Using Windows Mail or Outlook Express 594 Among the questions you’ll answer is the choice of a display name; this is the name that recipients of your mail see on their own e-mail client. It isn’t the same as your e-mail address, but if someone hits the Reply button, their software program will recognize and use your address from the details included in the message. See Figure 5-2. To remove an e-mail account, follow along: 1. Open the e-mail client. 2. Click Tools ➪ Accounts. 3. Highlight the account you want out of the program. 4. Click the Remove button. Reading e-mail messages and replying When you first open Windows Mail or Outlook Express, the program checks for any received mail and sends any messages it finds waiting to go out. After then it’s set up to automatically jingle your mailbox every 30 minutes; you can issue a right-now command by clicking the Send/Receive button in the toolbar. Figure 5-2: Your e-mail provider should offer a listing (or phone support) to help fill out the forms of the Windows Mail e-mail account setup wizard (and the similar screens of Outlook Express). 43 140925-bk08ch05.qxp 4/8/08 12:52 PM Page 594 Book VIII Chapter 5 Exchanging E-mail, IMs, and Newsgroups Using Windows Mail or Outlook Express 595 You can change the default interval with these steps: 1. Click Tools ➪ Options. 2. Go to the General tab. 3. Set the time between automatic searches. The time can be any number of minutes from 1 to 480. In the same section (see Figure 5-3) you can instruct the system to play a sound anytime new messages arrive; depending on your work habits, that can be very helpful or very annoying. Folders abound: ✦ Inbox. New mail goes here, on the right side of the panel. Mail remains in the Inbox unless you move it to another folder; the folder name is bold anytime an unread message is within. The system also displays a number next to the Inbox folder name to indicate how many messages you haven’t read. ✦ Junk E-mail or Spam. For Windows Mail users, depending on your settings, some messages may go directly into this folder. Figure 5-3: The General tab of the Options window allows customi- zation of alerts for new mail. 43 140925-bk08ch05.qxp 4/8/08 12:52 PM Page 595 Using Windows Mail or Outlook Express 596 ✦ Deleted Items. Messages you delete go here. This action is automatic for POP systems but must be enabled under Advanced Options for IMAP systems. You can take several routes when reading and responding: ✦ To read a message, click its header in the message list; as much of its contents as will fit will appear in the preview pane. To read the e-mail in a separate window, double-click its header. ✦ To reply to a message, click the Reply button. The program fills in the sender’s e-mail address from the information received with the original message. ✦ To reply to everyone who received a message, click Reply All. Your response goes to the original sender as well as to anyone listed on the To: or Cc: line of the message. Creating and sending e-mail messages To create a new e-mail, follow these steps: 1. Click the Create Mail button. Appropriately named button, no? A blank New Message window opens. 2. Enter at least one e-mail address in the To: box. To send to more than one recipient, list a semicolon between addresses. For example, To: somebody@somewhere.com;someone@elsewhere.com You can enter e-mail addresses you’ve previously encountered one of two ways: • The standard setting for most e-mail clients is to maintain a listing of all addresses you use. For example, once you’ve sent an e-mail to someone@elsewhere.com, the next time you start typing in someone, the e-mail client offers you that e-mail address; you can accept the suggestion by pressing the Enter key; keep typing and it goes away. • Use the records stored in Windows Contacts (in Windows Vista) or the very similar Windows Address Book (in Windows XP and previ- ous editions). 3. If you want to Cc someone, enter that e-mail address in the Cc: box. You can send one or more Ccs, or leave that field blank. If Bcc: isn’t shown, add it to your options by clicking View ➪ All Headers. One of the settings in the Send options automatically adds the e-mail address of anyone to whom you send a reply to the Contacts or Address listings. You can manually add listings by clicking Tools ➪ Windows Contacts (or Address Book) and filling out the form that opens. 