All About E-mail
Electronic mail is one of the most popular features of the Internet. You can chat with your friends and family (and total strangers), conduct business, send documents, and stay in touch with people near and far. You can even check your e-mail while on the road!
The basics of sending and receiving E-mail
E-mail terminology
Anatomy of an e-mail address
What about attachments?
The scoop on newsgroups
To send and receive electronic-mail messages, or e-mail, over the Internet and to organize your messages, you need an e-mail account. You can get this through an Internet service provider (ISP) or online service provider.
Client Based e-mail
You need an e-mail client—e-mail software for your computer ( Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird etc ). Your e-mail client creates an inbox on your computer. When you check your e-mail, new messages are downloaded into your inbox. You are then totally responsible for backing up your email. The safest way is to have some storage capacity on the e-mail providers server and leave your e-mail on there as well as downloading to your client—e-mail software on your computer.
Web Based e-mail
Your e-mail creates an inbox on your providers computer (Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail etc). When you check your e-mail, new messages are downloaded into your inbox on your e-mail providers computer. None of your sent e-mail or received e-mail is stored on your computer, you rely totally on your providers e-mail servers. Some providers such as Hotmail do connect up with Outlook to enable storage on your own computer as wel as theirs.
The Benefits of E-mail
When you send an email its transmission is often almost instantaneous. This is especially useful when sending a message to someone in a different country. Also, unlike when using a telephone you do not have to worry about whether the recipient of a message, living on the other side of the world, may be asleep! When they wake up, they can read their email and reply to you! A single email can simultaneously be sent to many different people. This can be very useful in a business environment, however this facility can be abused and it is now possible for people to send email via the Internet to millions of people. This habit is known as Spamming and is very strongly disapproved of!
What is required to Use E-mail? To send and receive email you require a computer, plus the necessary hardware and software.There are two basic types of email that you need to know about. Internal company emails are sent and received via your company’s LAN (Local Area Network). These are normally private systems that can only be accessed by people working within your organization.If you are connected to the Internet, then you can send or receive emails sent by another individual or organization that is also Internet connected.You will need email software to compose and send an email, but this is actually built into Windows, and many people will now compose their email within Microsoft Word and then use the Windows system to also send the email for them. If you are connected to your organization’s LAN (Local Area Network), Windows itself can then be used to connect to your company’s server PCs. In other cases, your organization may use specialist network software. In a large company, you may often also connect to the Internet via your LAN. In most cases the actual mechanics of connecting to the LAN and the Internet will have been setup for you by your organization's IT support staff. If you are working at home on your own or for a small company then setting up a connection to the Internet is a relatively simple task.
E-mail terminology
There are many acronyms associated with e-mail. Here are some that you
may come across:
SMTP—simple mail transfer protocol; the standard rules that many
e-mail clients use to handle outgoing e-mail messages.
POP3—postoffice protocol version 3; the standard rules that many
e-mail clients use to handle incoming e-mail messages.
MIME—multipurpose Internet mail extensions; a format for turning
an e-mail attachment, such as a Microsoft Word file, into ASCII text so
it can be sent from one e-mail account to another.
E-mail clients built on standards like SMTP and POP3 can share information
with each other, so we don't all need to use the same e-mail client. To
set up your e-mail client, you may need to know your SMTP server address
and your POP3 server address. If so, your Internet service provider can
give you this information. Some e-mail clients use programs called wizards
to help you get set up.
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Anatomy of an e-mail address
To send a message to someone, you must type his or her e-mail address
in the To section of your e-mail message. Generally, there are two parts
to your e-mail address: your logon identity and the identity of your ISP.
These are separated by the symbol @. A typical e-mail address for someone
who uses Hotmail, for example, looks like this: yourname@hotmail.com.
The extension—.com—indicates that Hotmail is a commercial establishment. Other common extensions are .gov for government users and .edu for educational users. E-mail addresses outside the United States may include letters that indicate the country of the user's ISP.
Sites to visit
Hotmail - sign up for a free* account (Internet connect time charges may apply)
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What about attachments?
You can send more than simple text in your e-mail messages. You can also
attach computer documents—including word-processor, spreadsheet,
graphic, and video files—to an e-mail message. So e-mail is a useful
way to share files that more than one person wants or needs.
With Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird, e-mail gets even more sophisticated and easier. They allow you to send messages on hypertext markup language (HTML) "stationery," which contains background graphics and special pre-selected font designs and colors to match. You can send e-mail directly from any application although, because of abuse, many companies will only allow plain text e-mail. Many larger companies have filter systems in place denying HTML and certain attachments.
Special notes
The person who receives your e-mail with an attachment can open the attachment
if he or she has the program in which the attachment was created - it
became prevalent in 2009 that Microsoft Word 2003 could not open Microsoft
Word 2007 causing great mayhem.
If the recipient does not have the program you used to create your attachment,
he or she may be able to get the appropriate viewer such as Microsoft
Word viewer or Microsoft PowerPoint® viewer. A viewer contains the
components of a program needed to display a file created with the full
version of the program.
To send an attachment, your e-mail client converts the attachment's digital
code into ASCII text, using a format such as UUENCODE or MIME. In order
for the recipient to read the attachment, the recipient's e-mail client
must be able to decode this format, or he or she must have another program
that can decode it.
Sites to visit
OpenOffice home page
Microsoft Office home page
Microsoft Download Center - download a viewer for Excel, Word, or PowerPoint,
and Word filters
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The scoop on newsgroups
If your e-mail client is also a newsreader, you can use it to subscribe
to, read messages from, and post messages to newsgroups, which are online
discussions on practically any topic.
Here are some newsgroup basics:
Each newsgroup covers a particular topic, often alluded to in its name.
A newsgroup is a discussion string of related messages. Each message responds
to an earlier message or addresses the overall newsgroup topic in some
way. You can post your own message in response to the messages that interest
you most.
You can find newsgroups that interest you by searching for them through
the Google.com site. Together, newsgroups make up Usenet, which you can
think of as part of the Internet.
Before you join in:
Read a newsgroup's FAQ, or frequently asked questions, file first to
learn more about the group. Almost all newsgroups have a FAQ.
Check whether the newsgroup has a file containing its charter and rules.
If it does, read this before you post messages.
Read a good portion of a discussion string before joining in. Others in
the discussion will appreciate that you took the time to get familiar
with the conversation first.
Sites to visit
Internet Explorer Home Page – download the latest browser
Google.com
ZDNet's "Usenet 101" news basics article
More on Outlook
Pros • Save Mailing List is easy to use
• Exports any selection of contacts
• Removes duplicate addresses
Cons • Save Mailing List has just one output format
• Can't save additional details
The Bottom Line - Save Mailing List makes it possible to turn any selection
of contacts and groups into a mailing list, which can be imported in most
bulk email applications.
Description
• Save Mailing List is an add-on to Outlook that saves contacts
as mailing lists.
• Output format is minimalist and compatible with most bulk email
applications.
• Save Mailing List saves any selection of Outlook address book
contacts or groups.
• Identifies and automatically removes duplicate email addresses.
If you've used Outlook or Thunderbird for some time, your address book is probably a mine of email addresses. Save Mailing List is a simple, but useful plug-in that lets you dig this mine and export the results as mailing lists. These lists are simple and can be used with most bulk email applications. Save Mailing List is particularly easy to use: select any number of contacts or groups, specify an output file, and that's it. Save Mailing List will even remove duplicates from the output. Of course all this simplicity comes at the price of limited flexibility. Save Mailing List can't save any contact details and doesn't support any other output formats.