For many people, email makes computers worthwhile. No need to bother rummaging for a pen, stamp, envelope, or mailbox. Just compose, click, and you’re done.
Sending and receiving email requires an email program, where you type your letters and send them off to your recipients, and an email address and password, which you get from your Internet Service Provider (ISP), the money grabbers described in the previous chapter.
This chapter shows you how to pick an email program, tell it what your address and password are, and how to send and receive email using that address—or even several addresses. And if, by chance, you don’t yet have an email account, a relationship with an ISP, or even a computer, you’ll learn about Web-based email services, like Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail, which let you send and receive email from any PC you visit.
Sending mail through the post office, dubbed “Snail Mail” by Internet veterans, requires several steps. You need to type or write a letter, stick it in an envelope, add an address and a stamp, and then drop it in the mailbox. Electronic mail works pretty much the same way: you type your letter into an email program, add the recipient’s email address, and then click the Send button. You don’t even need to pay any postage—a perk long celebrated by spam traffickers worldwide.
All email programs, sometimes called email clients, handle the basic task of sending-and-receiving equally well. The difference lies in their frills: copying your address book to your iPod through iTunes, for instance, is a perk that’s offered only by Outlook Express and Outlook. If you want a spell checker, you’ve got to turn to Mozilla’s Thunderbird. And if you want a menu with emoticons (smiley faces, frowns, and so on) to inject into your email, Eudora’s for you.
Sometimes the choice boils down to a program’s “feel” rather than its features. To help you choose, here are some pros and cons for three popular programs that shuffle email across many electronic desktops today. The best part? They’re all free.
Many people look no further than Windows’ Outlook Express (Start → All Programs → Outlook Express) to take care of their email needs. Legions have grown up with this freebie, tossed into every edition of Windows for the past decade; its sixth version lives on your PC right now.
Outlook Express, shown in Figure 12-1, is not particularly fancy, but it handles the basics very well. It can send, receive, delete, print, forward, sort, and file your email; manage your address book; send and receive files; and even block email from people you’ve marked as spammers, enemies, or just plain annoying. It borrows Internet Explorer’s Web-handling tools to display fancy emails that look like, well, Web pages.
Figure 12-1. Outlook Express lives on the Start menu of nearly every PC sold today, making it the world’s most popular email program. Like most email programs, Outlook Express stores your mail in folders along its left edge. Incoming mail moves straight into your Inbox folder (Section 12.4.4) for you to read; your currently selected message appears in the Preview window. Your sent mail heads for the Outbox, ready for Outlook Express to send. After sending the mail, Outlook Express places a copy of the message in your Sent Items folder for reference. Deleted mail goes into your Deleted Items folder. And Drafts contains mail you’ve started, but haven’t quite found the time to finish.
Pros. The huge popularity of Outlook Express forces many other programs to stay compatible with it. Rest assured that if you ever upgrade to a more powerful email program, your old email isn’t trapped: Nearly every email program will import Outlook Express’s messages and contacts. iPods even offer to carry your contacts from Outlook Express or Outlook. Outlook Express is fairly easy to use, free, and already living on your PC. Many people fire it up and never turn back.
Cons. Since it’s used so widely, Outlook Express is a big target for viruses, worms, spammers, spyware, and other dark forces in computer-dom. The program shares Internet Explorer’s vulnerabilities as well, since it borrows Internet Explorer’s code for displaying messages. And many viruses peek into Outlook Express’s address book, emailing a disguised copy of themselves to all your listed friends or coworkers.
You can nullify most of these threats by installing Windows XP’s Service Pack 2 (Section 15.4) and setting Windows Update to Automatic (Section 15.3), which lets Microsoft automatically patch newly discovered security problems. Add an antivirus program (Section 15.6.3), and Outlook Express stays reasonably safe.
Despite its flaws, zillions of people find no reason to switch from Outlook Express. In fact, the biggest gripe probably boils down to its lack of a spell checker. That’s Microsoft’s subtle way of prodding you to buy Outlook, the full featured email program included with the pricey Microsoft Office. It’s also a way to push you into buying Microsoft Word—when you install Word, Outlook Express sneaks over and borrows Word’s spell checker, giving you an easy way to proofread your outgoing email.
Eudora (http://www.eudora.com), shown in Figure 12-2, has a small, but devoted, following, most of whom are determined to cut down on the number of Microsoft products on their PCs. If that quest appeals to you, your biggest challenge will be deciding which version is for you:
Paid Mode. The $50 version, used mainly by businesses, includes 12 months of free upgrades, 6 free calls to tech support (within a 12-month period), and a spam filter.
Sponsored Mode. This free version drops two features from the pay version: the spam filter and the free tech support. This version of the program also displays a small ad in the screen’s bottom corner, as well as two ad buttons on the top menu.
Light Mode. If you find ads so offensive that you’re willing to sacrifice the program’s spell checker to rid yourself of them, choose this option.
All three versions of Eudora handle the same email basics as Outlook Express. Installation is easy, too: the program visits Outlook Express to import your email account settings as well as your previously received messages. (It copies your messages only; your originals remain safe with Outlook Express.) When the program finishes installing itself, it presents itself on the screen with all your old email waiting for you. To check for new mail, you need only enter your email account’s password.
Figure 12-2. Eudora looks very similar to Outlook Express, with a row of toolbar buttons along the top and a row of folders along its left edge that contain your mail. Eudora’s “adsupported” version, shown here, contains most of the features of the paid version, but continually displays an ad in its lower-left corner.
Pros. Eudora comes in both PC and Mac versions, a plus if you find yourself computing on both types of computers. To help keep your different email conversations separate, you can assign different colors to different conversations. The program also makes extensive use of tabs—little clickable protrusions for quickly changing views. Click a tab on your Mailboxes window, for instance, and the window switches from a row of In and Out boxes to a file browser, a handy way to drag a file into an outgoing email. Click the Mailboxes tab to bring back your Inbox, Outbox, and other mailboxes.
Cons. Many people find Eudora to be overkill, yet, frustratingly, it lacks some of the details of Outlook Express. For example, it doesn’t show how many unread messages are waiting in each folder, nor does it let you create and nestle subfolders inside your Inbox to track different projects. And although the ads try to be unobtrusive, it’s annoying when a misplaced click on your part interrupts your work flow with a word from the sponsor.
