Starting Windows Live Mail

Transcription

1 1 Starting Windows Live Mail Click on the Start button Mail. and then, on the Start Menu, click on Windows Live A window like this will open: This picture shows you the whole screen. I've 'maximised' the window to fill the whole screen. When you open Windows Live Mail it will connect to the Internet and look for any new incoming s.

2 2 First of all, let's set up Windows Live Mail so that it doesn't look too confusing! Click on the View tab: If Quick Views and Storage Folders are lit up like this, click on them to cancel them. Similarly, click on Compact shortcuts if it is lit up. All the 'views' and 'folders' you need are under My or whatever it says here. Any 'Storage Folders' that you might need can be made later. You can see that I've made a folder called 'Shopping', where I'm going to store s about my online purchases.

3 3 So make sure that this part of the View tab looks like this: The Status bar is worth having it's right down the very bottom of the Windows Live Mail window. The left-hand panel should now look like this. All the important folders (storage places for your s) are in one place. The Outbox is where your outgoing s are checked before they leave. There shouldn't be anything left in the Outbox! Turning off 'Compact shortcuts' means that you can see these more clearly. The most important one - other than 'Mail' is 'Contacts'. This is your address book. The Status Bar shows you the total number of s in the folder you're using. Over to the far right it will show you activity when Receiving mail or Sending.

4 4 On this occasion I've received three new s. This message box appeared in the middle of the screen: Windows Live Mail didn't like the look of one of the s and is telling me that this has been put into a special 'folder' or storage location. We'll look at this later. Close the box before you move on. Now we'll look at the Live Mail window in detail. On the left you'll find a list of the 'folders'. These are places where s are stored. Point to Inbox and click - to make sure that you are looking at the Inbox. The grey background (highlighting) indicates which of the folders is open. New s will come in to the Inbox. They will stay there until you decide to move them! The (2) means that there are two mails there that you haven't yet read. As we've already been told, there is (1) which is suspected 'junk'. We'll meet some of the other folders later.

5 5 The list of s is in the centre panel. The two new (unread) s appear in bold type. Beside them is a yellow symbol which represents an unopened envelope... The name of the sender is there and, below it, the 'Subject' or title that the sender has given the . The from The Old Town Bookshop is open notice the grey background. The 'envelope' symbol is now open. The text of the is over to the right. You can see just a small part of it here. Over the page I'll show you the whole text and go through some of the other information that comes with an .

6 6 Here's the text of the from The Old Town Bookshop. The sender's name appears at the top, and after it is the sender's address Your address will always appear or be available when you send an , so you can't be anonymous. [We'll see later that people can deceive you with this...] The Subject that the sender gave the appears large: Your order... If you want to keep this person's name and address in your Contacts, you can click on Add contact.

7 7 The name and the address are automatically added. In this case it's a business name and it's gone into the First name: box. If you are adding a person's name, split the name into First name and Last name. The important work is done in adding the address automatically: addresses can be long and complicated with dots, underscores, hyphens etc. etc. so you either have to copy them yourself absolutely accurately - or get the computer to do it for you, like this! If you click through the options in the list on the left you'll see that you can add a lot more information about the Contact home address, business address, birthdays, anniversary dates etc. etc. but the important things are the Name and the address. Click on Add contact.

8 8 Organising your s It's important to know what to do with an , just like mail that comes through your door. I've devised the s in this exercise to illustrate various aspects of organisation and security, so let's work through these four s. First, the one that's open from The Old Town Bookshop. This is a bona fide dealer in books whom I contacted earlier. I was expecting an from them. I've ordered some books from them but these will take some time to arrive! I'd like to keep this for reference, at least until my books arrive, but I don't want it hanging around in the Inbox. I always think that this is like 'keeping' your post in a heap on the doormat; it would get in your way every day! I need a storage location for important s. As this is a mail related to my online 'shopping', I'm going to create a 'folder' where I can keep s like this. Creating Folders for your Point to the head of the list of folders, just above Inbox. Now right-click and a menu appears. Click (left) on New Folder