Composing e-mail

Sending e-mail differs from replying and forwarding in a number of areas and functions. Perhaps the greatest difference is that sending, in the strictest form, involves creating original messages.

To begin composing an e-mail message, click on the icon. 

This will open the message composition window.

Enter the e-mail address of the person you wish to write.

Recipient Types and what they mean

To:Primary recipients of your message.
CC:Carbon Copy, for secondary recipients.
BCC: Blind Carbon Copy, for secondary recipients not identified to the other recipients, including those in the CC list.
Group:Posting to a discussion group.

Replying to e-mail  

When you reply to a previously received e-mail message, the text of the message you are replying to is included in your mail message. You can edit this ... Replying to a previously received email message automatically inserts the To: address and eliminates the need to "look up" the senders address.

Forwarding e-mail  

You can pass a received message to another user.  Messages that are forwarded retain their attachments.

Attachments       

Any file on the user computer or local drives can be sent as an attachment to an e-mail.  A message does not need to be plain text. An attachment can be a document (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, text etc.), a voice message, or a web page and its accompanying links.

How To Attach A File:
Open a Composition window. Enter the message. Click on the Attach button.
Choose whether to attach a file or a web page.
Choose the file from the dialog box:

(Multiple files can be attached with a single e-mail)

If possible, before sending messages with attached files, make sure that your intended recipients have the software available to read the attachments.  There is no point in sending, for example, an Excel spreadsheet to a person who does not have Excel.

Some common file formats include .doc, .pdf, .bmp, .gif, .jpg, html, .htm, .mid, .ppt, and .xl

There is no point in sending, for example, an Excel spreadsheet to a person who does not have Excel.

Viruses can be transmitted to your computer via an e-mail attachment. If you get mail from someone you do not know and it has an attachment you should not open it. Instead it is best to delete the message without opening the attachment.

Sending e-mail   

When you have completed your mail message press the send button.

As you have seen in this exercise, e-mail messages do have distinct components, the To: field, the Subject: field and the body. When you receive mail

Headers

There is information about the sender and other recipients of the message that you may be interested in seeing. This information is in the Header.

If you select any message you receive and choose View from the main menu bar, then select Headers, there is an All option. Select All and you will see where the mail came from and all the people who have received it. When you are done, you can put the Header selection back to the Normal setting

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