Off topic question

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jim Birke
  • Start date Start date
What sorts of questions? About the groups themselves? About Usenet? About
newsreaders such as Outlook Express (which I see you're using)?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org
 
I am subscribed to several newsgroups in msnews.microsoft.com.
Here are my questions:
one of them has the number 6495 in blue next to it. when I click on it, I
see '246 messages, 242 unread, 6345 not downloaded' in the lower left corner
of the screen. If Iook at this group from within the server, I see 6485
unread and 6489 total.. What do all these numbers mean? How do I download
the 6345?. Are all these messages taking up space on my drive? Is there a
newsgroup tutorial some place that I can read and learn from?

Thanks, Jim
 
The number 246 is the number of message headers you have downloaded; the 242
are the messages you have not "read" (i.e., clicked on and left selected
long enough for them to have been marked as read). To get the rest, you have
to change your NG settings so that you don't get just a limited number of
headers at a time (in Tools | Options | Read: News, clear the check box for
"Get (x) headers at a time." When you click on a NG in OE, only the headers
(subject lines) are downloaded; messages are not downloaded until you choose
to do so (there are settings for each NG, however, that determine whether
headers or messages are downloaded for offline reading).

The messages that you download (by clicking on the header to read in the
preview pane or by double-clicking to open them) are indeed stored on your
HD. If you have the Size column displayed in OE, you'll see that they're
quite small (I'm seeing messages ranging from 1KB to 7KB in this NG at the
moment), and OE stores them collectively in folders so that they don't take
up too much space. If you have OE set to expire them after a certain length
of time (say, 30 days), then you won't be storing them indefinitely.

For more on all this, see

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org
 
Sorry, I started to include a link, then looked at the linked page and
concluded that it didn't say much more than I'd already told you (or you
already knew). I've seen more info posted in one of these NGs recently, but
evidently not from that page. I meant to delete the intro text. You can,
however, learn more about how OE handles messages from the Web site I was
going to reference. See http://www.insideoe.com/files/

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org
 
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