Using e-mail

By David Flynn & Rose Vines

Getting started
Setting up your e-mail program
Creating e-mail
Reading and replying to e-mail
Sending files
Forwarding and carbon copies
Adding your signature
Using the address book
Using folders

Last year over a trillion messages flew across the Internet in the form of electronic mail. That's a lot of correspondence, and no wonder: e-mail is the most useful part of the Net. It's faster and less expensive than sending a fax or using the regular post (or 'snail mail' as it's derisively called by online aficionados). E-mail lets you keep in touch with friends and family, collaborate with business colleagues, do research into projects, and strike up new relationships.

Getting started
To use e-mail, you need three things: an online connection, a personal e-mail address and e-mail software.

When you sign up with an Internet service provider (ISP) you should receive a personal e-mail address. This usually consists of your user name, followed by an @ ('at') symbol, followed by the ISP's domain name.

For example, if your name is Ned Kelly, your online user name is Nkelly, and your ISP's domain name is Glenrowan.com.au, your e-mail address will be nkelly@glenrowan.com.au. As e-mail addresses are not case-sensitive, you can type the address with any combination of upper- and lower-case characters.

Once you have an e-mail address, you'll need some software to write, send, receive and manage your e-mail. Your ISP will almost certainly provide this. Alternatively, if your computer comes with Windows 98, you'll find Microsoft's Outlook Express e-mail program comes as part of the system. Outlook Express, also available as part of Internet Explorer 4.0, is one of the most popular e-mail programs. Netscape Messenger, which is part of the Netscape Communicator communications suite, is equally popular. For those with modest hardware, Eudora Lite is a good alternative.

In this tutorial we'll use Outlook Express as an example, but the same basic principles apply to all e-mail programs.

Setting up your e-mail program
To configure an e-mail program you'll need to enter the following details:

The name of your Internet service provider's incoming or POP (Post Office Protocol) mail server and the outgoing or SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) mail server. Both are usually the ISP's domain name preceded by the word 'mail', such as mail.glenrowan.com.au. Some ISP's prefix the servers with 'pop3' and 'smtp' respectively instead: pop3.glenrowan.com.au and smtp.glenrowan.com.au. Your ISP can provide you with the correct names.
Your full name, e-mail address, user or ISP account name and password.

Windows 98 has an Internet Connection Wizard which steps you through the whole process of setting up your connection details. You'll also find many ISPs supply their own setup routine to help you through this process. No matter which route you take, all the necessary details should be supplied to you by your ISP; if you encounter problems, your ISP is the one to call.
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Creating e-mail
Once you have your connection set up, you can test your e-mail program by sending a message to yourself.

To do that:

1. Click the Compose Message icon (it's called New Message in Netscape's Messenger e-mail program). If you're not sure which it is, let your mouse pointer linger over each icon to see the tooltip. A New Message form appears.

2. In the To box of the New Message window type your e-mail address, then fill in the Subject line and finally type your message (use the Tab key to move between the To box, Subject box and message area). For this test you only need a short phrase. When you start sending real e-mail you should also aim to keep your messages short (ideally less than a single screen) and broken into several small paragraphs -- this makes e-mail easier to read.

3. Click the Send Message button. If you're not currently online, your e-mail program will connect you to the Internet and send your e-mail; if you're already online, the mail will be sent automatically.

Note that Outlook Express does not send your messages immediately when you click the Send Message button unless you adjust a setting in the Tools Menu (open the Tools Menu, Options, click the Send tab and check the Send Messages Immediately setting). Instead, it places your message in the Outbox, ready to be sent next time you connect to the Internet. It does this so you can create a whole bunch of messages before connecting to the Internet. Once you've created all your messages, you can send them all at once (saving you online connection charges) by clicking the Send and Receive button in the main toolbar. So remember, if you're using Outlook Express to click the New Message's Send button and then the Send and Receive button on the main toolbar.
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Reading and replying to e-mail
To check for new incoming e-mail, click the Send and Receive button in Outlook Express (it's called Get Message in Netscape Messenger). Your e-mail will be downloaded from your ISP's mail servers into your e-mail program's Inbox.

To read the message, double-click its header in the Inbox. Once you've read it, you can click the Print icon to print it, the Delete icon to delete it, or you can reply to the message by clicking the Reply button. When you click Reply, a new message window opens containing the contents of the original message. You'll see that the reply is automatically addressed to the person who sent the original mail and the subject line remains the same as the first message but is now prefaced by 'Re:'.

