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Email is a bit like writing an ordinary letter to someone using pencil and paper and then posting it, except you do it all sitting at the comfort of your computer. And you do not need to go out and post it either, as your computer can do all that for you.
When you write a postal (snail-mail) letter, you put the name and the address of the recipient (the person you are writing to) on the envelope to make sure the postman knows where to bring it. It’s the same with email. Instead of using the street address of the person your email should go to, use its email equivalent, the email address.
An email address always contains a ‘@’. This means ‘at’ and serves as a separator. To the left of this ‘@’ is the user name of a person ‘at’ a domain, which is on the right of the ‘@’. The domain can be a company, for example, ‘virginmedia.co.uk’, about.com, etc. So, say your name Bill Smith, your email address may look a little like bsmith@virginmedia.co.uk or billsmith@virginmedia.co.uk. However, since Virgin Media like to give out daft usernames (the bit before the @ sign), it will probably look more like bs08967@virginmedia.co.uk. This can be changed if you like, to something more easily remembered, see e-mail aliases.
Pressing the ‘Send’ button is like handing your letter to the postman that comes to your house, or placing the letter in a post box where the postman collects it. What will he do with your letter? He’ll carry it to the nearest post office. The postal service will transport the letter from this post office to another post office near the recipient. There, another postman will pick the letter up and deliver it straight to the recipient’s door.
The same kind of thing happens with your email. Your email program sends the message to the nearest email server. Email servers are a bit like the post offices of the Internet. The email server will have a look at the recipient’s email address. Then it sends the message on to the email server nearest to the recipient. Then, like the post man bringing your letter to the recipients house, their email software connects with this server and delivers the mail from there. However, unlike ordinary mail delivery, which can sometimes take days, email delivery takes only a matter of minutes to get from your computer, through the servers and then onto the recipient’s computer.
There are so many programs out there nowadays that can be used for accessing your email, some free (shareware) others need to be paid for. Below is a list of some of the more common email programs used by the people on this site, along with links for downloading them.
Others that may be of use are:
The most common email program is Outlook Express, simply because that is what comes with your operating system (Windows). But some of the other programs are just as good and as easy, if not easier, to set up
Please ask for assistance on our forums if you get stuck.
This is pretty easily achieved. All you need to do is change the From: line in your email to the account you want to use. See the FAQ on "what is the From: line" on how to do this.
This is very like an ordinary address book and it can store not only people’s email addresses, but there are sections for saving their home and business details as well. To work with the address book, either press the ‘address’ button on your toolbar or go into it via the menus (in Outlook Express this is in ‘Tools’).
Once you are in the address book you should see a menu bar, a toolbar, a box used for searching and a large white box, which is where the list of everyone in your address book will appear once you have him or her saved in it. To add a new address, simply press the ‘new’ button in the toolbar and a list with the options of new contact, new group and new folder will appear. Since we want to keep it simple, select new contact. (Similarly, you can go through the menu via ‘File’ to do this).
You should now have a new window on your screen. The first page of it is where you place the name and/or nickname of the person you are adding. And there is a box about the middle where you place their email address as well. REMEMBER once you have typed the email address to hit the ‘add’ button otherwise the address will not be stored.
Along the top of this window, you will see what looks like little tabs used in filing. These can be selected to fill in extra information about the person, like their home address, business address and other information.
Once you have filled in all you want to be stored, hit the ‘OK’ button at the bottom of the window and you should now have a new address in your address book.
Simple. All you have to do is press the ‘new mail’ button that is in the toolbar near the top of the screen. This opens a new mail window, ready for you to type your email into.
This is where you put the email address of the person you want to send your message to. To do this you can either type in the address if you know what it is (in the white box beside the To: button), or press the To: button and select the address you want from the address book that pops up (see address book FAQ).