Thunderbird (http://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird), shown in Figure 12-3, flies to us from the Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit organization that also unleashed the popular Firefox Web browser (Section 13.1.2). Both programs are open source, meaning the programs’ code sits on the Internet, freely available for any programmer to inspect or modify (open source programs often get customized to fit the needs of particular user groups). With everything on the drawing board, some miscreants can look for weak spots to unleash viruses. But this open approach also lets other programmers find potential flaws and fix them before the attacks occur.
Figure 12-3. Thunderbird looks and feels a lot like Outlook Express. One big difference: its open source programming lets anybody examine the application’s internal structure. Most folks are content to work with its existing menus, but creative types are free to add bells and whistles. Some people create and share add-ons to enhance Thunderbird. Others translate the program into their own language or just pitch into the communal bugfixing that contributes to the health and well-being of all open source programs.
So far, open source seems to be working, as Thunderbird contains far fewer security problems than Outlook Express.
Pros. Thunderbird’s open source underpinnings let programmers offer small add-on programs called extensions—spam killers, address book enhancers, duplicate message removers, and so on. By downloading only the extensions you need from inside the program (Tools → Extensions → Get More Extensions), you can keep the program small, speedy, and free of long menus with unused features.
Like most competing email programs, Thunderbird automatically imports your information from Outlook Express (as well as from Outlook, or Eudora), keeping your originals safe inside Outlook Express. Thunderbird looks and feels like Outlook Express, but with a few more features—a built-in Real Simple Syndication (RSS) reader (Section 13.5), for instance, alerts you to updates on your favorite Web sites. New features appear almost daily as programmers release more extensions.
Cons. Although Mozilla’s Web site is well written, with Frequently Asked Questions areas and a searchable support database, it doesn’t offer person-to person tech support. Instead, Thunderbird fans need to seek help on the community forums (go to mozilla.org/support/ and, under the Thunderbird header, click Community Support Forums); if that fails, a third-party company, InfoSpan (1-888-586-4539), offers tech support for a $39.95-perincident fee.
Some people don’t want an email program that lives on their PC. Instead, they prefer to log onto the Internet with their Web browser and read their email online, using what’s known as a Web-based email service. These folks can always copy mail to their PC for reference, if they wish, but for the most part, everything stays on the Web.
Some people find both types of systems too attractive to pass up. They’ll sign up for a Web-based service to keep in touch while traveling, and keep their standard, PCbased email program for use at home or work. There’s nothing wrong with having several email addresses from different types of email systems.
To help you decide which system’s best for you, here’s a look at the advantages and disadvantages of Web-based email.
Pros. Since your messages live on the Internet itself, you can read your mail from any Internet-connected PC—a big plus for travelers. Web-based mail programs keep your address book online, too, making your contact info accessible from anywhere.
Another big plus: your email address never changes (unless you want it to, of course). When people move or switch ISPs, they typically have to give up their old email address (for example, [email protected] has to tell everyone that he’s now [email protected]). A Web-based email address, in contrast, never changes. You can move to a new city, state, or even a different country; or you can fire AOL as your ISP and hire Earthlink—the point is, it doesn’t matter who provides your Internet connection. With a Web-based email account, you never have to change your address.
Web-based mail also works better when sending mail from certain WiFi hotspots (Section 11.1.1). An increasing number of WiFi providers block traditional, PC-based mail services to keep spammers from parking down the block and flooding the network with spam. That doesn’t affect Web-based email, which handles mail differently.
Some people find Web-based mail easier to set up, because they’re spared the chore of configuring the most confusing part of a PC-based mail program’s settings: those annoying acronyms called SMTP, POP3, and/or IMAP (see the box on Section 12.1.4). Most Web-based email sites offer ways to send copies of your mail to Outlook Express, if you wish, giving you the best of both worlds: you can read and respond to email while on the road, and have that same mail waiting for you in your PC’s inbox when you return home. That lets you store a master record of all your mail on your PC for reference.
Best of all, the three Web-based email services described in the next sections are free, although two offer more features when you pony up some cash.
Cons. Some people think it’s creepy—and possibly a security risk—to store their email on any computer other than their own. But this shouldn’t be particularly frightening; after all, your PC-based email travels through dozens of other computers, each with its own potential security problems, before safely arriving in your Outlook Express inbox. There’s nothing inherently insecure about Web-based email.
Perhaps a bigger problem is that you always need Internet access to see any of your email, or to locate that recipe Aunt Maria sent last week—unless you’ve set up Outlook Express to grab a copy of all your Web-based mail, too.
The next three sections describe the three most popular Web-based email providers: Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo.
Before Google entered the Web-based email wars with its Gmail service (http://mail.google.com), its competitors offered free email accounts with thimble-sized storage. More ominously, your account evaporated if you didn’t log on after a few weeks. The competitors hoped people would grow tired of these limitations and fork over the annual subscription fee for a “real” account with larger storage and shelf life.
Google shook up the industry by offering free accounts with a whopping 2 GB of storage. And the accounts remain active even if you don’t log in for 9 months (after that, Google shuts down your account). Instead of annoying customers into purchasing accounts, Google makes money selling targeted ads alongside your email; if you’re discussing carpentry with a friend, for instance, small text ads for routers and chisels appear along your screen’s right side. Don’t worry. Nobody’s reading your email. Google’s computers do all the matching and ad placing. Since your email already runs through dozens of computers, checking it for viruses or spam, what’s one more computer in the chain?
In addition to the mammoth storage and long-lived accounts, Google includes innovations like letting you apply labels to certain emails to make them easier to find later. For instance, if you find yourself planning a trip to Vermont with your pals, select all the related emails (via the checkboxes next to every message) and then assign them a label like “Vermont Trip” (click the Edit Labels link on the left side of the window to create new labels). To retrieve all the messages pronto, click “Vermont Trip” from the Label menu; Gmail then retrieves all those messages, no matter what subject they use. Gmail also groups messages with the same subject into one thread. Click a subject name, and all the messages with that same subject appear. A built-in spell checker helps catch typos before you hit the Send button.
You can read your Gmail on the Web, or have Google send the incoming email to your PC-based email program like Outlook Express, Thunderbird, or Eudora—an easy way to back up your Gmail to your PC.
Google’s Gmail easily outclasses the competition, leaving them wondering how to fight back.