In the message window, you'll see that the contents of the original message have been automatically 'quoted' and preceded by a message header indicating details about the original author, recipient and message date. You can type your own response above the quoted message header (or wherever you choose, provided it's easy to distinguish your text from the original). You may also want to delete those lines from the original which aren't necessary -- excessive quoting is frowned upon. Then click the Send button (and the Send and Receive button, too, if necessary).

Sending files
You can also send computer files including word processing documents, spreadsheets, sound files, programs, photos and so on, as 'attachments' to an e-mail message.

Click the Insert File or Attach File icon and select the file on your PC. This places a copy of the file inside your message. The recipient of the message can usually open this file just as if you'd handed it to them on a floppy disk.

It's good practice to compress files with WinZip before you send them: they'll be smaller and travel faster (see the section on 'Unzipping with WinZip' in 'Downloading Files'). Don't send huge files (say, greater than 1.5Mb) unless requested. These can clog the recipient's mailbox on the ISP's mail server, and many mail servers set a size limit for attachments anyway.

Forwarding and carbon copies
When creating an e-mail you can send a copy of it to someone else using the 'CC' address field. CC stands for 'Carbon Copy' and is a hold-over from the typing pools of the 1950s.

If you receive a message which may be of interest to another person, you can send them a copy of it by clicking the mail program's Forward button. This creates a new e-mail containing the text of the original message, adds 'FWD' to the subject line and leaves room for your own comments.

Adding your signature
One of the many ways to personalise your messages is to have the e-mail program automatically add a few lines of text called a 'signature' to the foot of your messages.

This can contain your name, company or some funny or philosophical thoughts. Try to keep signatures limited to four lines. In addition to plain text signatures, both Outlook Express and Netscape Messenger (as well as some other e-mail programs) support vCards, the electronic equivalent of a business card. Once you create a vCard (it's just a matter of filling in a few details in a form) you can automatically attach it to your outgoing e-mail. This enables you to send more details about yourself (phone, address, business name, and so on) without occupying space in the e-mail message itself. However, your recipient will only be able to read the vCard if their e-mail program also supports them, so check first.

In Outlook Express, check the Tools Menu, Stationery option to set up your signature and vCard; in Netscape Messenger, open the Edit Menu, Preferences option, and look under Mail & Groups, Identity.

Using the address book
Almost all e-mail programs allow you to enter often-used names and e-mail addresses into a simple electronic address book. You can create short 'nicknames' rather than having to type the recipient's full name in the 'To' field every time, and you can also define groups of people who will receive the same e-mail with a single-click.

Using folders

Creating and using folders within the program is a great way to organise your mail. You can move messages from your Inbox to folders designated for particular projects simply by dragging and dropping the messages.

Don't forget to empty the Trash or Deleted folder often and compress the other folders on a regular basis, as this will maximise your hard disk space -- all those messages can quickly add up!

Mailing lists

You can use e-mail to participate in mailing lists. These are free discussion groups covering a vast array of topics (you name it, there's a mailing group for it) and conducted as strings of e-mail messages in which a note from one participant is automatically sent to everyone else on that list.

A comprehensive index of mailing lists can be seen at the Web site www.neosoft.com/
internet/paml

You can have this index delivered to your e-mail box as a text file (albeit a huge one!) by sending an e-mail to the address listserv@bitnet.
educom.edu

Leave the subject line empty and in the body of the message type only the following: list global.

Be warned: an active mailing list will result in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of messages each day.

Mailing lists can also be used to distribute short e-mail items like online magazines on a daily or weekly basis. Subscribing to these is a similar process to joining a regular mailing list.

Lingua e-franca

Because e-mail is a written medium, you must be careful to ensure that your words accurately convey your meaning -- after all, take away voice tone and facial expressions and it's often hard to know whether someone is sincere, sarcastic, angry or just doesn't understand you.

'Your first steps on the Net' gives you a quick guide to getting your message across and deciphering those cute-but-cryptic symbols and abbreviations which e-mail users rely upon to get their message across.

Life is getting easier with the introduction of programs which let you write messages with HTML rather than plain text. You can include different fonts, colours, formatting and even bullet lists in your e-mail just by clicking toolbar buttons -- exactly as you would write a document with your Windows word processor.

Regardless of how you say it, be careful of what you say. E-mail should not be considered a secure or private medium, and in some court cases it has been accepted as evidence of actions or intent.