Receiving Email Messages

Checking (downloading) your mail from your usual computer

Checking your email means downloading your mail from your ISP to your computer's hard drive.

You can set your email software to leave the messages on your ISP's computer so you can download them again, or have it automatically delete the messages from your ISP's computer as soon as it downloads them to yours. Some ISP's have fairly small mailboxes for each account, so if you leave too many messages, people trying to send you mail won't be able to. The default setting is to delete them automatically, and most people don't change this.

There are two ways to check [download] your email:

1. On demand - Whenever you want via a command to check mail

2. At predetermined intervals [or times] that you specify.

If you are always connected to the Internet or don't mind your computer dialing in when it wants to, you may like having your software check for you. This is very helpful for anyone who might forget to check their email regularly. If a new piece of email arrives the software will alert you.

Checking email uses some of your computer's resources. If you set the software to check too often, you might find it disrupts your work flow. Try checking once an hour. It's more productive to interrupt your workflow once to read four messages than to interrupt your work flow four times to read one. [If your software lets you check at certain times, choose those times you are less likely to be interrupted, such as when you start the day, during lunch, or late in the day.]

Checking (downloading) your mail from a different computer

If you are on vacation, a business trip, or away from your computer, you can still check your email using any computer that is connected to the Internet. To do this, you will need to know how to set up the email program on that computer to contact your ISP.

If you are using an ISP account, you need to know the name of your mail server, your email account name, and your email account password. These topics were covered in the section on Setting Up Your Email Account. You need to enter this information in the email program settings on that computer, and then delete it when you have finished.

If you are using a web-based email account, you need to know the web address of the service you are using and your user name and password.

Keeping your messages on your usual computer: If you are reading your email from someone else's computer (you are on vacation or visiting a friend), make sure you set the email software to leave the messages on your ISP so you can download them again when you are using your own computer.

Creating mailboxes (folders)

Mailboxes are a way to organize the messages you receive, much like folders in a word processor where you save items with a similar theme.

Your software should create an Inbox, Outbox, and Trash folder for you. You can create as many additional folders as the software you use allows. Most software allows a large number of folders.

Getting messages into other mailboxes (transferring and filtering)

Unless you specify otherwise, incoming email is always sent to your Inbox.

To organize your email, you can:

Transfer it from one folder to another manually by using a command (such as the "transfer" command in Eudora or the "move message" command in Netscape Communicator) or by dragging a message from one folder and dropping it into another folder.
Create a filter or mail action that automatically moves incoming messages to particular folders based on criteria you specify. For instance: If you serve on a committee with several people, you can set up a filter to automatically put messages from any of them into a specific folder instead of your inbox.

Creating filters

A filter is a method used to tell your email program to automatically put incoming messages that meet specific criteria in a specific mailbox. If you don't set up any filters, all incoming messages go into your IN box. Any messages that don't meet the criteria of the filters also go into your IN box.

Filters can be created using a fairly broad range of criteria. They can be simple, for example: any incoming message from kabade@crlc.org gets placed into a folder called Kathi; or any message with the word "lobster" in the subject goes into a folder called "Crustaceans".

Filters can be very complex, such as if the To field is "lloyd@ocean.net" and the Subject field contains the word "protest" and a "cc" field contains "rocky@coastal.net", then the message goes into a folder called "protest campaign". Other mail from lloyd@ocean.net that does not contain the word "protest" or does not have a "cc" to "rocky@coastal.net" would go into the "crustaceans" folder.

Another good use of filters is to "filter out" your junk email. If you often receive junk email from a particular email address or with a particular word in the subject, you can have it automatically placed in a "junk mail" folder or even routed directly to the trash. It is safer to use a junk mail folder so you can review the messages before you delete them in case one really wasn't junk email.