Note
At the time of this writing, you can receive a Gmail account in only one of two ways: through an invitation from an existing account holder or by visiting the Web site with your PC and entering your cell phone number. Google then sends your cell phone a text message with an invitation code that you enter at the Gmail site to complete the sign-up process.
Hotmail (http://www.hotmail.com), Microsoft’s salvo in the free Web-based email wars, comes with ads next to your messages, like Google. But to make even more money, Microsoft burdens its free account holders with other restrictions, in an attempt to annoy you into upgrading to the $19.95-per-year, restriction-free account.
For instance, Microsoft bumped its storage from a paltry 2 MB to a slightly-less-paltry 25 MB when Google arrived, and plans to increase it to 250 MB. But that’s still only one tenth of Gmail’s storage capacity. Hotmail’s free email account’s shelf life still remains low: if you don’t check your mail for 30 days, Microsoft erases it all, leaving you with nothing to read when you return from that month-long, email-free, yoga retreat.
You’re also limited to sending 100 messages a day, and you can’t send mail to more than 50 email addresses, which hampers Hotmail’s effectiveness as an emailer for groups. On a positive note, Hotmail also offers a calendar for tracking your appointments online. However, Microsoft automatically deletes every appointment older than 90 days—a good thing for people seeking to clean up their paper trail, perhaps, but a downer for folks who want to save their old appointments for later reference.
Finally, your emails remain stuck online. Unlike Gmail, Hotmail’s free accounts won’t forward mail to your PC’s email program—until you fork over the $19.95 a year, of course, Microsoft’s cure-all for all these annoying restrictions.
Before Gmail arrived, Yahoo (http://mail.yahoo.com) offered 4 MB of storage. They’ve since bumped it up to 1 GB, and are making serious efforts to compete with Google. Like Gmail, Yahoo’s free mail account also sends mail to your PC’s mail program, if you wish.
You can even set up Yahoo to grab mail from other mail servers—the computers holding mail from your other email addresses. The reason that’s a good thing? It means you can log onto Yahoo to read mail from your ISP’s mail account, your Gmail account, and your Yahoo’ email address. It’s a great way for globetrotters to merge all their email addresses into a single spot, accessible from any Internetconnected PC.
Like Gmail and Hotmail, Yahoo displays some advertising as you read your mail. If you don’t log in for four months, Yahoo deletes all your email, an inconvenience you can avoid by upgrading to a paid version of the service, the Yahoo Plus account, which costs $19.99 a year.
Although Yahoo’s great at retrieving mail from other accounts you may already have, it drags its feet when it comes to exporting mail. Yahoo forwards email only to Outlook Express, and only if you upgrade to Yahoo’s Plus account.
It never hurts to set up Outlook Express, Windows XP’s free email program, even if you’re considering switching to an alternative, like Thunderbird or Eudora. Those applications, and most other email programs, automatically set themselves up by consulting your Outlook Express account information, saving you from the hassles of manual configuration.
To get started, fire up Outlook Express right from your PC’s Start menu; if it’s not listed, choose Start → All Programs → Outlook Express. The program doesn’t always hop straight onto the screen, though. When you load Outlook Express for the first time, the Internet Connection wizard asks you for the following information. Click Next after you’ve answered each question.
Your Name.
Enter your real name here (assuming you want your recipients to know it). When you send email, this name appears in your message’s From: field, and, with some email programs, automatically winds up in the recipient’s address book.
Internet E-mail Address.
Your ISP let you choose this address when you signed up. It’s probably something like [email protected].
E-mail Server Names.
These are the most confusing settings to enter (see Figure 12-4, top). This screen is where you indicate what type of mail server your ISP uses and what the address is of the servers that send (Outgoing) and receive (Incoming) your mail. (See the “The DIRT on POP, IMAP, and SMTP” box on Section 12.1.4 for details on your different choices.)
Type. If you’re using a POP3 server, like most people, leave the “My incoming mail server” drop-down menu alone. If you’re using IMAP, choose that setting from the drop-down menu.
Server name. Your Incoming mail server is usually named something like pop.cox.net. Your Outgoing mail server is usually named something like smtp.cox.net. Some ISPs toss in a region like pop.central.cox.net. Make sure you know the exact wording to choose here, or you won’t be able to send or receive mail.
If you don’t know the server names, check the sign-up papers you received from your ISP. Most ISPs also list this information on their Web sites in the Frequently Asked Questions area, or in the Customer Service area under “mail setup,” “POP access,” or “server names.”
Internet Mail Logon.
Here’s where you enter your email account name and password, as shown in the bottom of Figure 12-4.
Account name. Here, you enter only the portion of your email address that occurs before the @ sign: davidcopperfield without the @cox.net part. Either you chose this name or your ISP assigned it to you when you signed up for your Internet account (Section 11.3.1).
Password. Your email account password is almost always the same password you use if you log onto your ISP’s Web site to check out your account information.
Even though you’ll be entering a password here, don’t turn on “Log on using Secure Password Authentication (SPA)” unless your ISP specifically tells you to.
When you’re through, the wizard leaves you at the Outlook Express main screen, shown earlier in Figure 12-1.
Should you ever need to change your settings, or check to make sure they match your ISP’s requirements, view the settings by clicking Tools → Options and then double-clicking your account’s name.
Figure 12-4. These two windows are where you inform Outlook Express of key email account settings. Top: Leave the top drop-down menu set to POP3 unless you know that your ISP uses the IMAP mail-server system (see the box on Section 12.1.4 for more details). Then carefully enter the names of the incoming mail server and outgoing mail server as provided to you by your ISP. A single typo will keep your program from fetching your email. Bottom: Enter your account name and password here. Be sure to turn on the “Remember password” checkbox. If it’s turned off, Outlook Express asks for your password every time it checks for waiting mail—a good thing if you’re extremely security conscious, but a needless hassle otherwise.
Note
Whenever you open Outlook Express (and most other email programs, for that matter) the program automatically connects to the Internet to check for new messages. Although this convenience brings in your mail quickly, it’s sometimes a bother for people with dial-up connections who simply want to open Outlook Express to check out an old email. To keep Outlook Express from logging on each time you open it, choose Tools → Options → General tab and then turn off the checkbox marked, “Send and receive messages at startup.” Then, when you want to check for new email in Outlook Express, choose Tools → Send and Receive → Send and Receive All.
