Incoming email messages are
stored in your mailbox on your ISP’s server until you use an email
client such as Windows Mail to retrieve them. The easiest way to do that
is to let Windows Mail check for and download new messages
automatically. Several settings within the Options dialog box control
this feature. Select Tools, Options and make sure that the General tab
is displaying, as shown in Figure 1.
Here are the settings related to retrieving messages:
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| Play Sound When New Messages Arrive | When
you activate this option, Windows Mail plays a sound whenever it
downloads one or more messages. If multiple messages arrive, Windows
Mail plays the sound only once. This is useful only if you don’t get
very many messages and if you leave Windows Mail running in the
background while maintaining a connection to the Internet. The sound is
either annoying or redundant in any other scenario, so consider
deactivating this check box. |
Tip
It’s possible to change
the sound that indicates the arrival of a new message. Select Start,
Control Panel, Hardware and Sound, Audio Devices and Sound Themes, and
then display the Sounds tab. In the Program Events list, select New Mail
Notification and then click Browse to choose the sound file you want
Windows Mail to play when it delivers new messages.
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| Send and Receive Messages at Startup | When
this check box is activated, Windows Mail connects with the server to
check for waiting messages as soon as you start the program. It also
sends any messages that are waiting in the Outbox folder. Note that if
your computer has no current connection to the Internet, Windows Mail
attempts to establish one. This is true even if you select Do Not
Connect in the If My Computer Is Not Connected at This Time list
(described later). If you prefer to stay offline at startup, deactivate
this check box. | | Check for New Messages Every X Minute(s) | With
this option activated, Windows Mail auto-matically checks for new
messages using the interval specified in the spin box. You can enter a
time between 1 and 480 minutes. | | If My Computer Is Not Connected at This Time | If you activate the Check for New Messages Every X
Minute(s) check box, use the following list to specify what Windows
Mail should do if your computer is not connected to the Internet when
the time comes to check for new mesages: |
Do Not Connect— Choose this option to prevent Windows Mail from initiating a connection Connect Only When Not Working Offline— Choose this option to tell Windows Mail to connect only when the program is in online mode Connect Only When Working Offline— Choose this option to tell Windows Mail to connect only when the program is in offline mode
Note
To put Windows Mail in
offline mode, pull down the File menu and activate the Work Offline
command. To return to online mode, deactivate this command.
If you elect not to have
Windows Mail check for new mail automatically, you can use any of the
following techniques to check the server by hand:
To receive messages on all your accounts—
Select Tools, Send and Receive, Receive All, or click the Send/Receive
button’s arrow to drop down the list and then click Receive All. To receive messages on only a single account— Select
Tools, Send and Receive and then select the account you want to work
with, or click the Send/Receive button’s arrow to drop down the list and
then click the account. To send and receive messages on all your accounts—
If you also have messages waiting in your outbox, select Tools, Send
and Receive, Send and Receive All, or click the Send/Receive toolbar
button.
Tip
A quick way to send and receive messages on all your accounts is to press Ctrl+M or F5.
Processing Messages
Each new message that arrives is stored in the Inbox
folder’s message list and appears in a bold font. To view the contents
of any message, select it in the message list; Windows Mail displays the
message text in the preview pane. If you find the preview pane too
confining, you can open the selected message in its own window by
double-clicking it.
When you have a message
selected, you can do plenty of things with it (in addition to reading
it, of course). You can print it, save it to a file, move it to another
folder, reply to it, delete it, and more. Most of these operations are
straightforward, so I’ll just summarize the basic techniques here:
Dealing with attachments—
If a message has an attachment, you’ll see a paper clip icon in the
Inbox folder’s Attachment column, as well as in the upper-right corner
of the preview pane. You have two choices:
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| Open the attachment | Click the preview pane’s paper clip icon and then click the name of the file. | | Save the attachment | Click
the preview pane’s paper clip icon and then click Save Attachments. You
can also select the File, Save Attachments command. |
Moving a message to a different folder—
Later in this chapter, I’ll show you how to create new folders you can
use for storing related messages. To move a message to another folder,
use your mouse to drag the message from the Inbox folder and then drop it on the destination folder. Saving a message—
Instead of storing the message in a folder, you might prefer to save it
to a file. To do so, select File, Save As and then use the Save As
dialog box to select a location, enter a filename, and select a file
type. Saving a message as stationery— If
you receive a formatted message and you like the layout, you can save
it as stationery for your own use. To do so, select File, Save As
Stationery. Printing a message— To print a copy of the message, select File, Print. Replying to a message— Windows Mail gives you two reply options:
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| Reply to message author | This
option sends the reply to only the person who sent the original
message. Windows Mail ignores any names in the Cc line. To use this
option, select Message, Reply to Sender or press Ctrl+R. You can also
click the Reply button on the toolbar. | | Reply to all message recipients | This
option sends the reply not only to the original author, but also to
anyone else mentioned in the Cc line. To use this option, select
Message, Reply to All or press Ctrl+Shift+R. You can also click the
Reply All button on the toolbar. |
Forwarding a message— You can forward a message to another address by using either of the following commands:
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| Forward | Select
Message, Forward, press Ctrl+F, or click the Forward toolbar button.
Windows Mail inserts the full text of the original message into the body
of the new message and appends a greater than sign (>) to the
beginning of each line. | | Forward as Attachment | Select
Message, Forward as Attachment. In this case, Windows Mail packages the
original message as an attachment, but it makes no changes to the
message. The user who receives the forwarded message can open this
attachment and view the original message exactly as you received it. |
Deleting a message—
To get rid of a message, select it in the folder and then press Delete
(or Ctrl+D) or click the toolbar’s Delete button. If the message is
open, press Ctrl+D or click the Delete button. Note that Windows Mail
doesn’t really delete the message. Instead, it just moves it to the Deleted Items folder. If you change your mind and decide to keep the message, open the Deleted Items folder and move the message back to the folder it came from. To remove a message permanently, open the Deleted Items folder and delete the message from there.
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