Manage news updates from websites using Windows Live Mail

Windows Live Mail works with the Windows 7, Vista and XP operating systems but you will need a Windows Live account in order to use it: these accounts are free to set up and you will be prompted to do so when downloading and installing Windows Live Mail. When Windows Live Mail is first launched the usual email view will be displayed. To switch to the RSS feeds view, click on the Feeds shortcut that's located at the bottom-left of the window. A selection of Microsoft-related RSS feeds are already set up and will appear in the left section of the Windows Live Mail window. We'll look at how to view the various stories within a feed in a moment but first let's add a new RSS feed to Windows Live Mail.

Before continuing, you'll need to locate some RSS feeds to add to Windows Live Mail. Most popular websites provide a range of RSS feeds and will link to them from their home page. To locate Computeractive's RSS feeds, for example, use a web browser to visit www.computeractive.co.uk and click on the orange RSS feed logo in the top-right corner of the site. Alternatively, visit www.computeractive.co.uk/static/rss directly. All Computeractive RSS feeds will now be displayed. Now right-click on the name of the one you want to use and then select Copy shortcut from the pop-up menu.

Now switch back to Windows Live Mail and click on the menu button located at the top-left of the window; if you have trouble finding this button, it can also be accessed by pressing the Alt key followed by ‘F'. From the menu that appears, click Options and then the Feeds button. The Manage Your Feeds window will now appear. From here you can see all RSS feeds that are currently active, as well as add new ones to the list and organise them into folders.

To add the RSS feed copied from the Computeractive website, click the Add Feed button located at the top of the Manage Your Feeds window. The Add RSS Feed box will now appear, and all you need to do is paste the feed copied in Step 2. To do this, click in the URL box and then either right-click and select Paste, or use the keyboard shortcut of pressing the Ctrl and V keys simultaneously. Once the feed has been pasted into the URL box, click the OK button.

The new RSS feed will now appear in the Your Feeds section of the Manage Your Feeds window. To organise your feeds into folders, click the New Folder button, choose a name for the folder then click OK. Move feeds into folders simply by dragging and dropping them with the mouse. Use the dropdown menu at the bottom to specify how often the RSS feeds should be updated, ranging from 15 minutes through to one-week intervals. Next, click Close to return to the main Windows Live Mail screen.

Make sure the Feeds view is selected (as described in Step 1), and click on the new feed. In this example, it's the Computeractive hardware reviews feed. All stories within this feed will be displayed: to view a particular story, simply click on its entry in the list and a preview will appear in the right-hand section of the window, just as with emails. To view the full story on the publisher's website, click the blue View Online link located just under the feed headline in the preview window.