43 140925-bk08ch05.qxp 4/8/08 12:52 PM Page 596 Book VIII Chapter 5 Exchanging E-mail, IMs, and Newsgroups Using Windows Mail or Outlook Express 597 To adjust how Windows Mail or Outlook Express handles the database of e-mail addresses, go to the program’s main screen and click Tools ➪ Options, and choose from the Send tab. 4. Enter a subject in the Subject text box. You can (and should). Although it isn’t required, some e-mail clients (and some e-mail recipients) are very suspicious of messages that come with a blank subject . . . and definitely likely to reject or consign to the Junk E-mail folder any message with a subject that looks like, well, junk. 5. Enter your message in the blank area of the message window. At the top of the text area is a set of buttons similar to those in a word processor. You can choose • Font • Size • Bold • Italics • Numbered lists • Bulleted lists • Indents • Justification of the text to the left, right, or center of the message • Picture insertion 6. Click the Attach File button (paper clip icon) in the taskbar. This enables you to attach a file — text, spreadsheet, database, graph- ics, music — to an e-mail. Another very valuable e-mail use is sending. 7. Locate the file and click Open; A new box lists attachments below the subject line. Copy that Cc: is a term that has held onto a version of its original meaning even though technology has marched on. The acronym once meant “carbon copy” and indicated to the principal recipient of the message that a copy was sent to someone else as well; carbon paper was placed between sheets of plain paper to make copies of type- written or hand-written characters. The recipi- ent of a message can see the names of persons who receive a carbon copy; to hide the identi- ties of additional recipients of a message, put their name in the Bcc: (Blind Carbon Copy) field. 43 140925-bk08ch05.qxp 4/8/08 12:52 PM Page 597 Using Windows Mail or Outlook Express 598 8. Click the Send button in the mail window. This puts your message out into the stream of data on the Internet; depending on the message size, the network congestion, and, in some cases, where the message is going, it should arrive somewhere between immediately and very soon. Some e-mail systems may limit the size of messages, and others may auto- matically reject mail that includes attachments out of concern that they may contain damaging viruses or spyware. If your mail is rejected or your recipi- ent tells you that your attachment isn’t coming through, you may have to ✦ Find an alternate way to send a file; this includes file transfer protocol (FTP) sites, which allow direct transfer from one computer to another over the Internet. ✦ Reduce the size of files by splitting them into pieces or reducing the resolution of an image. Requesting a receipt for sent messages You press the Send button and watch with a sense of satisfaction as a mes- sage disappears from your screen and reappears in the Sent box. All is well. Or is it? How do you know the person to whom you sent the mail has received the message? Is he away on a six-month expedition to Antarctica? Is her laptop broken? Did you type a mistake in the e-mail address? Is the e-mail address broken? And, maddeningly, did your perfectly legitimate e-mail somehow get diverted into a junk or spam folder or, even worse, was it deleted before the recipient even got to see it? One way you can get some further satisfaction when you send an e-mail is to request a receipt. When you do this, most recipients see a message on their screen indicating that the sender has requested they send a receipt. (See Figure 5-4.) Notice the word “request.” The recipient can oblige you by clicking Yes, or ignore your plea for a receipt by clicking No. And some mail servers automatically strip out requests for receipts. Therefore, if you get a receipt for a message you’ve sent, you know it arrived at its destination; if you don’t get a receipt, the message may or may not have been delivered. (You can send a second request, or you can use that antique technology called the telephone to place a call and ask if the e-mail was received.) To request a receipt for a specific message, do these easy steps: 1. Create an e-mail. 2. Click Tools ➪ Request Read Receipt. 43 140925-bk08ch05.qxp 4/8/08 12:52 PM Page 598 Book VIII Chapter 5 Exchanging E-mail, IMs, and Newsgroups Using Windows Mail or Outlook Express 599 To instruct your e-mail client to automatically request a receipt for all mail you send, do these steps: 1. Click Tools ➪ Options. 