Once your e-mail account is properly configured, you’re ready to send and receive e-mail. You can send an e-mail message to anyone who has an e-mail address. You can even send messages to yourself. That might be worthwhile if you’re new to all of this and just want to test things out for starters. To write an e-mail message:

1. Click Create Mail in the toolbar (or press Ctrl+N or choose File  ->  New  ->  Mail Message from the menu bar). An empty message opens in a window titled New Message. To add a fancy background to your message, click the arrow on the Create Mail button, and then click a stationery name.

2. Type the recipient’s e-mail address next to To:. If you want to send the message to several people, you can type several addresses separated by semicolons (;). - Optionally, to send carbon copies of the message to other recipients, put their e-mail addresses in the Cc: box. Again, you can separate multiple e-mail addresses with semicolons. - Optionally, to send blind carbon copies of the message to other recipients, type their e-mail addresses into the Bcc: box, again separating multiple addresses with semicolons. A blind carbon copy sends the e-mail message to the recipient with all other recipients’ names hidden. This protects the privacy of other recipients and makes the e-mail look as though it was sent to the recipient directly. If you have multiple e-mail accounts and want to change the account from which you’re sending, use the From: drop-down menu. If you don’t see From: and Bcc: boxes, choose View  -> All Headers from the New Message menu bar.

3. In the Subject: box, type a brief description of the subject of the message. This part of the message appears in the recipient’s Inbox and is visible prior to the recipient’s opening the message.

4. Type your message in the large editing window below the address portion of the e-mail. Optionally, use the basic editing techniques and spell checker described later to clean up your message before sending. - Optionally, set the message priority or request a read receipt using techniques described in the sections to follow.

5. Click the Send button in the toolbar. Depending on how Windows Mail is configured, the message will either go to your Outbox or be sent immediately. If it goes to your Outbox, you’ll see a 1 next to that folder name. To send the message, click Send/Receive in the toolbar. If you sent the message to yourself, it might not appear right away. You’ll have to wait a few seconds— maybe longer. Then click Send/Receive to get your messages from your ISP’s incoming mail server.

Typing and editing tips

Here are some basic things to keep in mind when typing an e-mail message (or just about anything else on a computer screen): - When typing a paragraph, don’t press Enter at the end of each line. Only press Enter at the end of the paragraph. - To insert a blank line, press Enter (for example, press Enter twice at the end of a paragraph). - The blinking cursor on the screen shows where the text you type next will appear. To change text, click where you want to make your change to get the blinking cursor to that spot. Then type your new text. - To delete a few characters, click where you want to delete. Press Delete (Del) to delete characters to the right of the cursor or a blank line. Press Backspace to delete characters to the left of the cursor. - To delete a larger chunk of text, select (drag the mouse pointer through) the text you want to delete. Then press Delete (Del).

- To undo a recent change to your text, press Ctrl+Z or click the Undo button in the toolbar, or choose Edit  ->  Undo from the menu bar. - Use standard copy-and-paste techniques to paste text into an e-mail message, and to move or copy text out of a message. There’s rarely any need to re-type text you can already see on your screen. Just copy-and-paste the text instead. Anyplace you can type text, you can also paste text.

Check your spelling

To check your spelling in an e-mail message, choose Tools  ->  Spelling from the New Message menu bar, or press F7, or click the Spelling (abc) toolbar button. The spell checker will compare each word in your message to an internal dictionary. When it finds a word that doesn’t exist in its dictionary, the Spelling dialog box opens. From there you can do any of the following: - If the Spelling box offers suggested words, click the word that’s spelled correctly, then click Change. - If the word is already spelled correctly (because it’s a person’s name or some other word not normally found in the dictionary), click Ignore. If you already know how to use a word processing program like Microsoft Word or WordPerfect, you can type, edit, and spell-check your message in that program. Press Ctrl+A then Ctrl+C in the word processing program to select and copy all text. Then click in the body of your e-mail message and press Ctrl+V to paste that copied text into the e-mail message. Add a background color, picture, or sound When you’re in the New Message window writing your e-mail message, you can add a background color or picture, or even a sound to your message. First, choose Format  ->  Background and then click whichever item you want to add. Then:

- If you chose Color, just click whatever color you want to use.

- If you chose Picture, click the Browse button and navigate to the picture you want to add. Then click OK.

- If you chose Sound, click the Browse button and navigate to the folder that contains the sound file you want to add. Click the sound file’s icon and click Open. If you chose a sound, the sound will play when the recipient clicks the message header to read the e-mail message. Don’t use an entire song as a message background. Stick with small sound effect files. To send a song or other large audio file, attach it to the e-mail message. Setting message priority The Priority column at the left of the contents pane has an exclamation point (!) as its column heading. This column shows nothing for normal-priority messages. It shows a red exclamation point for high-priority messages. It shows a blue arrow for low-priority messages.

