousands of interesting, informative discus-

Newsgroups Explained

UP TO SPEED

Newsgroups

364 office x for macintosh: the missing manual

In fact, Entourage lets you use multiple news servers (bulletin-board distribution

computers), subscribe to individual newsgroups, filter messages in your newsgroups

using Rules, and post and read messages (complete with attachments, if needed).

See Figure 8-19.

Setting Up an Account

Setting up a new news account is similar to setting up a new email account; the

adventure begins by contacting your Internet service provider and finding out its

news server address. Depending on how your ISP runs its news service, you may also

need your user name and password.

Next, choose Tools→Accounts. Choose News from the New pop-up button in the

resulting Accounts window.

You can either enter news server information manually, or click the Assist Me but-

ton to have the Account Setup Assistant step you through the process of creating a

news account like this:

1. With the Account Setup Assistant open, select the email account you want to

use and enter your organization.

Entourage needs an email address because every newsgroup posting has an email

address associated with it.

Figure 8-19:

If you’ve been using

Entourage for email,

the newsgroup

portion should look

familiar. It uses the

same three-pane

view: the Folder

pane lists your

newsgroups, the

top-right pane lists

the names of

messages in a

selected newsgroup,

and at the bottom

right, the Preview

pane shows the

actual text of the

highlighted

message.

Newsgroups