When the Internet Connection wizard—the helper from the previous section that walked you through setting up your email account—leaves you at the main Outlook Express screen, you’ll find your first piece of mail already waiting. To see it, click Inbox from the Folders pane along the screen’s left edge. This message didn’t come through the Internet, though, like most email. Microsoft simply programmed Outlook Express to greet all newcomers with the same welcome message. (They don’t really know your email address.)
The best way to get real mail is to start sending some mail to your friends (send and ye shall receive). Outlook Express lets you create and send email using any of the following methods:
Click the Create Mail button from the toolbar at the top of the program.
Choose File → New → Mail Message.
Choose Message → New Message.
Click the Address Book icon, right-click a name, and then choose Action → Send Mail. (For more information on entering names into the Address Book, see Section 12.5.)
Outlook Express opens a new window containing a blank email, complete with a blinking cursor in the To: box, ready for you to add an address (see Figure 12-5, top). Follow these steps to finish your email and send it on its way.
Address the message.
Either of these methods make it easy to stock the To: line with your recipients’ addresses:
Start typing a recipient’s name into the To: field. Outlook Express automatically plucks that person’s address from your Address Book (Section 12.5) and inserts it into the To: field.
Click the To: button to reveal your Address Book, shown in the middle of Figure 12-5. Hold down Ctrl, click the names of everyone you want to receive the message, and then click the Address Book’s To: button. Click OK when you’ve selected everybody, and then your Address Book automatically inserts those selected addresses into the To: field of your blank email.
If the recipients aren’t listed in your Address Book, however, you need to resort to the old way of entering names: type in the email addresses individually, separated by commas or semicolons, like this: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected].
Add any additional recipients to the CC: or BCC: fields.
The To: field works best for people who need to take action on your email; placing them in the To: field means you’re expecting them to reply. But when other recipients aren’t directly involved, keep them up to date by using one of the other two boxes:
CC (Carbon Copy). Save this box for people who aren’t directly involved and don’t need to reply. For instance, if your boss asks you to buy more coffee, place your boss’s name in the CC: field and the coffee vendor’s name in the To: field. That whisks your emailed coffee request to the vendor and lets your boss know you’ve taken care of the job.
BCC (Blind Carbon Copy). Carbon Copy and Blind Carbon Copy do the same thing: send a single piece of mail to several people simultaneously. There’s one important difference, though: Carbon Copy lists the email addresses of all the recipients, so everyone on the receiving end can see who’s been included; Blind Carbon Copy leaves them off. This small distinction makes a big difference.
For instance, add extra recipients to the Blind Carbon Copy field when they don’t know each other, letting them keep their email addresses private. Blind Carbon Copy also works great for letting the police see your response to the ransom letter.
If you absolutely must forward a joke to all your friends, place their addresses in the BCC: field, not the To: or CC: fields. That keeps their email addresses away from the eyes of strangers (and spammers) when it’s forwarded another 14 times.
Figure 12-5. Top: To send a message to one person or several people simultaneously, click the To: button (circled) to open the Address Book. Middle: When the Address Book opens, hold down Ctrl and click every person who you want to send your message to; the Address Book highlights each name you click. If you click a name by mistake, click it again to “deselect” it. When you’ve selected the recipients, click the To: button. Bottom: The Address Book automatically addresses your email to your chosen recipients.
Sum up your message in the Subject: field.
Many people receive dozens, if not hundreds, of emails each day. To make yours stand out, sum up your message’s point in the Subject: field. “Hey there” doesn’t work well as a subject; “Should I buy french roast or decaf” does. If people can’t decipher your email’s subject with a glance at its Subject: line, your mail may disappear in a haystack of other nondescript emails.
Many people ignore this step, preferring to simply type their message. Others take pains with their email’s format—the way the message is displayed on the screen. Outlook Express offers two formats: the fancy HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), shown in Figure 12-6, or the simple Plain Text. Both formats are described below:
Figure 12-6. When you choose to write a message using the HTML format, Outlook Express places a toolbar across the top of your note. The toolbar works much like the toolbar in a word processor, letting you select words and change their fonts and colors to spice up an email.
Plain (Format → Plain Text). Plain text looks just like it sounds. As you type your message, Outlook Express places plain black letters on a white background, with no colors, underlines, italics, pictures, buttons, fancy font sizes, or flashing lights. Since it’s simple and to the point, Plain Text works best in most situations, especially at work.
HTML (Format → Rich Text (HTML)). The HTML format lets you create letters that resemble mini-Web pages, with elaborate backgrounds and special fonts. HTML works best for party flyers, or casual email between friends. If you’re sending the email to somebody at work, stick with plain text; some corporate email programs strip HTML messages of their formatting, turning your colorful stationary back into plain text.
To choose the default mail format Outlook Express uses for all your new messages, choose Tools → Options → Send tab; in the area called Mail Sending Format, select either HTML or Plain Text.
GEM IN THE ROUGH: Sincerely Yours—Automatically
Sending lots of email means lots of repetitive typing, especially when ending a message. Email doesn’t allow for scrawled signatures for a closer, so most people make do by typing their name and perhaps adding the name of their company, Web site, or a witty phrase. To speed things up, add those words to a signature that Outlook Express automatically tacks onto the end of your email.
To create a customized signature, choose Tools → Options → Signatures tab → New; the Signature Settings area appears, ready for you to type in a signature in the Edit Signature area.
If you’ve set up several accounts in Outlook Express to handle different email addresses, click the Advanced button, and click the email account you’d like to bear that particular signature. (That lets you assign a bawdy signature for your personal email address, for instance, but stick to standard fare for your work email address.)
Tack on your newly created signature to all of your messages from the assigned account by turning on “Add signatures to all outgoing messages.” If you prefer to reserve your signature for a few specific messages, leave that option turned off. Instead, choose Insert→Signature when composing an email.
But no matter which format you choose there, you can change the format setting, on-the-fly, when composing a new message: choose Format → Plain Text or Format → Rich Text (HTML).
One thing to remember, though: choosing Plain Text is always appropriate, as it’s easy to read. But since most spam comes formatted in HTML, your HTMLformatted email may be kicked into the recipient’s Junk folder by her spam filter. The bottom line—use HTML formatting with caution, and definitely not for must-see email messages.