Every e-mail message you type will automatically be set to normal priority. To change that, click the Set Priority button in the New Message toolbar, or choose Message  ->  Set Priority from the menu bar. Then choose a priority. The appropriate symbol will show up in the Priority column of the recipient’s Inbox. To see how priorities and read receipts work, apply those features to some test messages sent to your own e-mail address.

Requesting a read receipt

If you want to verify that a recipient has received and read your e-mail message, choose Tools  ->  Request Read Receipt from the New Message window’s menu bar. Then send your message normally. When the recipient receives and reads the message, she will see a box indicating that you’ve requested a read receipt. If she chooses Yes to send a read receipt, you will receive an e-mail message with the word Read in the Subject line. That message tells you the date and time that the recipient read the message. There’s no guarantee that you’ll always get a read receipt, because the recipient can opt not to send you one.

Getting Your E-Mail

To get e-mail messages addressed to you, you have do download them from your ISP’s incoming mail server. Depending on how Windows Mail is configured, that might happen automatically as soon as you open Windows Mail. It might even happen automatically every few seconds. It all depends on how you configure Windows Mail. But regardless of how Windows Mail is configured at the moment, you can always download waiting messages by clicking Send/Receive in the toolbar. New messages you receive may go straight to your Junk Mail folder, or to your Inbox. It all depends on (you guessed it) how you’ve configured Windows Mail. I’ll talk about junk mail a little later in the article. Every folder shows a little number indicating how may unread messages it contains. To see unread messages, click the folder in the Folder list (either Inbox or Junk Mail). The contents pane shows message headers for every message currently in the folder. Headers for unread messages are boldface. To preview what’s in the message, click its message header. The Preview pane shows the message (or at least, part of it).

An unread message turns to a read message within a few seconds of clicking its message header. So its message header won’t stay boldfaced for long. And the number next to the folder name will also go away once you’ve read all the messages in that folder. The preview window may not be tall enough to show the entire message. But you have a couple choices there. You can use the scroll bar at the right side of the message to scroll up and down. Or you can adjust the height of the preview pane by dragging its upper border up or down. Or you can double-click the message header to open the message. An open message appears in its own window.

Replying to a message

If you want to reply to the e-mail message you’re currently reading, click one of the following:

- Reply: Click this button to reply to the original sender only.

- Reply All: Click this button to reply to the original sender plus everyone else to whom that sender sent the same message. The message opens in a new window with some empty space up top for you to type your reply. No need to delete the original message below that space. In fact, it’s better to leave it there because that way the person to whom you’re replying can review, if necessary, the original message to which you’re responding. When you’ve finished typing your reply, click the Send button in the toolbar.

Forwarding a message

To pass on the message you’re reading to a friend or colleague, click the Forward button. Type in the new recipient’s e-mail address. Optionally, you can type multiple e-mail addresses separated by semicolons (;). Then click Send. Just remember that if your outgoing messages end up in your Outbox, they won’t actually be sent until you click Send/Receive in the toolbar. Other stuff you can do with a message To see other things you can do with a message, right-click the message header. The first few options let you do things we already discussed (open, print, reply, forward). The rest are summarized in the following list.

- Open: Opens the e-mail message in a separate window. You can move, size, and position that window to your liking using the techniques described in Article 2. - Print: Prints a copy of the message (on paper). See Article 36 if you need help with printing.

- Reply to Sender, Reply to All, Forward: As described under the “Replying to a message” and “Forwarding a message” sections.

- Forward As Attachment: Forwards the message to senders of your choosing as an attached file rather than as a message. See “Using E-Mail Attachments” in this article for more information on attachments.

- Mark as Read: Removes the boldface from the message header.

- Mark as Unread: Makes the message header boldfaced.

- Move to Folder: Moves the message to any folder in the Folder list. (Optionally, you can drag any message header to any folder in the list.)

- Copy to Folder: Puts a copy of the message in a folder you specify, without removing it from its current folder.

- Delete: Sends the message to the Deleted Items folder.

- Junk E-mail: Offers numerous options for deciding how to treat future messages from the message sender.

- Add Sender to Contacts: Adds the message to your contacts (similar to a personal address article).

- Properties: Shows some detailed information about the message.

Magnifying e-mail text

To change the text size of an e-mail message, choose View  ->  Text Size from the menu bar, then click a text size. To return to the normal text size at any time, choose View  ->  Text Size  ->  Normal.

Sorting message headers

As in any columnar display of data, you can sort message headers however you see fit. Just click the column heading by which you want to sort. For example, to sort messages by Date Received, with the most recent messages at the top of the list, click the Received column until the little triangle in that heading points down.