For anyone who’s had trouble setting up an Outlook 2007 email account, I have some great news: I’ve cracked the code.

Well, my wife did actually, and before anything else I’d like to sing her praises.

You see, I’m like a knight out of Army of Darkness (the best of the Evil Dead trilogy, won’t you agree?) The car falls out of the sky and I attack it with my sword thinking it’s some kind of iron dragon.

Meanwhile, my wife is Bruce Campbell’s Ash, the self-sufficient technomaniac who can make a mechanical hand out of metal. She’s watching me freak out because Outlook 2007, my personal iron dragon, refuses to send email to anyone outside my company (although it has no qualms about receiving email from anywhere).

So I’m sat here, jabbing at Outlook like it’s the most alien thing in the world, and my wife finally decides to give me the time of day. At this point I’ve done everything I can to make Outlook work (haha, joke’s on me). I’ve even tried configuring Outlook to use my ISP’s smtp, in this case the smtp of PLDT MyDSL. I feel like I’ve accomplished something, but it’s still all funky. So the wife steps in.

She shows me it’s not rocket science by doing some quick online research and finding Gmail’s smtp. She then follows the instructions on how to configure Outlook and boom, we’re all set. What took me a couple of days to agonize over took her less than 5 minutes to resolve.

I do a test email, witness magic, and say something about how rich we’d be if my wife charged inordinate amounts of money as a tech consultant to hapless guys like me, of which I’m sure there are thousands.

So fellow Outlook 2007 users-who-don’t-have-it-in-you-to-do-some-simple-research-and-follow-clear-instructions, don’t despair. If keying in your local ISP’s smtp still doesn’t let you send emails, using Gmail’s smtp is a brilliant alternative.

And if you’re a fan of the Evil Dead Trilogy, Sam Raimi’s got some good ol’ horror coming our way this May.