Type your message.
Type your missive into the message window’s bottom half. The usual editing rules apply here, which means that you can cut (Ctrl+X), copy (Ctrl+C), and paste (Ctrl+V) words or sentences while writing your message.
Send your message by clicking Send on the message’s toolbar.
As soon as you click the Send button, Outlook Express connects to the Internet, delivers the mail to your ISP’s mail server, and then starts your mail on its path to the recipient’s inbox. That lack of delay can be dangerous. The off-the-cuff message you dashed off in 10 seconds could live in somebody else’s PC (not to mention in her mind) for a long time.
Tip
You may prefer that Outlook Express wait a few minutes before sending your emails, giving you time to add last-minute thoughts or even cancel the message if you suddenly realize calling someone a toad won’t improve matters. Adding a delay is a two-part process. First, choose Tools → Options → Send tab and turn off “Send messages immediately.” Then click the General tab and turn on “Check for new messages every XX minutes,” changing XX to any number between 1 and 480 minutes. (Ten minutes usually works well.)
Once Outlook Express sends your mail, the program places a copy of your sent email into your Sent folder (Section 12.4.4), stamped with its send date and time.
Just as you can stuff a photo and other items into a real-world envelope, you can insert a digital photo and other types of files into an email. Outlook Express uses the word attachment to describe a file that rides along with an email message. You can attach one or more files to a message using any of these three methods:
Right-click the file or selected files and choose Send To → Mail Recipient. Outlook Express then quickly opens a new message and attaches your selected file or files.
Open a new message, and then drag and drop a file (or a group of selected files) into your open message window. Outlook Express then tacks the file or files onto your email for transporting.
Open a new message and choose Insert → File Attachment from the New Message window. Navigate to the folder containing the desired file, and then double-click the file you want. Repeat for other files. (To send several files in the same folder, hold down Ctrl while clicking each file you want.)
Attached the wrong file to your message? Right-click the misplaced file’s icon from within your email window, and from the shortcut menu, choose Remove to pry the file from your message. (Outlook Express was sending only a copy, so your original file stays unharmed.)
One warning: don’t try to send a friend 25 favorite photos from your trip to Tunisia, or any other large files. Sending files that add up to more than 5 MB can create several problems.
Not everybody has a speedy broadband connection (Section 11.1.2), so your vacation photos may end up tying up your friend’s dial-up connection for hours.
Many email accounts allow only about 5 MB of storage. Your friend may receive your message, but nothing else. All his other email bounced (Section 5.7) because your huge file hogged his entire mailbox.
Many mail servers balk at large files and bounce them back to you, wasting your efforts.
You’ve got several options if you do find yourself needing to send large files; the first step is recognizing when your attachments qualify for beefy status. Keep an eye on the file’s size as you attach it; Outlook Express also lists the size next to each attached file’s name. When the total exceeds 5 MB, try some of these solutions.
If you’re sending digital photos, let Windows XP resize them for you automatically (Section 5.5). Smaller photos consume less space, letting you safely send a dozen decent-sized photos. Consider posting your photos to a photo-sharing site (Section 5.5.2), and then sending your friend the site’s Web address.
Try sending large files through YouSendIt (http://www.yousendit.com). This free Web site lets you upload a file, and then sends the recipient an email with the link where he can download it.
To avoid dealing with a third-party service like YouSendIt, chat hounds can send large files through an Instant Messaging program.
When you’ve exhausted all these options, don’t forget how our ancestors made do: copy your large files to a CD (Section 10.5.1), and mail or FedEx it to your friend or coworker’s street address.
Much to the dismay of bad spellers, speedy typists, and fumble-fingered folk, Outlook Express doesn’t include a built-in spell checker. Instead, Spelling is listed on the menu (Tools → Spelling) as an unavailable, “grayed out” option, leading people to think they’ve somehow broken their program. Instead, Microsoft deliberately left out spell checking as one more way to annoy people into upgrading to its full-featured email program, Outlook, which includes a spell checker.
However, if you install Microsoft Word, FrontPage, Works Suite, or similar Microsoft programs, Outlook Express sneaks over and borrows that program’s spell checker, letting its spell check option appear on the menu in its full glory.
Then you can press F7 (or choose Tools → Spelling) to spell check your newly composed message. Even better, make Outlook Express automatically check your spelling before sending any messages by choosing Tools → Options → Spelling tab and turning on the “Always check spelling before sending” checkbox.
Perhaps the only joy greater than sending a message is receiving one. Every time Outlook Express picks up a new piece of email, the program adds it to the growing list of messages waiting in the program’s inbox (Section 12.4.4). To see these messages, click your inbox, as shown in Figure 12-7.
Outlook offers two ways to view a message: inside the preview pane, and inside its own window.
To preview a message, click any part of its name in the message list. That message’s contents spill into the preview pane directly below. To make names and messages easier to read, feel free to drag the border between the message list and the preview pane. Drag the border upward to devote more space to the preview pane when reading a message; to see more message names, drag the border downward.
Figure 12-7. Outlook Express displays your messages in three sections. To see what’s inside any folder listed in the left-hand pane, click the folder’s name; the names of the messages in that folder appear in the top half of the two adjacent panes. Click the message you want to view, and its contents appear in the bottom pane. Once you read a message, its envelope icon indicates that it’s been “opened.” Unread mail is marked with an icon of an unopened envelope. Double-click any message, and it leaps to the screen in its own window.
To see a message in its own window—the best way to view long messages—double-click the message’s name. The message pops open into its own resizable window. To make it fill the screen, double-click its title bar along the top of the message. (To return it back to its former size, double-click the title bar again.)
You can quickly plow through many messages in either viewing mode. In the preview mode, press your keyboard’s up or down arrows to view adjacent messages on the list. When viewing a message in its own window, click the Previous or Next buttons (in the message window’s toolbar) to cycle through other messages.
Note
Outlook Express normally lets you view images embedded inside messages. Occasionally, you’ll see a blank frame instead of the images—usually when the message comes from a spammer. Outlook Express explains its actions with a banner across the message’s top saying, “Some pictures have been blocked to help prevent the sender from identifying your computer.” If the message came from a friend, click that banner to see the images. But if it’s from a spammer, delete the message, as described in the next section.
