Adding contacts to Outlook and Outlook Express

The easiest way to add an email address to your contacts list is to 'harvest' the address from an incoming email.

In Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express and Windows Mail (rebranded OE for Windows Vista), the method for doing this is identical:

1. Open the email message
2. Place cursor on the appropriate entry (email address or name) in the 'from', 'to' or 'cc' section and right-click
3. Click 'Add to....' to complete the process (Outlook Express has 'Add to Address book', Windows Mail has 'Add to contacts', 'Outlook has 'Add to Outlook contacts')
4. Repeat for each contact that you wish to add

In Outlook Express and Windows Mail (but not Outlook), you can set the options to automatically save any new contacts when you reply to a message:

In Outlook Express, Tools/Options/Send - tick "automatically put people I reply to in my address book".

In Windows Mail, Tool/Options/Send - tick "automatically put people I reply to in my contacts list".

Note that if you use the 'Reply All' option when responding to a message, you will get the entire recipient list in your address book.

I mention this because I regularly get newsletters, etc, which come with an unsolicited 'gift' of the sender's entire mailing list due to the simple error of using the 'Cc' box rather than 'Bcc' which hides the recipient addresses.