Microsoft Outlook always gave me that scary feeling. As far back as yesterday I didn't a thing about Outlook passwords. I always thought this home usage solution to be pretty hard one when all you need is just a mail client. That's why I chose Microsoft Outlook Express as a mail client application, contact manager and scheduler.



The first edition appeared in 1997 and known as Microsoft Outlook 97 was aimed at business users and had a lot of corporate features, the coolest one being the integration possibility with Microsoft Exchange Server. That feature extended Microsoft Outlook's functionability with additional functions for corporate users, as for example, common mailboxes, task folders, calendars, conferences, arrangement and scheduling of general meetings and affairs, coordination of documents.

But times have changed. Microsoft Office Outlook is becoming increasingly popular among home users. And for lots of reasons. In my case it was the usage of communicators under OS Windows Mobile. There'd just got to be a way to synchronize data between a phone and a computer! And it looks like I was not alone with this issue. Outlook has become so popular that even for smartphones as Nokia there are solutions that help synchronize them with the Microsoft Office Outlook application.

The possibility of data sharing in Microsoft Outlook implies certain data protection and access control systems. I've been wanting to figure them out for quite a while now but never got to it. Let's try and do that together by the example of Microsoft Outlook 2003.

It turns out that Outlook features two types of password protection:

* security access to email accounts, i.e. passwords to mailboxes (email account password);

* personal data security (pst file - pst password) - archived email messages of Outlook Mail, Outlook Calendar, Outlook Contacts and Outlook Task.

How do password protect my email account?

The access security function activates when you add in the profile the emails that you'll access from your Outlook Mail. That would be an access password to the mail server assigned to process messages to/from the given email address. Each account has its own unique password. That is Outlook will contain as many passwords as there are accounts created in your Outlook Mail. The good thing is - once you set the password while adding another email to your Outlook Mail you don't have to remember it. Outlook will do that for you and will use it to access the mailbox.

It is easily set. Follow the pics:















Or watch the video:

How do password protect my personal data files (pst file)?

Personal data file (pst file) is where private data of all Outlook users are stored. Namely outgoing messages from Outlook Mail, notes from Outlook Contacts, events schedule from Outlook Calendar and finally to do lists from Outlook Tasks. Obviously Microsoft Outlook features a security mechanism to protect the file from unauthorized access - you are asked the password every time you launch Outlook. This type of passwords (pst password) is even more easily set than the previous one. Just have a look! Here are the pics:















And here's the video:

How to recover Outlook passwords

Another aspect that should be mentioned while speaking about Outlook passwords is their possibility to be recovered. What do you do if a password has been lost of forgotten and you can't access your data? As it turned out - nothing serious happend. The methods used by password protection system are so weak that passwords, whether those protecting accounts or personal folders, are recovered in no time. Different password recovery solutions are abundant in the market. Here is a .

As it turned out Microsoft Office Outlook is not that scary at all. Though not flawless (for example, it has no native newsgroup reading feature), the application is a powerful tool for managing your mail, contacts, calendar and schedule. And most of its problems are quite soluble: the application supports different plug-ins and is open to other developers' solutions. This is it! So quick and easy!