The first and most important thing about posting on a MSN Group is you must be a member of that site. In order to be a member of a MSN Group you must have a passport.net account. This doesn't mean a passport.net email account. It simply means whatever your email address is, be it AOL, hotmail or msn it has to be linked to passport.net account. If your account isn't linked to a passport.net account you will not be able to join, sign in and post at any MSN Group.
After you are sure you have your email account set with passport.net, you can then signup for any MSN group by clicking on the “Join Now” link located on the left at the top of the menu, right under the “What's New” text. After you have joined, you sometimes will have to wait for approval. If you aren't approved you will never be able to post on that MSN Groups.
After you have been approved you can then have the ability post in your selected MSN Groups web page. This doesn't mean you can post yet though. There are a few steps before you can actually get to post.
You must go to your MSN Group you wish to post in, at the top center right by the web search is a button that says “Sign In” or “Sign Out”. You must click that in order to sign in. Once you are signed in, to the right of your MSN Group regardless on what page you may be on, you will see “Welcome (smilie) and your nickname (member). If at the top it doesn't read “Sign Out” and the right doesn't read (member) then you will not be able to post. This is a big problem with users asking me why they are unable to post and don't realize they aren't logged in or aren't even a member of the MSN Group they joined.
After double checking you are a member find your way to the message boards to post. Once you have found the message board you wish to post your message in (for this example let's say General). In the General message board of your MSN Group you will see a kind of tool bar right above the messages. It reads “Prev 50 Next 50 New Discussion Send to my Inbox.”
To post a new message click “New Discussion.” However, if you wish to respond to a message already posted you must click on that message. I will explain how to post a reply to a discussion already posted in a bit. Right now I will explain how to post a new discussion. After you have clicked the “New Discussion” button a new window will open up (be sure your popup block permits this.) At the top says “Subject” think of this just like an email. Subject is what the posting will be about. In the larger window where it says “Type in your message below:” Type in your message. When you have finished, press “Send Message”. The window will disappear, and sometimes your message will instantly appear, other times it has to be approved by the staff of that MSN Group.
To reply to a message already posted in a MSN Group, click on that topic and scroll down to the bottom where the last post is located. Click on the “Reply” link just above the user's name of who posted. If you are unable to locate this, you can click the word “Reply” which appears in the first posting. Once again, if you are unable to locate the “Reply” button, you can then use your find by pressing the F3 button on your keyboard, typing in the word “Reply” and hitting enter. It will highlight where the button is you may be missing. After you have clicked the “Reply” button a new window will open up (be sure your popup block permits this.) In the window where it says “Type in your message below:” Type in your message. When you have finished, press “Send Message”. The window will disappear, and sometimes your message will instantly appear other times it has to be approved by the staff of the MSN Group.
MSN Groups are set up just as any web based email. So if you are having problems posting, you may not be accustom to web based email and I would highly suggest signing up for a hotmail and yahoo email account so you can get use to the format.
