Opening received attachments

When somebody sends you an e-mail message with files attached, the header for that message shows a paper clip icon. For example, the first two messages both have attachments. When you click the message header of such a message the Preview pane also shows a paper clip. Clicking the large paper clip icon in the Preview pane shows the filenames of the attachments and a Save Attachments option. Most malware (viruses and such) is spread by e-mail attachments. Never open any e-mail attachment unless you know who it’s from and what it contains. Do not trust e-mail messages that claim to be returning failed messages from your account. Most of the time they’re fake. Their attached files contain things you do not want on your computer! To open an attachment, first click the message header, then click the large paper clip icon in the Preview pane header. The name of each attached file appears in a menu. To view the contents of an attachment, click its filename in the menu. You will probably get a security warning. If you’re confident that the attachment is safe, click Open to open it. The attachment will open in whatever program is currently configured for that file type on your system. (Assuming there is a program for that file type on your system.) If it opens, you can view it, save it to a regular file, print it, or do whatever you like with it in that program. (Again, assuming you know how to use that program to do all of those things.) Close that program when you’re done viewing the attachment.

Now let’s look at why you might not be able to open every attachment you receive. There are thousands of different file types, and thousands of different programs. You can only open files (attachments) for a file type if you have a program that can open that file type. If you don’t have an appropriate program installed on your system, you’ll see an error message, when you try to open an attachment. As an example, suppose someone sends you a Microsoft PowerPoint file with a .ppt extension. If you don’t have the PowerPoint program (or a PowerPoint viewer), you won’t be able to open that attachment. At least, not until you get a PowerPoint viewer. It would probably take as many pages as there are in this entire article for me to list all the different filename extensions and the programs that can open them. So I won’t even attempt that. But I can tell you some of the more common file types, and the programs you need to open them. I’ll stick with free viewers here. The difference between a viewer and program is that the viewer will let you see the file, but not change it. Also, the viewer is free. The full program for the file type usually costs money.

Blocking specific senders

In Windows Vista The Blocked Senders tab is the opposite of Safe Senders. There you can list specific domains or addresses that should be blocked. Of course, there are millions of addresses from which you don’t want to accept e-mail, and it wouldn’t make sense to try to list them all. Furthermore, if you chose Safe Senders Only on the first page of the dialog box, you don’t need to list any domains or addresses in Blocked Senders, because everyone except your safe senders will be blocked automatically.

Blocking by country and language

Most of us get junk e-mail messages written in languages we don’t understand, often from countries we never even heard of. The International tab in Junk E-Mail Options lets you block messages from entire countries. For example, you can click the Blocked Top Level Domain List button to see a list of all countries that have a specific abbreviation in their international domain (US for United States, AU for Australia, and so forth). You can really minimize your foreign junk mail by clicking Block Top Level Domain List. When the list opens, click Select All. Then scroll down through the list and clear the checkmark next to any country from which you are willing to accept e-mail. Different languages require different encoding (characters). The Blocked Encoding List lets you block and accept messages based on that encoding. So again, you could click that option. Then select (check) encodings that support languages you can’t read. But be careful there. Just because you don’t know what an encoding means doesn’t mean you can’t read text written in that language. You should only block an encoding if you’re sure it’s for a language you can’t read.

Blocking phishing scams

Phishing is perhaps the most prevalent threat on the Internet today. This is where people send out e-mail messages that appear to be from legitimate banks and businesses where people have accounts. They tell people there’s a problem with their account and instruct them to log in to their accounts. Unaware users dutifully follow the instructions, not realizing that the place where they’re signing in and divulging their user name, password, and other personal information is not the company the message and Web page purport to be. It’s an imposter posing as a legitimate business to steal information. Phishing scams like that are prevalent because they work. People see a name and logo they recognize, so they assume the e-mail and page are legitimate. Unfortunately, names and logos mean nothing in e-mail messages and Web pages. Anyone with even rudimentary computer skills can copy them off of legitimate Web sites and paste them into their own fraudulent e-mails. And they do it all the time. This is how they lure innocent folk into divulging information that leads to identity theft and unauthorized withdrawals from bank accounts.

Managing Mail Folders and Messages

All of your e-mail messages are organized into mail folders. Those mail folders are different from the document folders discussed in Article 28 because you get to them through the Windows Mail program, not from Explorer. Windows Mail comes with several pre-defined folders for storing messages. Those folders are represented by little folder icons in the Folders list at the left side of the Windows Mail program. They include

- Inbox: If you don’t use junk mail filtering, every e-mail message you receive is stored in this folder. With junk mail filtering, only messages that get through the filter are stored in this folder.

- Outbox: If you disable the option to send messages immediately, messages you send are stored in this folder until you click the Send/Receive button.

