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Oops!  Sorry Hunter, it's Corel PaintShop Pro X.

Thanks for your reply, Hunter.  I am reproducing it here because although I have had email notification, it doesn't appear in the sequence of Qs & As in the forum:

"NNTP stands for Network News Transport Protocol (just like FTP = File
Transfer Protocol and SMTP = Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and POP = Post
Office Protocol). NNTP is the "old school" type of "forum"; primarily use on
UseNet newsgroups, but many software companies maintain their own NNTP
servers for user-to-user support.

These news servers contain many different newsgroups covering probably most
any topic you could think of (on UseNet) and the software companies that
maintain their own, it can depend on the topics, but usually are setup in
such a way that there are different newsgroups for each version of the
various software products they carry.

As for posting to the newsgroups, you just need to setup your newsreader to
connect to one of the news servers in the world, then have it populate a
list of what newsgroups there are on that server. The method of posting will
probably vary depending on the application you're using to connect to said
server, but they're basically like email - for example in Outlook Express
(it's what I use) when I have a NG selected, in my menu bar there are
buttons for "new post", "reply group", and "reply" - New Post would create a
new message and Reply Group is what you'd use to reply to a message on the
newsgroup (don't use "reply" as that will go via email to only that person
and most people using NNTP newsgroups never post their real email address so
as to reduce spam because their real addresses could be harvested there by
spammers)."

(GeoffO's questioning resumes here)

I have set up a CorelNews account in Thunderbird and a whole lot of 'previous correspondence' has come flooding in.  So I tried using the address from which one of the messages appeared to have been sent (cnews.corel.com), but Thunderbird gave me an error message saying that the address was not in the correct format, ie it didn't have an @ in it.

So the missing link seems to be in my lack of comprehension on setting up a "newsreader to connect to one of the news servers in the world".  It would really help if you could give me a child's guide to making this connection.

OK, I am now converting from Thunderbird to Outlook Express (on the principle that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!).

First stumbling block, in OE Help, seems to put us in a chicken and egg situation:

• "For a newsgroup account, you'll need to know the name of the news server you want to connect to and, if required, your account name and password."

But you can't make contact until you know your user name and password, and you can't find out this information until you have made contact.

So, if you are prepared to continue with this time-consuming mature student ... ?

Thanks Hunter, that's fixed it.  I was trying every username and password I could think of.  The thing finally worked when I left both panels blank.  Message has gone off; now await results.