Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
Sharing one email account across two Windows user accounts isn't always easy, but it is possible depending on what email program you use.
My husband & I share the same computer. I haven't been able to set up Outlook Express so he can access mail when he is logged on. He has to log on as "me" to read mail messages. We have just one email address at present. Should he not be able to access the inbox from the Microsoft Internet Explorer tool bar when he is logged on?
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The short answer is yes we can make that work. But it's not really how Windows XP or Outlook for that matter expect things to behave.
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Windows XP is truly a multi-user operating system. That means that each user who can log in has a completely separate collection of settings. They have a different desktop, different shortcuts, different menus, a different "My Documents" folder, and for most applications, a completely separate set of settings.
Outlook Express is definitely one of those applications. Each user under Windows XP has their own set of settings in Outlook Express. Log in to Windows XP as yourself and you'll see your settings. Log in to Windows XP as your husband and you'll see a completely different set.
And therein lies the seeds of our solution.
Step one is simple: for each Windows XP user account you want to use the same Outlook Express settings you'll log in and configure Outlook Express the same way. In your case that means using same email account, names, addresses, passwords, and what-have-you.
After doing that, you'll both be able to send and receive email on the same account, but you'll still have separate mailboxes, and each of you will not easily be able to see the mailbox of the other.
If that's ok you can stop reading here. You're done.
To have multiple configurations of Outlook Express share the same mailboxes we'll have to configure them to all point to the same Store Folder. From your question I assume you've already got email working when you log in as yourself, so we'll find out where that message store is and use it for your husband as well.
Logged in as yourself in Outlook Express, click on the Tools menu, Options menu item, Maintenance tab, and then finally the Store Folder... button. It will tell you that "Your personal message store is located in the following folder:". Copy down that folder name.
Backup the contents of that folder. For now just copying the contents somewhere else will do.
Log in as your husband and then in Outlook Express go to the same Store Folder... setting in options. This time press the Change... button, and use the browse control to locate the folder you copied down when you were logged in. Once you've found it, click on it, click OK, and then OK your way back out of the options dialog.
Along the way Outlook Express will tell you that this setting will not take effect until you exit and restart Outlook Express. Do that and your husband should now be able to see the same mail folders you do, as well as being able to send and receive email on your shared account.
Article C1920 - April 7, 2004 « »
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
February 12, 2008 5:40 AM
I am trying to set up an existing email account through outlook, i get onto the setting and make it the default but the enter network password keeps coming up when its testing...how do i sort this? Thanks
Marianne
May 26, 2008 7:33 PM
Can two people at two remote sites log in to the
same hotmail account ?
thanks,
Bob
November 26, 2008 2:06 PM
My objective is similar to others herein, but perhaps a variant. My system is WIN/XP-SP3. My wife as her own WINXP login as I do I. For months I have had a configuration that allows me to have the OE6 configuration in my account ??see? all our email accounts (four) including the one my wife employs.
So in my user login I can see all four accounts and in her login I can see her account, as she only employs her own. In my login, I see four email accounts: email-1, email-2, email-3 and email-4. In her account I can see email-4
Now for the saga as OE6 went belly up for some inexplicable reason. And while I have some measure of skill and tinkered for a while, I could not deduce a suitable fix.
In desperation, I loaded and activated the Windows Live Mail software and then activated all four email accounts in my user login space. (Yes, along the way, I recovered all emails from the OE DBX files via the DBXpress software product.)
Next I logged into my wife??s account but could not access any files with the recovered emails. As a matter of fact WLM would not allow me to activate an already activated email account in her login space indicating that it could not change the registry. Yes, I played with the Store Folder option in WLM. Along the way I saved and copied emails and also moved all the identities into a common space on a disk and into an area other than C:\Documents and Settings\user name\. The new store is I:\WLM Store, with sub-folders for all four email accounts.
At this moment, I can see my three email accounts in my login space, but I must log off my user id and login to my wife??s user id to see and access her email account.
Is there a solution path for me or is the nature of WLM that nothing will work?
Thanks much.
Ted
December 9, 2008 1:25 PM
I have configured Outlook XP for two email accounts. I have setup everything with the necessary login and passwords. My test messages worked. But, after I log off and log back on, it asks me for password every time it tried to send and receive. Why?
May 14, 2009 11:40 AM
I tried this approach outlined for sharing an email account on XP but in my case for Vista. Everything worked fine up to the last item which is to browse to locate the folder. The problem is the folder is in the other users name and Vista won't let me go there. Suggestions?
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