Guide 1: E-mail

Guide 1: E-Mail

Picture this:  you've forgotten your mate's birthday and you can't find a
porter to get a phonecard (very common), and he/she would be out anyway. 
What do you do?  Easy.  Send them an E- Mail.  Why?  Because it's free,
fast and it'll have the date on it when it gets to the other end so that
even if your mate doesn't read it the same day, there's proof that the
thought was there.  You can use E-Mail for things other than simple one on
one communication; it's possible to receive files via E-Mail and to join
mailing lists about various subjects, but I'll leave you to investigate
such things for yourself. 


NB Some departments, such as law, have their own central machine and it
may well be that your mail will go to the departmental server rather than
to your standard Unix account.  If this is the case, you'll just have to
wait until you receive instructions from your department about how to
access your departmental mail programme before you can read any incoming
mail, although you could still send mail from your Unix account. 


To get access to E-Mail, log into one of the Unix machines as you did when
you changed your password.  Type pine at the prompt.  You will then enter
the most commonly used mail programme.  Pine is helpful in that it lists
command options at the bottom of the screen to help you, so you should
find it relatively simple to get to grips with.  To see any messages you
have received you need to look at your inbox.  This is the folder that is
automatically opened when you start pine, so hit I to view it.  Messages
have a N beside them when they are new and un-read; pressing return allows
you to view the selected message.  The space bar will move the message
down a page.  Press I to return to the list.  The cursor keys will allow
you to select different messages.  To save a message into a different
folder, select the message and hit S; hitting return will put the message
into the default saved messages folder.  If you want to make your own
folder, just type in a different name before you hit return, respond to
the computer's query and you will have created a new folder.  If you
return to the main menu by pressing M and then press L you will see a list
of the existing folders.  Saving messages is a good habit; don't worry
that a D appears next to the message, it has only been deleted from its
old folder. 


If you don't want to keep a message at all, just press D to delete it when
it's highlighted.  If you change your mind, press U to cancel the
deletion; note that messages are only removed when you exit the programme
(hit Q from the main menu) and even then you will be asked if you really
want to get rid of them.  Before I tell you how to actually send a
message, I'll briefly mention the address book function.  The instructions
for entering names are handled automatically so I won't describe them
here, but note that you can assign a nickname for an address so that when
you compose a letter you needn't type out the whole address, just the
nickname.  You can also set up lists in the address book and give that
group of people one nickname; the programme will then print all their
mailnames for you when you use the group nickname, saving you a lot a
hassle. 

Before you compose a message you need the exact mailname of the person
you're sending it to.  If you get just one character wrong, your message
will either get thrown back in your face by the postmaster or end up going
to the wrong person.  However, don't worry about capitals and so on; 
addresses are case insensitive.  Mailnames are made up of two
componenents, the personal name and the domain name, linked by an @ sign. 
A typical Durham address looks like:  F.Bloggs@durham.ac.uk


Durham addresses are nice in that they use your actual name as your
personal name; other Universities may not, so you will probably need to
contact your friends at other Universities if you want to find out what
their E-Mail addresses are.  If you are unsure about your own mailname,
exit pine and type in mailname followed by your surname.  The system will
then list the mailnames of people with that surname.  This is a useful way
of finding a person's mailname, but only locally.  I'll mention another
method later. 


To compose a message, press C when doing anything other than entering
text.  At the To:  prompt type in the E-Mail address (mailname) you want
to send your message to.  The next prompt, Cc: can be ignored; if you
wanted to send a copy of the message to someone else, typing their E- Mail
address there would achieve that.  To list E- Mail addresses, follow each
one by a comma and space until you've typed in the last one.  Ignore the
third prompt; just press return.  At the Subject: prompt, give the letter
an appropriate title; this will be visible to the receiver before s/he
reads the message.  Having done that, type in your message, preferably not
in upper case (see the Netiquette section later).  Don't press return at
the end of lines; the text will move onto the next line automatically.  To
send the message, hold down Ctrl and hit X.  Respond to the query and your
message will be sent.  Note the other options accessable by using the Ctrl
key (indicated by a ^) and another, such as cancel and postpone message;
those are the two you are most likely to use in addition to the send
message command.  Once a message is sent, that's it; you can't cancel it
in mid transmission. 


If, having received a message, you want to reply to it, simply select the
message and press R.  The programme will ask you whether you want to
include the sender's message and will then generate the sending
information part of the message for you.  If you want to pass on the
message you have received to someone else, select it and press F, then
construct the sending information part of the message as you would for a
normal message. 


You should now be able to handle the basics of sending and receiving
messages.  One final point to note is that the programme saves a record of
all the messagess you send in a folder called Sent Mail, so should you
give a letter an incorrect address you can always forward it to a new
address using the Sent Mail copy.  If a message does fail to get anywhere
you will probably find that it is returned to you by the postmaster
automatically with a description of the problem.  If this happens, you'll
just have to try again with a different address.  Remember that some
people may not yet have registered, which could explain why they have no
E-Mail address. 

Written by Andy Thomas, A.G.Thomas@durham.ac.uk