[pbleighton]

I just joined rec.games.bridge tonight, and I have some questions. I used the newsgroup my cable company gave me, and am using Outlook Express to send and receive messages. I had to start an email account using hotmail in order to send replies. Questions:

1) I got a "wash my hands" email in hotmail, saying that the communication between hotmail and outlook express was Beta (techspeak for it doesn't actually work yet). I had answered a wizard question "yes" when it asked me if I wanted to download my hotmail folders, not wanting to mess up my capacity to post. Now every time I open outllok express it gives me an error meaasge that it couln't connect with hotmail. I don't actually want to view hotmail stuff in outlook, I just want to use the hotmail account to post. Can I delete the hotmail entry on the left side of outlook, or at least the folders underneath it, to stop the error messages, or will that kill my ability to post?

2) I have sent two replies using "new post" - one on "double" and one on "Response To Double Of 3H". I tried using the Reply Group button, but it gave me a message which mentioned sending a message to all participants, though the newsgroups field was still rec.games.bridge. I am not clear how the group functions. Did my two posts get through to the rec.games.bridge server, accessible to all members (check if you can), or do I need to use Reply Group to actually send the email to all members (I suspect the former). Does Reply All send one email to the server, or one to each member?

Peter Leighton