2. Go to the Receipts tab. 3. Select the Request a Read Receipt for all Sent Messages check box. This check box is in the Requesting Read Receipts section. Deleting messages Deleting messages can be as simple as highlighting a message and then pressing the Delete key . . . except that it doesn’t always work that way. POP On a system using a POP server, all incoming mail is delivered to your laptop or desktop and resides in a folder there. If you highlight a file and press Delete, it’s removed from the Inbox and moved to a Deleted Files or Trash folder; depending on your settings in the Options window, that mail either ✦ Is permanently deleted the next time you shut down the e-mail program. Figure 5-4: When you request a receipt for mail a message like this one will usually appear on the screen of the recipient. It’s up to them whether to give you the notice you have asked for. 43 140925-bk08ch05.qxp 4/8/08 12:52 PM Page 599 Using Windows Mail or Outlook Express 600 ✦ Stays in the folder until you go into it and throw away the files. This is similar to the way the Windows Recycle Bin serves as a temporary stopgap to give you a second chance to “undelete” a file you accidentally removed or to rescue you from a change of mind. IMAP Things are different with an IMAP-based system where users have several options. From the Options window you can choose to do the following: ✦ Permanently (and irretrievably) throw away a message when you move to another folder or close down the e-mail client. When you delete a message from an IMAP folder, you see a strikethrough (like this) applied to the header. This indicates the message is marked for deletion from the central server. ✦ Immediately remove mail marked for deletion by clicking the Purge Deleted Messages button. ✦ Instruct Windows Mail or Windows Live Mail to move deleted messages on an IMAP system from the Inbox to a Deleted Message folder; the message is still on the remote server but isn’t permanently thrown away until you clear out the folder. Setting other special IMAP features Because IMAP accounts store messages on a central server and not on your laptop, you can, to a great degree, customize the way your e-mail client works on your machine. You can have all messages, only new messages, or only message headers downloaded to your machine. I use IMAP for my e-mail, and I prefer that Windows Mail download only mes- sage headers to any machine I use to check mail. This protects from inadver- tent downloading of malicious mail and also keeps my mail organized; over the course of a week I might check for messages from my desktop machine, from one of my laptops, from a cell phone, or from a machine I borrow at a client’s office or at an Internet café. From any location, I can read mail, delete junk, reply to messages, and move messages to special folders and always see the same results at any machine I use to sign on. Although you can create message rules for POP mail accounts to search for specific words or phrases to identify junk mail, Microsoft (and, in fairness, most other companies offering software to consumers) hasn’t yet extended this feature to IMAP accounts. The principle problem here is the same thing that makes IMAP so attractive: The mail doesn’t live on your machine until you download it. 43 140925-bk08ch05.qxp 4/8/08 12:52 PM Page 600 Book VIII Chapter 5 Exchanging E-mail, IMs, and Newsgroups Using Windows Mail or Outlook Express 601 If you use an IMAP service, see if the provider offers a junk mail or spam filter that they apply to messages on their server. Several of the companies I deal with apply a vacuum to messages; messages are either diverted into a junk folder or are marked JUNK or SPAM before they go to my system. Junk and other modern annoyances Permit me to step up onto my soapbox for a moment: Democracy is a great thing, but one of its shortcomings is that it leaves open the door for people who charge full-speed right up to the limits of the law and sometimes way past the line. That’s why the Web is home to (highly profitable) pornography sites and ridiculous or dangerous political and social opinion or phony news sites, and that’s why my daily e-mail harvest typically includes a few dozen annoying solicitations for things I don’t want to buy. Call it junk, call it spam, call it annoying when it starts to overwhelm your inbox, costing you time and money. You can easily understand why people send this stuff out: It’s essentially free to send out millions of messages if you’ve got the addresses. (And even if they don’t have actual e-mail addresses, some spammers just blast their junk out to millions of made-up names with the hope that a small percentage of them are real.) The good news is that lots of smart people at Microsoft and other companies have devoted a great deal of effort to find ways to enlist computers in the fight to identify junk mail and malicious mail. The bad news is that, like real diseases, the bad guys are just as busy looking for ways to find ways to defeat the defenses. Users of Outlook Express have to look elsewhere for assistance in hunting down junk and spam; you can ✦ Purchase filter programs from companies such as Symantec. ✦ Subscribe to online services from other sources that add on to that e-mail client and attempt to be of assistance. With the introduction of Windows Mail (and the enhanced Windows Live Mail), though, Microsoft has delivered a capable junk e-mail filter that ana- lyzes messages and moves suspect mail to a special folder in the e-mail client. Users can view the junk mail folder and delete any messages, or instruct the program that individual messages are ones you consider legitimate. If you instruct Windows Mail or Windows Live Mail that a particular message is legitimate, it knows that another message from that address should go to your regular Inbox. On the other hand, if junk slips by the filter and arrives in your Inbox, you can instruct the e-mail client to be on the lookout for future mail of that type or from that source and provide instructions to either place it in the Junk E-mail folder or completely block it from arriving in your system. See Figure 5-5. 