You know that when you right a letter, sometimes on the back of it you put your own address so that the person you are sending it to knows who it came from? Well, it’s the same with email. There is a field called ‘From:’ where your email address is put. You should see your own email address in here as soon as you start a new mail (assuming you have your accounts set up, see setting up accounts). Since this doesn’t normally change, the email software inserts this automatically for you, so you don’t need to do anything with it. However, you may have several different email addresses set up for yourself, so in this case (if you want to use one of the other ones) you need to select that different address. To do this, simply click the box beside the From: button (the box that has your email address in it) and it should open up a list of all your email addresses. Then all you have to do is scroll down the list until you find the one you want, select it and there you have it!
Similarly, when you receive an email from someone you will see the From: box has his or her address in it, to let you know who has sent you the email.
When you want to send an ordinary letter by post to more than one person, you have to print it several times and write different envelopes. With email, this is much easier. You simply use the ‘Cc:’ field to specify more recipients. They’ll each then get a copy of your email. It is used very like the >To: field
The subject is often what the recipient (the person you are sending the email to) sees first, along with the ‘From:’ address, so you should put something meaningful in here, probably summing up the message itself in a few words. However, there are no strict guidelines as to what you need to put. Lets say, for example, you are sending an email about something funny that happened to you in work that day. You could perhaps put "Silly thing happened today", or "Daft thing at work", or even "This should make you laugh".
The large area below where you put the to:, subject:, etc. is where you write the contents of your email. This part is called the ‘body’ of the email. In here you can write about whatever you want. Be careful though how you write it, as whoever you send it to could be using a different email program and may not see the text clearly if you use fancy lettering and pictures (see spicing up and email).
All you should have to do now is hit the ’send’ button at the top of your email and away it goes!
This part is easy. Just hit the ‘reply’ button, write the reply, send it and off you go. There are a few things to note, however, when replying to a mail message.
Should you include the original text in your reply? Well, this is entirely up to you, whether to or not. However, it is suggested that if you are going to be answering some of the points in the original text, to leave these parts so that the conversation doesn’t get confusing. You can, of course, delete some (or all) or the original text if you don’t want it or don’t need it for your reply. To do this, highlight the area of text you want rid of using your mouse (press and hold the left button and drag the mouse across the text) then go to ‘edit’ in the menu and select ‘delete’.
Should you put your reply text above or below the original text? Again, the users choice. However, it is normally accepted as good grace to put the reply below the original text so that the ’story’ follows some sort of sense. Some people, however, find this to be an annoyance to do and will still put the reply at the top of the message. Use whatever choice you like best.
The ability to forward (just about) everything in a fast and easy form is one of the most used ways of email. But what is forwarding? When do you use it? And how do you use it right and best?
Imagine one of your friends has sent you a wonderful email that you would like to share with someone else. The easiest way to do this rather than retyping the whole email is to ‘forward’ it on to whoever you want to share it with.
To forward an email message, you will usually click the "forward" button, normally placed near the top of your screen. Then you can type in the to: and cc: fields who you want to forward it to, along with any extra messages you would like to see in the body of the text. (If you would like to forward the email as an attachment, see sending attachments)
The subject of a forwarded message can be the original message’s subject, preceded by "Fwd: ", but it can also be something (completely) different, if you wish it to be.
Attachments are files that you send along with an email. They are a bit like stapling an extra page to a letter or form that you are posting the normal way. It lets you send information, perhaps a text document or a graphic from a file by literally attaching it to your email.
Probably the easiest way is to open a new mail for someone and click the attachment button at the top of the mail window. You can then look through your hard drive for the file you want to attach.
If you are wanting to send an email you have received as an attachment, simply right-click the email with your mouse. A small list of menu commands should appear and there should be one along the lines of "forward as an attachment". Click this and a new mail window will open with this email attached to it. Fill in the relevant details (who it is to, subject and a few lines to say what you are sending) and hit the send button.
This should be simple enough to do. Basically, open the email the same way you would any normal email. You will notice however unlike normal emails, there is a new box appearing below the subject box. This should contain the attachment that came with the email. All you have to do is right-click (or double-click) you mouse on this box and a menu will appear giving you the choice of either opening the attachment or saving it. Choose the ’save as..’ option. A new window should now open (your Windows Explorer). Search your hard drive for where you want to store the attachment and hit OK. This should now be the attachment stored.