Not all of your email will come from friends inviting you to join them in wild adventures, luxurious trips, and fabulous dinner parties. In reality, you’ll want to send a large portion of your mail straight to the trash. Outlook Express offers several ways to delete emails you no longer want (or never wanted in the first place).
Right-click a message’s name and, from the shortcut menu, choose Delete.
Click a message’s name and then click the Delete button on the toolbar.
Click a message’s name and press Ctrl+D or Edit → Delete.
However, once you perform any of these steps, the message isn’t really deleted. Just as Windows offers a safety net with its Recycle Bin (Section 16.1), Outlook Express’s Deleted Items folder serves the same purpose. All deleted messages aren’t swept from your PC; instead, they’re swept into the Deleted Items folder. That lets you salvage accidentally deleted items by dragging them back into your Inbox or any other folder, either in Outlook Express or Windows.
The Deleted Items folder’s safety net makes true deletion a two-step process: delete the message, then delete it from your Deleted Items folder. You can do that in either of two ways:
To delete a single message from the Deleted Items folder, click the message’s name and then press Del or choose Delete from the toolbar.
To delete everything from the Deleted Items folder, right-click the folder and, from the shortcut menu, choose “Empty ‘Deleted Items’ Folder.”
Once you purge anything that’s in your Deleted Items folder, Windows finally understands that you don’t want it around anymore. Outlook Express really deletes the message, bypassing the Recycle Bin.
To empty your Deleted Items folder each time you close Outlook Express—handy when dealing with sensitive items—choose Tools → Options → Maintenance tab and turn on the “Empty messages from the ‘Deleted Items’ folder on exit” checkbox.
One of the best advantages email holds over letters comes when replying, as Outlook Express automates the entire process. When you’re reading a message that needs a reply, click the Reply button in the toolbar.
Outlook Express opens a new message window, automatically addressing the new message’s To: field with the sender’s name and email address. Outlook Express recycles the original mail’s subject line by placing a “Re:” (short for “Regarding”) before the subject’s name, letting the receiver know exactly what message you’re replying to.
Outlook Express then dumps the original email’s contents into your reply, prefacing each line with the “>” bracket, which sets apart your reply from the original. That lets the receiver see at a glance what she’s sent you, sparing her a search in her Sent folder.
Finally, Outlook leaves you with a blinking cursor at the preaddressed message’s top, ready for you to type in your response.
The Outlook Express toolbar offers two reply buttons, each with slightly different effects:
Reply. Used most often, this button simply addresses your response to the message’s sender.
Reply All. This sends your response to the sender, as well as everybody listed on the message’s CC: field (Section 12.3). It’s a great way to keep everybody informed about a work in progress, sparing you from typing in everybody’s email address by hand. However, it’s disastrous when you meant to send a private response to the sender.
Forward lets you kick a received email into somebody else’s inbox, a handy thing on two occasions:
You want to share a letter with some of your friends. Forward spares you the hassle of cutting and pasting your son’s college letter into a new message when you want to share it with the relatives.
You want to designate a task. When a piece of mail refers to something best handled by somebody else, the Forward button lets you send the mail his way, sparing you the bother of answering it.
To forward a piece of mail, click the toolbar’s Forward icon instead of the Reply button. (Or right-click the email and then choose Forward.) A new piece of mail appears, with the initial message’s contents pasted inside. Fill out the address just as if you’re sending your own piece of mail, and type a short note explaining why you’re forwarding the email: “I thought you’d get a kick out of this, Geraldine,” or “You’re much better equipped to handle this than I, George.”
You can forward a piece of mail to as many people as you want by placing the recipient’s names in the To: or CC: fields (see Section 12.3). But if you’re forwarding something funny to oodles of friends, be sure to place their names in the BCC: field, not the To: field.
Note
When sending spam or suspicious email (Section 15.5) to a company’s security department, don’t use Forward. Instead, right-click the suspicious email’s name and then choose “Forward as an Attachment. " That forwards the email as an attached file rather than just quoting the text. This important difference preserves the message’s header—significant technical information for tracing the file back to its nefarious sender.
From the day you first open it, Outlook Express automatically sorts your incoming and outgoing email into five folders along its left edge. Click any folder to spill its contents onto the adjacent pane, letting you see what’s inside:
Outbox. Messages you’ve written and sent, but that haven’t yet been delivered. Click the Send/Recv button, and Outlook Express connects to the Internet to deliver them, and then it places a copy of the message in your Sent Items folder, described next.
Sent Items. Copies of messages that you’ve sent and Outlook Express has delivered.
Deleted Items. Messages you’ve deleted. As handy as your PC’s main Recycle Bin, the Deleted Items folder (Section 12.4.4) lets you retrieve accidentally deleted items. Unlike the Recycle Bin, however, the Deleted Items folder never empties itself. Right-click it and choose “Empty ‘Deleted Items’ Folder” to delete the messages for good.
Drafts. Emails you’ve started writing, but plan to finish later.
Outlook Express’ five folders work fine for getting started. But once you begin to receive emails, you won’t want every received message to clog your Inbox. To reduce Inbox clutter, tell Outlook Express to create new folders, organized the way you want. You can create new folders in two ways.
Folders inside existing folders. You can place folders inside your Inbox, for instance, devoting one folder to each of your ongoing projects. To do that, right-click your Inbox and, from the shortcut menu, choose New Folder, as shown in Figure 12-8, top, to open the Create Folder window, shown in Figure 12-8, bottom. Type a name for your new folder, and then click OK to create the folder.
Folders on the same level as existing folders. To create a folder that’s not hidden inside existing folders, right-click Local Folders and then choose New Folder to open the same Create Folder window, where you type a name for your new folder, and then click OK to create it.
Figure 12-8. You can organize your email in Outlook Express by creating new folders inside your Inbox, or in any other folder. Top: Right-click your Inbox (or any other folder) and, from the shortcut menu, choose New Folder. Bottom: Name the folder whatever you like, and then click OK. This Create Folder window also works great if you change your mind midstream; once you’re here, you can click any listed folder to create a subfolder; you’re not stuck with the folder you right-clicked to open this window.
The folder system in Outlook Express works much like any other folders you encounter in Windows—you can drag files and folders to new locations, for instance, letting you move a project folder out of the Inbox and into, say, your Completed Projects folder when you’re done with it. You can also drag messages from one folder to another—handy for dragging mail out of the Outbox and putting it into the Drafts folder until you have time to add that last-minute thought.