43 140925-bk08ch05.qxp 4/8/08 12:52 PM Page 601 Using Windows Mail or Outlook Express 602 Lowering your exposure to junk The only way to eliminate the risk of receiving junk is to never sign up for an e-mail address. Other than that, you need to know how to keep a low profile in cyberspace. ✦ Avoid giving your e-mail address to people who don’t need to have it. Don’t publish it on web sites or newsgroups. ✦ If a web site asks for your e-mail address, consider whether it’s in your best interest to give it to them. Can you opt out of promotional mailings? Can you limit what the web site will do with your address? For example, you might find it acceptable for a particular store to send you the occa- sional bulletin about a sale, but you might not want that company to share your address with other vendors. ✦ If you receive junk mail, your best bet is delete it. If you reply to it, the sender will know it has reached a real address; asking to be removed from a mailing list sometimes has the effect of putting you on hundreds more. Setting up a Trojan Horse One strategy to limit the amount of junk mail you receive is to create several e-mail addresses: Figure 5-5: The Junk E-mail folder of Windows Mail or Windows Live Mail is the automatic destination of messages the e-mail client believes to be unwanted communi- cation. 43 140925-bk08ch05.qxp 4/8/08 12:52 PM Page 602 Book VIII Chapter 5 Exchanging E-mail, IMs, and Newsgroups Using Windows Mail or Outlook Express 603 ✦ Use one or two as your principal “official” address and be very careful who you give it to; use it for banks, government agencies, employers, and others who have a legitimate reason to reach you. ✦ Create one or more additional addresses through one of the free e-mail services offered by companies including Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo. Use that address when you’re shopping or visiting sites where you’re uncertain of the sponsor’s intentions. I have a few such Trojan Horse addresses and they regularly fill up with all sorts of junk . . . but I only visit them from time to time and quickly spin through them to see if anything of value has somehow ended up in the manure pile. Adding a newsgroup account Newsgroups are the modern vestiges of the old bulletin board systems that preceded the Internet. There are newsgroups that are maintained by major companies like Microsoft, others monitored by organizations including pro- fessional associations, and then there are those that are the technological equivalent of the Wild, Wild West. Your Internet service provider may offer you access to the full panoply of newsgroups available on the Internet or may offer a “cleaned-up” set that attempts to eliminate obvious pornography sites and others that may be considered offensive. You can also obtain unfiltered access to newsgroups by subscribing to newsgroup services you can search for and find on the Web. Take special care if you venture into newsgroups other than those from established groups. Make sure you have a current antivirus program and a capable firewall installed. And even then, be very cautious about revealing anything to newsgroup members: This is a great place to use a Trojan Horse e-mail address rather than your primary one. To add a newsgroup account in Outlook Express: 1. Click Tools ➪ Accounts. 2. Switch to the News tab. 3. Click the Add button. To add a newsgroup account in Windows Mail or Windows Live Mail: 1. Click Newsgroups. The option is in the left pane of the screen. 2. Click Add a Newsgroup Account. 43 140925-bk08ch05.qxp 4/8/08 12:52 PM Page 603 . by clicking Yes, or ignore your plea for a receipt by clicking No. And some mail servers automatically strip out requests for receipts. Therefore, if you get a receipt for a message you’ve sent, you. also keeps my mail organized; over the course of a week I might check for messages from my desktop machine, from one of my laptops, from a cell phone, or from a machine I borrow at a client’s. between addresses. For example, To: somebody@somewhere.com;someone@elsewhere.com You can enter e-mail addresses you’ve previously encountered one of two ways: • The standard setting for most e-mail