- Sent Items: Stores a copy of every e-mail message you send, providing Windows Mail is configured to store copies of sent messages. Options for using the Outbox and Sent Items folders are on the Send tab of the Options dialog box. See “Personalizing Windows Mail” later in this article for the full suite of options available to you.

- Deleted Items: Acts like a wastebasket for messages you delete. Deleted messages are not permanently removed from your computer until you delete them from this folder.

- Drafts: If you start writing an e-mail message, but don’t have time to complete it, you can store the message in this folder. Then come back to the message, finish writing the message, and then send it.

- Junk E-mail: Stores messages that your junk mail filter settings have deemed as junk mail. You should check the contents of this folder to make sure nothing important got in there before deleting them. The names of mail folders that contain unread e-mail messages are boldfaced and have a number to the right. The number indicates how may unread messages are in that folder. To view the contents of any e-mail folder, click its name in the Folder list. The contents pane to the right shows a message header for each message in the folder. The message headers for unread messages are boldfaced.

When you click a mail folder name, the status bar at the bottom of the program window shows how many messages are in that folder, and how many of them are unread. Choosing columns for the contents pane The contents pane shows a message header for each message in a mail folder. You can customize that contents pane to show information that’s relevant to how you use Windows Mail. For starters, you can choose columns for display in that pane as follows:

1. Choose View  ->  Columns from the Windows Mail menu bar. The Columns dialog box opens.

2. Select (check) the columns you want to see. Clear checkmarks from columns you don’t want to see. Your choices are

- Priority: This column shows an exclamation point for messages marked high-priority by the sender; it shows a blue down-arrow for messages marked low priority; and it shows nothing for normal priority messages.

- Attachment: Shows a paper clip for messages that have attached files.

- Flag: Provides an easy way for you to mark messages that require more attention later.

- From: Shows the sender’s name.

- Subject: Shows the subject of the message.

- Received: Shows the date and time received.

- To: Shows to whom each message is addressed. Especially handy if you use Windows Mail to manage multiple e-mail accounts.

- Account: Shows the name of the e-mail account from which each message was downloaded. Handy if you use Windows Mail to manage multiple accounts.

- Size: Shows the file size of the message and its attachments (if any).

- Sent: Shows the date and time that each message was sent.

- Watch/Ignore: Used mainly with newsgroups (Article 19) to color-code ongoing conversations you’re watching or ignoring.

3. Optionally, click any selected column name and use the Move Up or Move Down button to change its position in the list. (You can also rearrange columns after you exit the Columns dialog box.)

4. Optionally, click any selected column name and set its width in pixels. You may find it easier to move and size columns after you exit the Columns dialog box. See “Sizing and positioning columns” earlier in this article.

5. Optionally, click the Reset button if all you want to do is get back to the columns that Windows Mail displays by default.

6. Click OK.

You can sort message headers based on information in any column. Just click the column heading on which you want to base the sort.

- An up-pointing arrow in the column heading means the headers are in ascending order (A to Z, or newest to oldest, or smallest to largest).

- A down-pointing arrow indicates descending order (Z to A, or largest to smallest, or oldest to newest). Click the heading to switch between ascending and descending order. For example, to put the newest messages at the top of the list, click the Received column heading until that column heading shows a downpointing triangle.

Flagging messages that need more attention

The Flag column is wonderfully simple to use and worth its weight in gold. Let’s say you read a mail message and know it needs more attention. But you can’t really give it the time right now. Click the Flag column for that message header. A little red flag appears, which acts as a perfect visual reminder. Of course, you can click the Flag column heading (once or twice) to quickly move all flagged message to the top of the list. When you’ve finally given the message the attention it needs, click the little flag next to its header. The flag disappears.

Grouping conversation messages

Sometimes you’ll get into an e-mail situation where someone writes you a message, and you send a reply. They reply to your reply. Then you in turn reply back. This kind of back-and-forth communication is often referred to as a conversation, because it is like a spoken conversation. The message headers for these conversations don’t usually look special in Windows Mail, other than the fact that messages to which you’ve already replied have a reply arrow in their icon. You can get better organized and save some space by grouping those conversational messages together. Just choose View  ->  Current View  ->  Group Messages by Conversation from the menu bar. Once the messages are grouped, there are two ways you can view them. In the collapsed view, only one of the message headers is visible. Reducing all the messages in the conversation to a single header like that can save a lot of space, and also make it easier to treat the whole conversation as a unit. When you need to see messages within the conversation, just click the + sign. The conversation expands to show all the original message headers. In that view you can click any message header to review its contents. When you’re done with that, just click the – sign next to the first header to collapse all the messages into a single unit again.