After you create a folder inside another folder, a plus sign appears next to the newly organized folder indicating it contains other folders. Click the plus sign and, presto, you’ll see the folders lurking inside.
When you need to print an email—directions to a friend’s house, for instance, or that recipe for pistachio salsa—click the Print icon along the message’s top, press Ctrl+P, or choose File → Print. In any case, the familiar Print dialog box appears to let you select a printer, paper type, number of pages, and so on (see Section 4.4 for Print dialog box details). Choose your options, and Outlook Express whisks it off to your printer.
Things become a bit trickier when printing an email that was composed using the HTML format (Section 12.3). HTML messages can contain extra formatting like images, unusual margin widths, tables, and other items difficult to fit onto paper. So, Windows XP treats the mail as if it were a Web page, offering the same options as Internet Explorer for squeezing the mail onto a single sheet of paper (see Section 4.9).
Outlook Express offers a nice finishing touch to your printed email. At the page’s top, it prints your name, the sender’s name and email address, the message’s subject, and the time and date the message was sent.
When somebody sends you mail with an attached file, you’ll know even before you open the message—you’ll spot a paper clip icon next to the message’s name. Double-click the email, and you’ll spot the attached file either in the message’s Attach: field or along the message’s bottom.
Although you can see the file’s icon inside the message, the file’s not really saved on your hard drive. That attached file is actually embedded inside the email message. So, you need to free the file from its email wrapper by saving it to a folder on your hard drive. You can do this in either of two ways:
Drag and drop. Drag and drop the attached file’s icon from the message to your Desktop or any other folder. If somebody sent you lots of files, click one and press Ctrl+A to select them all; that lets you drag them all to a folder with one quick drag.
Click and save. Right-click the attached file, and, from the shortcut menu, choose Save As. When the Save Attachment As window appears, navigate to a folder to store the newcomer, and then click Save to save the file in that folder. To save a group of attachments all in one fell swoop, select them all, as described above, right-click the selected attachments, and then choose Save All.
Sometimes Windows XP thwarts your attempt at saving the attachment. Microsoft’s first so-called Service Pack (major upgrade) for Windows XP added a restriction to Outlook Express that keeps everybody from opening—or even seeing—more than 70 types of files, including emailed links to Web sites. Instead of letting you see your attached files, Outlook Express displays a warning banner or “grays out” the file’s names so you can’t save them (see Figure 12-9).
This doesn’t mean Outlook Express found some virus-infected files. It means somebody sent you a program, a link to a Web site, or any other type of file that’s capable of carrying a virus.
If your PC already has an antivirus program (Section 15.6.3), put a halt to Outlook Express’ protection goons: choose Tools → Options → Security Tab and then turn off the option called, “Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus” (Figure 12-9, bottom). Click OK, and if it still balks at letting you open an attachment, restart Outlook Express.
You might never need to fill out Outlook Express’ Address Book—the program’s collection of names and email addresses (as well as any other contact information you want to store). Whenever you reply to a message, Outlook Express automatically tosses that person’s name and email address into your Address Book. If it’s not handling that chore for you, tell it to start, pronto: click Tools → Options → Send tab, and then turn on “Automatically put people I reply to in my Address Book.”
Even when you don’t reply to a received message, you can add all the addresses from any message’s To: box using these commands:
Tools → Add to Address Book → Sender. This adds the sender’s name to your Address Book, even if you don’t reply.
Tools → Add to Address Book → Everyone on To list. This adds the email address of every person listed in the To: field. It’s a great way to add the address of every member of your knitting club from the emailed newsletter.
Right-click any email address. If you spot an email address listed in the body of an email, right-click it and then choose Add to Address Book.
Occasionally you need to peek into your Address Book to edit entries, adding a street address to an existing contact, for instance, or typing in a phone number. In that case, open the Address Book by clicking its icon in the toolbar of either Outlook Express or any open message. The Address Book then appears, listing the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all your contacts.
Figure 12-9. The overzealous Outlook Express sometimes blocks incoming attachments instead of opening them, a fault easily remedied. Top: When the message opens in its own window, Outlook Express completely removes the attached files from view and displays a warning. Middle: When viewed in the preview pane, the message’s attachments are “grayed out,” preventing you from saving them. Bottom: To let yourself open attachments in Outlook Express, choose Tools → Options → Security Tab and then turn off the option called, “Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus.”
You can edit any contact’s information by double-clicking the person’s name. Or, to add a new entry, click the New icon or choose File → New Contact. In either case, an address card appears, as shown in Figure 12-10, with seven tabs for entering enough information to keep the CIA happy.
Most people stick with the basics: first name, last name, and email address. But to create a full-fledged dossier, click the other tabs to enter home and business addresses and phone numbers, names of the spouse and children, gender, birthday, anniversary, and so on.
Figure 12-10. To add somebody to your Address Book, type in the person’s first name, last name, and email address. And feel free to click the Home or Business tabs to enter the address and phone number. If you’ve got an iPod, the accompanying iTunes music-playing software can take the basic information you enter here and place it into your iPod for on-the-road reference (Section 8.3.5).
Email works much like a normal, person-to-person conversation, yet it carries its own set of potential social gaffes. These short guidelines will help keep you from looking like an amateur.
Don’t write with all capital letters. This LOOKS LIKE SHOUTING, something few enjoy seeing up close on their monitor.
Keep it short. Sum up your letter in the Subject: field, make your point, and then click the Send button. If you have several other unrelated subjects to discuss, place them in separate mails. That makes it easier for the recipient to prioritize them, not to mention find them again when needed.
Don’t forward chain mails or hoaxes. These mails encourage recipients to forward them to all of their friends, helping spread the word about a poor sick child, an act of bravery, or some newly discovered PC-killing virus. Most people hate receiving these. And people who’ve spent more than six months on the Internet have probably already seen it. Before forwarding a chain mail or hoax, look it up at Snopes (http://www.snopes.com), a site that collects hoaxes that continually make the rounds of the Internet.
If you absolutely must forward a message like this, place recipients in the BCC: field (Section 12.3), or you’ll expose their email addresses to thousands of strangers, including spammers.