This is a very sneaky way of sending viruses to people. A lot of accidents happen when people send attachments to someone and the person sending them doesn’t have a virus checker program on their computer. If they don’t have a virus checker, then they will have no way of knowing whether or not they have a virus on their hard drive. This means that unconsciously they can send an attachment to someone that may just have a virus contained in it. Of course, there are always nasty people out there who intentionally send viruses to others (mostly people they don’t know, and email addresses they get from web sites, news groups, etc).
The best way to try and prevent the spread of viruses through emails is to have an extremely good anti-virus program on your computer (see anti-virus FAQ). This is probably the only best management of viruses there is. Most virus software programs can be set to automatically scan any emails you are receiving, as well as scan web sites, your hard drive and any downloads you are carrying out. This way it should prevent you from getting any viruses in the first place, so you shouldn’t be able to pass any on.
If you do have virus software and are not sure whether your program has scanned your email (especially if there is an attachment) you should save the file first before opening it and run a check on it to make sure.
Some viruses can also be opened via the preview pane (in Outlook Express, this is). You don’t necessarily need to open the attachment for it to run, as some emails have a sort of code embedded in them that automatically runs the attachment. To prevent this from happening in Outlook Express (unsure about other email programs, if you know about this, let me know!) switch off your preview pane. To do this go into "View" in the menu and select "Layout". At the bottom you should see the information about the Preview Pane. Untick the box entitled "Show preview pane". This will then hide it from view. To open email after this, simply double-click on each one in turn and they will open in full screen in a new window. I have also done this for my news reading, too (do it exactly the same way, only make sure you have highlighted a news group first). Always better safe than sorry.
So, things to remember to protect against email viruses:
"Can I type in bold, or use different fonts to send my email? If you use bold face and fancy fonts it’s not sure the recipient will see the same as you do. This is just one thing to remember if you are wanting to spice up your email and make it look pretty and/or professional. Not all email programs allow you to use html (which is the format needed to do these fancy styles). So that means not everyone will see your message properly when you construct them this way. However, if you are sure this is what you want to do, then the first thing you need to do is make sure you are writing the email in html and not in plain text, which is the default usually set up for email programs. To do this (in Outlook Express) simply go press the ‘new mail’ icon then go to ‘format’ on the menu bar and select ‘Rich text - html’ from the list.
Once you are in html mode, you should notice a few changes to how your message window now looks. Just above the ‘body’ of the message there should now be what is called a formatting bar. In here you can change the font type, size and style, add bullets, centre or justify your words and even add a picture. To work with the font and/or add bullets, do the same as you would in an ordinary document you are typing (like in e.g. Microsoft Word or Lotus Word Pro). To add a picture, press the picture icon and then search for the picture you want to insert in the same way as you normally would when using other programs.
One note of caution when using HTML format is that not all mail clients and software support this format, and any mail that you send in this format to them is going to look unintelligible and they will certainly not appreciate it.
Another thing to bear in mind is that some mailing lists actively ban HTML format and if you send in that format you are liable to get yourself banned from further posting to it.
Your webmail space is a good idea if you can’t get connected via your email program, or are out and about and want to use another computer (say, in a library) or perhaps you have a queue of mail messages and you know it will take a long time to download onto your computer (you can read them via your webmail space, which is much quicker).
When you first join Virgin Media, they send you a letter with a username and password on it. Now, most of the time this username is not very easy to remember and takes some getting used to. Since your username is also the bit before the ‘@’ in your email, it is sometimes difficult for yourself and anyone sending you email to keep a track of. For this reason, Virgin Media have set up an email alias system, which allows you to pick a new "name" (or bit before the ‘@’ sign) that is easier for everyone to remember. So, instead of having to remember something like abcd12345@virginmedia.co.uk you could have an alias like irule@virginmedia.co.uk, or any type of name you like. Some people pick to use their nicknames or a name most commonly used by their friends.
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