I hope you can help. Somehow I have managed to cause all the titles of my e-mails to be hidden in my Outlook Express software. To read them, I have to right-click to highlight them and then click on Open in order to read them. Thank you for any suggestions.

A great aspect of e-mail is that as each message arrives it is marked with the time and date, the name of the sender and other details that get listed in different columns that run across the screen.

One of two possible fixes will get your e-mail display restored to the happy state where each note is displayed with a column for the subject line next to the name of the sender.

First, make sure your setting to display subject lines hasn't been altered to hide them. Click on View in the Outlook Express command bar and then pick Columns. This brings up a list of all the details that get displayed along with each new message - stuff like date, size, sender and, of course, subject. It's possible that the entry for subject no longer is checked. Restore the check mark and it should work.

The other possibility is that you or somebody else managed to cover up the subject line while attempting to manipulate the width of the various columns in the Outlook Express e-mail display. These column widths are adjustable to let users try to incorporate as much of each column as desired while making room for as many columns as possible across the screen. If you move the cursor arrow to the faint line that separates one column from another you can click and drag the column to make it grow or shrink.

Maybe your subject line column got shrunk. If so, clicking at that exact spot will let you drag it back into view.

James Coates is a reporter for The Chicago Tribune, a Tribune publishing newspaper. He can be reached via e-mail at jcoates@tribune.com.