My brother-in-law, Ric, popped round this evening to help me figure out how to move my toilet 4 inches to the right. Don't ask, it's a long story.

While here he asked me a question about Outlook and I figured some others might be interested in the answer.

Ric wants to find a way to keep his and my sister's email separate on their shared home computer. Just using rules to move email to different folders doesn't work well for him and he really wants to find a way to have one separate instance of Outlook running for each user. Well, this isn't really possible so Ric had started wondering whether he could get away with using Outlook 2003 and relegate my sister to just using Outlook Express! But there's no need to deprive anyone of the great features in the full Outlook application. What Ric needs are 'Outlook Mail Profiles'.

Go to Control Panel, select Mail, then Show Profiles. By default there's only one profile, the one you use every day. So click Add..., give your new profile a name and then configure the email account(s) for the new profile. When you've finished, change the last setting in the Show Profiles dialog to Prompt for a profile to be used. Next time you open Outlook you'll be asked to confirm which profile you wish to use for that session. This way of working is also great if you have a lot of email accounts and want to set up different profiles based on the different times or locations you check your mail. Maybe creating your own 'Weekend' profile could help keep your gaze from business emails during the most precious 48 hours of the week.

And so now Ric and my sister are happy. So happy in fact that Ric's agreed to come back on Friday to help me move that blasted toilet. I feel flushed with success!