Electronic mail (e-mail, or email) is a way of sending and receiving letters electronically. As well, you can send and receive documents and pictures, and virtually any other computer file that is fairly small. The main use is for correspondence and sending/receiving pictures. In addition you can also forward emails you have received.

• Outlook Express
  • Screens
• Yahoo! Mail
  • Screens
• Other e-mail programs

Here is a look at Microsoft's Outlook Express. This is one of the most common email programs, as it comes along with Windows.

Outlook Express Main Screen - This is the first screen you will see when you open Outlook Express. On the left you see the different folders that keep your email organized.

Inbox

stores your incoming email messages (emails), notice the (1) next to it, this indicates there is 1 unread message. As well, you will notice that Inbox is in bold, indicating there are one or more unread messages, this would be the same of any of the folders.

Outbox

stores your composed emails that have not been sent. Composed emails do not have to be put in the outbox before sending.

Sent Items

stores emails that you have sent. These will not show up as unread unless you mark them that way.

Deleted Items

stores emails that you "delete" from any of the other folders. This is similar to the recycle bin on the Windows Desktop. When you delete an email it is put into the Deleted Items. Once you delete that message from the Deleted Items folder it is removed from your computer.
You can also set up Outlook Express to automatically delete messages in the Deleted Items folder that have been there more than a certain amount of time.

Drafts

stores unfinished email. If you run out of time while composing an email, or just want to take a break before finishing the email, you can save it as a draft. This saves the email, but does not send it. You can then go back later to finish and send the message.

User Folders

while there are none listed above, you can create your own folders to help organize your email. You could have separate folders for family and friends, and work. The difference with these folders is that you must specify which messages go into these folders.

To line

where you put the email addresses of the person(s) that the message is to. You have more than one address listed in this line, simply separate the email addresses with commas. This is the only mandatory line. If you have no address in this line you will not be able to send your message.

CC line

This is the Carbon Copy or Courtesy Copy line, since there is no carbon paper involved the second is an updated interpretation. This is where you can enter additional email addresses, in the same fashion as the To line.

Bcc

There is also another option that you can use to enter addresses which does have a distinct difference. This line is not shown above, it is the Bcc line. Bcc stands for Blind Carbon(Courtesy) Copy. The address(es) in this line will receive the email, but will not be shown to those listed in the To or CC lines.

Subject line

This is where you put the subject of the email. You do not have to include a subject, most email programs will alert you that you have a message with no subject before sending.

Body section

This is where the body of your message goes. You will note that there is a "grayed out" bar above Body section, this contains formatting tools, similar to Microsoft Word. You can change the font, size, and alignment of the text. As well you can create bulleted or number lists.

• The Spelling button will spell check you message
• The Attach button will allow you to attach files to your email message.
• The Priority button, which can mark the message as normal or urgent. This does not change the delivery of the message, it just gives a visual indicator to the recipient that it is urgent.

When you click on the Attach button, a window will open that lets you search your computer for the file(s) that you want to attach. In general it will open the "My Documents" folder first. You can use the "Look in:" box at the top of the windows to choose a different location. Once you have found the file you want to attach, click on it to highlight it and then click the Attach button near the bottom of the window. If you want to attach another file, repeat the process.

You will see similar folders listed at the left of the screen. In this case there are additional user folders because email from multiple addresses is accessible in this case. The top list has the general mail, and down below is where email for my ATS account is put. You will note that some of the folder names are different, Trash instead of Deleted Items and Sent instead of Sent Items. There is no difference in how these folders work compared to the above descriptions. However, in terms of the Trash folder, Yahoo! Automatically deletes messages older than 30 days.

There is also an additional folder that is not present in Outlook Express, the Bulk folder. This folder stores email messages that are considered spam, not the luncheon meat, by Yahoo!. This Yahoo! thinks these are messages that you do not want, generally these are advertisements and newsletters, and other types of bulk email. If you notice that there are messages in the Bulk folder that are not spam, or messages in your Inbox that are, you can mark these messages accordingly. This helps Yahoo! better check your messages for spam.

You will note that again there are similarities between this Compose screen and the Outlook Express New Message window. There is a To, CC, and Subject, line, a Body section, and in this case the Bcc line is also visible. These all act in the same manner as in Outlook Express. You can see that the To, CC, and Bcc text are blue and underlined. This means that they are "hyperlinks" (links). In this case if you click on one of them it will open your Yahoo! Address Book so that you can choose from the email addresses you have stored there. This is possible with Outlook Express as well.

In this case since there are multiple email addresses that are accessible here, there is an option of which address to send the email from. With a regular Yahoo! Mail account this choice will not be there. Above the From line there are some buttons. Familiar are the Send, Spell Check, and Save as Draft. These all work in the same fashion as Outlook Express. The Cancel button will cancel the message and return you to the main screen or Inbox, depending on what your previous screen was.

There are a few other differences between Outlook Express and Yahoo! Mail. Below the Body section there are some check boxes. The first selects to include a "signature". A signature is a section of text that generally contains name and contact information. These are generally used in a business situation. The next check box is Allow HTML tags, unless you have designed WebPages you don't need to be concerned about this. It is just a way to include Web formatting, but you need to know HTML coding to use this. Next we see the Save a copy check box. Since this is Web based email, all of your email and settings are stored on Yahoo! and take up there space. As a result, Yahoo! limits the amount of space you can use, and sent messages take up that space. However, messages in your Trash and Bulk folders do not count towards your allocated space. The next check box is used if you have a Yahoo! PayDirect account to send money through email.

To attach files, instead of clicking the Attach button as with Outlook Express, there is a link between the Subject line and Body section.

Since this is Web based, there is a slight difference in attaching files to your email. After clicking on the Attach link, this screen opens. To attach a file click you have two options. First, if you know exactly where the file is on your computer, you can type it into one of the boxes. Since this is fairly unlikely, the better option is to click on one of the Browse buttons to the right of the boxes. This will open a window like the one used to select the file in Outlook Express, simply find the file, but in this case you will click on the "select" or "open" button instead of attach.

Once the file is selected, the location will be listed in the respective box. If you want to attach another file, select an unused box/browse button and repeat. When you are done selecting your file(s), click on the Attach Files button near the bottom. This will attach your file(s) and return you to the compose screen.