So far in these Essential How to’s I have shown how to set up your e-mails and your RSS feeds inside WINDOWS LIVE MAIL. So now we will work through the steps required to set up some NEWSGROUPS that you may be interested in both reading and contributing to.
1. Go into WINDOWS LIVE MAIL and click on the small icon at the bottom of the FOLDER PANE. It’s next to the RSS feeds icon.
2. Once in the NEWSGROUPS page you need to access all of the NEWSGROUPS in order to SUBSCRIBE to them, so click on VIEW NEWSGROUPS at the top of the page.
3. A list of available NEWSGROUPS will then be downloaded, and you can now choose which ones you are interested in.
4. For this How-to, I am going to concentrate on all things LIVE (naturally!) so in the search area, just type in WINDOWS LIVE.
5. All of the relevant newsgroups about anything which is WINDOWS LIVE related will then appear. Choose the ones you are interested in by clicking on SUBSCRIBE for each of them, then once you have chosen all of your WINDOWS LIVE newsgroups, click on OK.
6. All the relevant NEWSGROUP folders that you have just subscribed to will now be shown and if you click on the top one and then click on the first post, you will be able to read that post in the reading pane. Now we are going to alter the VIEW from the DEFAULT view at the bottom of the screen to the side.
7. If you haven’t got the MENU showing at the very top of the WINDOWS LIVE MAIL window, then click on the middle icon (the one in the middle of the paintbrush and the question mark) and just choose SHOW MENU BAR in order to enable it.
8. Click on VIEW from the MENU BAR, and then select LAYOUT from the drop down list.
9. Next from under the READING PANE (NEWS) choice, tick the TO THE RIGHT OF THE MESSAGE LIST choice. and then click on APPLY followed by OK. NOTE. Obviously if you prefer to have your reading area at the bottom of the message list then just leave it as it is.
10. It’s also a good idea to set up some NEWSGROUP rules. I usually set up a 7 day rule whereby any posts made earlier than 7 days ago are deleted so as not get overwhelmed by the number of messages being downloaded, especially when reading posts in a popular and well used NEWSGROUP. So,
11. Click on the TOOLS tab in the MENU BAR, and from the drop down list, select MESSAGE RULES and then NEWS.
12. From the NEWS RULES window, just tick the box against the rule that you want to set up. In my case, I will choose from the conditions area, WHERE THE MESSAGE WAS SENT MORE THAN DAYS AGO, which when ticked produces other choices, so I then click on the blue DAYS from the lower area and input the amount of days ago that I want the ACTION to be applied to, in this case 7. Following that I then tick in the ACTION area the choice of DELETE IT.
13. Lastly I then give my NEWS RULE a name such as MY SEVEN DAY RULE, and then click on SAVE RULE. You can now apply your new RULE to your chosen NEWSGROUPS straight away if you wish.
14. Whilst reading a NEWSGROUP message, you can also RATE it at the top of the message if you feel that it is a good post or a good answer to someone’s query. You can also REPLY to the NEWSGROUP message either to just the person who posted the message, or to the whole GROUP using your WINDOWS LIVE ID. You can use your own name or a nickname.
So now you have set up some NEWSGROUPS inside WINDOWS LIVE MAIL.
TG 
