Although I don't know if it makes a differance, are you in corporate/workgroup mode or are you using internet mail? I never saw nntp settings in outlook, but I really never looked. I personally use forte agent, and they have a free news browser. My only other suggestion would be to check out officeupdate and see if there is an addon.

Outlook uses the OE newsreader. Go to "View>Go To>News" and you can configure it there.

Thanks for the info Clutch, but what I wanted to do is having Outlook 2000 be the only window open where news and mail can be viewed, eliminating the need for OE. Doing what you have suggest will only launch OE, or did I missed something?.
To answer Ryoko, we are corporate/workgroup if you mean like we use outlook for everything and internet email is just one of the feature. Tried looking for addons but didn't have any luck, neither does Technet. I am trying to eliminate multiple windows opening since my users get "confused". The newsgroup was going to be use for Q/A or meeting forum for the employees.
 
Note: I am currently looking in Office XP for this possibility but right now Office 2000 is our office suite.
 
Thanks

What ryoko is referring to is being in "Corporate/Workgroup" (as in connected to an Exchange or Lotus Notes server) or "POP" (traditional SMTP/POP mail) mode. In either case, Outlook 2K/XP will still want to use the news reader within OE since it doesn't have one of its own.

And slightly elaborating, if you have an exchange server you can accomplish the items you mentioned ("Q/A or meeting forum") simply by using the collaboration features of the server. You can perform scheduling, customize public folders for various projects, internal FAQ, etc. Exchange server is extremely powerful, look into its features if you have it.