E-mail basics: E-mails
and attachments
Electronic
mail, what everyone calls e-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!
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The basics of sending and receiving
·
Anatomy of an e-mail address
The basics of sending and receiving
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. You also need an
e-mail client-which is simply e-mail software for your computer. Your e-mail
client creates an inbox on your computer. When you check your e-mail, new
messages are downloaded into your inbox.
E-mail clients
Here
are some examples of e-mail clients:
Microsoft® Outlook® 2002—a messaging and collaboration client;
provides advanced e-mail, calendar, and contact management and a platform for
workgroup information sharing when used with Microsoft Exchange Server. Outlook
2002 has loads of terrific new features. Check them out!
Hotmail®—the world's leading provider of free* e-mail. Because
it is Web based, everything you need to use Hotmail resides on the Internet,
rather than on your computer. So you can use Hotmail on any computer that has
access to the Internet. If you travel, move, or change your Internet service
provider, your Hotmail e-mail address and service stay the same.
Microsoft Outlook Express—designed for users who need fast, reliable
e-mail and newsgroup functionality without the full capabilities of Outlook.
Outlook Express is included in the Microsoft Windows® operating system and in
Internet Explorer 6, and is especially easy to use if you're using Microsoft
Internet Explorer 6.
Microsoft Exchange—Businesses today rely on their messaging and
collaboration servers more than ever. Exchange gives you a comprehensive
messaging platform, with the tools to create rich collaboration applications.
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.
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
Sites to visit
·
Hotmail—sign up for a free*
account (Internet connect time charges may apply)
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 2002, e-mail gets even more sophisticated and easier. Outlook
2002 allows 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 found in Microsoft Office 2002.
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.
·
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
·
Microsoft Office XP home page—where
you can get Outlook 2002, and the many other great software that is a part of
Office XP
·
Microsoft Download Assistance Center—download
a viewer for Excel, Word, or the PowerPoint presentation graphics program
* Internet connect-time charges may apply.