Outlook Express – Maximizing Email Windows

Subscriber Geraldine Astbury wrote me from the U.K. to say:

Hi Terry,

I use XP and Outlook Express. When I open my emails they always open with the small size window and I have to click the maximize button. Is there any way to open my emails so that they are already in the maximized size? I’ve searched all over the place on my PC (tools, help etc) and can’t find out how to do it.

May I say how much I enjoy your Computer Tips Newsletters. I’ve learned some great stuff from you. I’ve only been computing for a few years but absolutely love it. It’s opened up so much for me even though I’m a grandmother aged 66. I read your newsletters with a lot of enjoyment. I’ve only just learned about them recently. So thanks Terry for all the help you offer.
Yours
Geraldine

Hi, Geraldine. Thanks for the email — I appreciate hearing that I make a difference.

With Outlook Express, there’s a trick to “maximizing” the email when it’s opened.

The trick is that you don’t maximize it — OE will not remember that you maximized the email and there’s not a setting that will let you tell OE to maximize the email.

BUT, Outlook Express will REMEMBER the size and location of an email window when you close it. It will open a new email in a similarly sized window at the same screen location. You can take advantage of this memory to make Outlook Express open emails into any size stretched (not maximized) window

The steps of the trick are:

1. make sure Outlook Express is not maximized
2. open an email and make sure it’s not maximized
3. grab the email window by the top bar and move it up and left, until the top left corner is located at the top left corner of your screen
4. grab the lower right-hand corner of the email window by hovering over the corner until you get the diagonal two-ended arrows
5. press and hold your left mouse button on that two-ended arrow — and stretch the window to the size you want (in this case, to cover the whole screen).
6. let go fo the left mouse button.
7. click on the X in the top right hand corner of the email’s window to close the window.
8. double-click on any email and it should open in this pseudo-maximized mode.

Remember that Outlook Express is simply remembering the size and location. If you resize it smaller one day (and you will), subsequent emails will open in that smaller size.

All you have to do is stretch an email, close it to trigger OE to remember the setting, and you are back to pseudo-maximized windows again.