3.4.12.5 E-Mail

Reading Your Mail

Clicking the Read Mail icon in the Outlook Express main window takes you to your Inbox. You can also get there by clicking the Inbox in the left pane of the Outlook Express window.

Click the Send and Receive button on the toolbar to tell Outlook Express to connect to your Internet service provider and get your mail. Outlook Express pops up a dialog box to show the progress of your e-mail connection. The “look” of this box will vary depending on the ISP you’re using.

 Next, a dialog box opens showing the connection to the mail servers as your mail is sent and received.

Outlook Express won’t automatically disconnect form your Internet service unless you check the Hang Up When Finished box. And if you have Active Desktop installed, it won’t disconnect even then. Right-click on the networking icon on the Taskbar and select Disconnect.

 In the Inbox, your messages are listed in the upper pane, with unread messages in bold. You can change the order of messages by clicking a column heading to sort messages according to that column. Click the heading again to reverse the sort order.

When you highlight a message header in the upper pane, the message itself appears in the lower preview pane. Double-click on a message header to open the message in its own window for easier viewing. Outlook Express in not limited to plain text e-mail. It also handles messages formatted in HTML, which means you can vary fonts and colors and include links and graphics. If people you are writing to use e-mail software that can handle HTML messages, they’ll see the formatting; otherwise, the message will be displayed in plain text.

The Inbox view will be most useful if you receive lots of mail and want to quickly check the subject and sender-reading important mail first. Otherwise, you may find it simpler to just double-click your first new message and work in the mail reader window. The mail reader toolbar gives you quick access to the most common operations.

As you read each message, Outlook Express will mark it as Read in the Inbox by changing its entry to normal type instead of bold. To delete a message, click the Delete button instead of Next; Outlook Express will automatically move on to the next message.

Replying

The sender of the original message is automatically entered in the To field, and the original subject is copied to the Subject field with “Re:” in front of it. Depending on your Setup, the original message may be copied to the text area, so that the recipient knows what message you’re replying to. (This may seem redundant, but many people send dozens, if not hundreds of e-mail messages a day and, for them, it’s very frustrating to receive a message that simply replies “OK” or “I agree completely.”

On the other hand, if the message you are replying to is a long one, only quote back enough so that the sender understands what you’re responding to. You can put>>and<< around the parts of the original that you leave. In Figure 9.8, I’ve quoted back the relevant part of the message and added my reply.

If you create your reply by clicking the Reply to All button (instead of Reply to Author), your reply will be sent to all the people listed in the To and Cc fields of the original message.
When you are finished typing your reply, just click the Send button the toolbar to put the reply in your Outbox. The next time you click the Send and Receive button, the messages in the Outbox will be transmitted to your mail service.

Sending a New Message

In the To field, you can directly type in the Internet mail address of the recipient. If the recipient has an entry in your Address Book, just start typing the name and Outlook Express will complete it.

If you’re not sure how you have someone entered in the Address Book, click the file card icon in the To field to see a list of everyone in your Address Book. Highlight the name in the list and then click the To button.