Reply to an existing message rather than starting a new one. When you receive a message discussing “Upcoming Mars Trip,” click Reply from the toolbar. Your email program automatically renames the subject to “Re: Upcoming Mars Trip,” helping every recipient keep track of the conversation. If you click Create Mail from the toolbar to reply, and then name your response, “Martian Holiday,” you’ve broken the thread, in email lingo. The original discussion breaks into two separate subjects, making them much more difficult to track.
Watch the sarcasm. Email carries the impact of the printed word, but it’s often phrased conversationally. Since the reader can’t see the smirk on your face as you type, your sarcasm rarely comes across. Leave it out unless you know the recipient very well.
Don’t send flames. When an email really upsets you, don’t immediately return fire. Wait a day or so to cool off. Even better, discuss it in person; you may be mistaking a misguided attempt at humor for anger.
Don’t send too many attachments. One or two baby pictures, properly resized (Section 5.5), can be a treat for relatives. More photos than that, and you’re consuming a lot of somebody’s time and mailbox space. Instead of mailing them, post them on a photo-sharing site (Section 5.5.2). That lets the recipients view them at their leisure.
When you’re having trouble sending a piece of email, don’t immediately blame yourself. Email sleuthing involves more suspects than an Agathie Christie novel. Here are some of the more common email problems, as well as their fixes:
Mail won’t send to a newly added address. It takes only one typo to spoil delivery. Email programs like Outlook Express fill out the email addresses of friends automatically from your Address Book (Section 12.5), but if a newly added address gives you trouble, check with the recipient to make sure you’re spelling it correctly.
Mail suddenly stops sending or receiving, but you can still connect to the Internet. This happens when your ISP’s mail server goes down temporarily. It happens to the best of them. These glitches usually last from a few minutes to several hours, and your only course of action is to wait. (To send an urgent piece of email, try using a Web-based email service [Section 12.1.4] like Gmail or Yahoo.)
No email will send. When you haven’t been able to send any email, the problem may lie with your email program. Run the setup program that comes with Outlook Express (Section 12.2), or any other email program, to make sure you’ve entered the following items correctly: your user name, password, and the ISP’s mail server names (see Section 12.2 for complete details).
No Internet connection or email. When you lose your Internet connection, you have no alternative but to wait until your ISP restores service. If you’re desperate, drop by a library, an Internet Café, or other publicly accessible PC (Section 11.1). Make sure you’ve connected your PC to the Internet correctly, though (Section 11.6.1), before you rush out of the house.
Your recipient’s email address no longer works. You don’t have any control over this one, either. If you’re having trouble sending mail to a friend, her ISP’s email server might not be working. There’s not much you can do but ride it out.
Mailbox unavailable. When your sent message returns to you with the subject “Mailbox unavailable” or something similar, you’re seeing the PC equivalent of an answering machine that’s too stuffed with messages to accept more. Since the recipient’s mailbox can’t hold any more messages, his ISP sent it back to you to resend at a later time. The recipient probably hasn’t logged on for awhile. Or maybe somebody sent him digital photos without resizing them first (Section 5.5), immediately filling up his mailbox.
When a sent message returns to your Inbox, resend it and hope for the best. Since most mail programs don’t offer a Resend option, choose Forward, instead, to send your message as an attachment. Add a note about how your original message bounced. If it bounces yet again—and you’re sure you have the right email address—try waiting a day or two before sending it. You may just have to reach for the telephone.
Unfortunately, the battle against spam—unsolicited emailed advertisements—can’t be won easily. Sending one email costs the same as sending one million, making it an irresistible advertising tool. And believe it or not, it’s profitable. Some deluded souls really do buy stuff from spammers—or at least they send them money; the goods aren’t always delivered.
Finally, sending spam is already illegal in many areas, but that’s no deterrent. The current email system doesn’t offer a foolproof way of tracking a sender’s identity. That makes the laws difficult to enforce.
More and more antivirus programs like Trend Micro’s PC-cillin Internet Security (http://www.trendmicro.com) and Norton’s Internet Security (http://www.symantec.com) include spam management programs. These programs install special filters on your PC that watch email you dump into a special Spam folder. As the programs recognize patterns between the mail you toss and the mail you keep, they begin taking over, automatically dumping suspected spam into your Spam folder.
Although spam can’t be banished completely, these tactics can help reduce the amount of spam hitting your mailbox:
Ask your ISP if they have a spam filter. Some ISPs put filters in place that trap spam before it hits your mailbox. ISPs are constantly bombarded with spam, and when they see 5,000 messages flowing in from one address, they can turn off that spigot, keeping it from reaching the rest of their customers.
When buying products, signing up for Web site access, or registering products, turn on the No checkbox if they ask to send you marketing materials.
Create a disposable email address at Yahoo, or another free email service (Section 12.1.4). Use this address for email conversations that don’t really matter—registering at a free Web site, for instance. When that email starts drawing too much spam, delete it from Outlook Express (Tools → Account; click the disposable email address’s name and then click the Remove button.) Then create a new disposable address and start over.
Never click the “Remove Me” link from spam; when you click such a link, you let the spammers know that your email address works, that you read your email, and that you’re a perfect candidate for their next mailing.
Add the spammer’s address to your blocked senders list, described in the next section.
Remember the childhood ploy of plugging your ears and whistling when you didn’t want to hear somebody? Outlook Express offers a similar way of dealing with people who continually send annoying or harassing messages.
When you open a message only to find something offensive—spam, insults, or something from somebody you’d rather not hear from—choose Message → Block Sender. Outlook Express adds the sender’s name to your Blocked Senders list (affectionately named a “Twit Filter” by net-savvy citizens), and presents a dialog box offering to remove all of that person’s messages from that current folder. (Click Yes to remove them; click No to leave the messages in place.)
The next time Outlook Express notices an incoming message from that sender, it automatically kicks it into your Deleted Items folder rather than your Inbox.
If you discover you’ve banished somebody accidentally, or you’ve shaken hands and made up, remove her from your blocked senders list by clicking Tools → Message Rules → Blocked Senders List. Click her name on the Blocked Senders list and then click the Remove button to bring her back into your social circle.
Unfortunately, the Blocked Senders list rarely works as a spam killer, as most spammers create a new email address for every batch of spam. But adding spam addresses to your Blocked Senders list provides a sense of moral satisfaction for many people.