| OPEN AN E-MAIL |
Continuing from the previous, Receive An E-Mail, section. When your e-mail has been downloaded (received) it is listed in the main display area (viewing window pane - Fig 1.0 below). In this example there are two e-mails from my friend Denise Oakdale. The first one does not have an attachment (RE: E-Mail Test Only) but the second one does (two files attached). You know when an e-mail has an attachment because it has a Paper Clip symbol to the left of it.
Over time, when your INBOX gets fuller, you may find it hard to distinguish between new e-mail and old e-mail. So to help out windows live mail 2011 gives you a few pointers. For example. The heading of an unread e-mail will be in bold text and its envelope icon will be of a Closed Envelope, whereas the heading of a read e-mail will be in plain (not bold) text and its envelope icon will be of an Opened Envelope. The status bar also states the number of e-mails that have been read as well as the number of e-mails that remain unread. Unfortunately there is nothing to tell you how many attached files (attachments) an e-mail contains. You will only know this when you open the e-mail.
To open an e-mail simply double click on its envelope icon or on its name. As you do this the first click highlights the e-mail (Fig 1.1) and the second click opens the e-mail (Fig 1.2). You probably will not notice the highlighting of the e-mail due to the e-mail's message window appearing in front of the viewing window pane straight away.
The above e-mail (Fig 1.1) consists of an Header (the FROM, SUBJECT and DATE information) and a Body (the E-Mail Message itself). The header tells you
who the e-mail came FROM (who the Sender is), what the SUBJECT is about and the DATE (and TIME) the e-mail was sent. You know who it is addressed TO
because it has been received by a particular e-mail account (i.e. the Yoingco (contactjohn) e-mail account in this case). The body contains the sender's
message and any previous messages sent between you and the sender. Any previous messages will have a line above them and underneath that line is the
header and body, as in the above example (Fig 1.2).
FROM means who the e-mail came from. In this case, from Denise Oakdale.
The reason FROM shows Denise Oakdale is because this is the Display Name (First and Last name) denise chose for herself when she set up her Hotmail e-mail
account. She could of put a nickname but she chose to put her real name instead. If you want to change the sender's display name yourself you can do.
Right click on one of their received e-mails, to bring up the Options menu, and then select the ADD SENDER TO CONTACTS menu-item. This will bring up the
Add A Contact window which will allow you to change their display name as well as other details.
SUBJECT is just the Title of the e-mail.
Always be wary of an e-mail's title. For example. Bad people normally use it to fool you. They might title a bad e-mail "Hello John", hoping your name
is John and hoping you will open the bad e-mail. And if your name is not John they hope you might think "What is this? My name is not John?" and then
become curious enough to open the bad e-mail.
DATE is the date, and time, when the e-mail was sent by the sender and not when you received it.
The DATE heading in the windows live mail 2011 viewing window pane is meant as a sorting method. For example. When you have received many e-mails,
perhaps over a 9 day period, they will at some point need sorting into order. And one way you can do this is by the date and time an e-mail was received.
See the Sorting E-Mails section for more information.
MESSAGE contains the actual e-mail message and any previous e-mail messages.
When you open an e-mail its message is always displayed inside a read (view) only edit box, so it can be viewed but not edited. To edit it you need to
click on the REPLY button for example (explained in the next section). The message itself normally only contains the sender's message. However. These
days, by default, any previous e-mail messages between you and the sender are also shown. Those previous e-mail messages are marked with a line
(Fig 1.2 above).
Also these days anti-virus software tends to add its own message to the bottom of an e-mail message to let you know that e-mail is free of viruses
(clean) - This does not mean the attachment, if any, is virus free though. It could have been blocked, if it was considered dangerous or virused. Another
thing you might see in an e-mail message is advertising, usually included by the sender's e-mail server (i.e. Hotmail), which is quite normal these days.
When you have finished reading an e-mail and want to close it either click on the eXit (Close) button in the top-right corner of the message window or
use the File menu, CLOSE menu-item. Both methods will take you back to the windows live mail 2011 (INBOX) window.
When you arrive back at the windows live mail 2011 window look at the INBOX and Status Bar. You will notice that these have changed. The INBOX has
decreased by one, to let you know you have now read (opened) one of the two e-mails. And the status bar (bottom-left corner) reflects this by stating: 2
message(s), 1 unread. The bottom-right corner of the status bar might remain as: 2 new message(s) for a short time only but then states Working Online
only. Another thing to take note of is the Envelope Icon next to each e-mail. When you open an e-mail for the first time its envelope icon will change,
from a Closed Envelope, to an Opened Envelope (Fig 1.5 above).
I will now open the second e-mail.
The only difference between the above two e-mails is that the e-mail above has attachments - Two photograph files attached to it in this example.
Attachments are explained in more detail below (see The Attachments Area).
When you have finished reading an e-mail and want to close it either click on the eXit (CLOSE) button in the top-right corner of the message window or
use the File menu, CLOSE menu-item. Both methods will take you back to the windows live mail 2011 (INBOX) window.
When you arrive back at the windows live mail 2011 window look at the INBOX and Status Bar. You will notice that these have changed again. The INBOX now has no number next to it. This is because it decreased by one and reached zero, but instead of stating INBOX (0) it just states INBOX to let you know you have now read (opened) every e-mail in that e-mail account. The status bar (bottom-left corner) reflects this by stating: 2 message(s), 0 unread. Another thing to take note of is that the envelope icons next to both e-mails now have an Opened Envelope next to them instead of a Closed Envelope.
| THE ATTACHMENTS AREA |
The attachments area (also known as the Attach Box because it is an edit box that is viewable/readable only), which was explained in the
Attach A File section, lists all the (safe/clean)
files that are attached to an e-mail. They are listed by file name, file size and associated program icon (if they have one).
In the above example the attached files are both image (photograph) files, called IMG_0339.jpg and IMG_1185.jpg respectively, and are therefore associated
with the default Windows 7 photo viewer (image program); which will normally be Windows Photo Viewer or Windows Live Photo Gallery. The file name and file
size information relating to a particular attached file is not displayed until you hover over it.
In the case of photo attachments you have two methods of viewing them. You can either double click on each photo or you can view all of the photos as a
slideshow, by clicking on the VIEW SLIDE SHOW link - This will then bring up the associated image viewer and display the photos.
Double clicking on a photo might bring up the following Open message requester that asks you if you want to open the attached file. If so, just
click on the OPEN buton to continue. If the Error message requester in Fig 2.2 then appears, this will be because you currently have no photo program
(image viewer) associated with this file's type; which means you must use the
DEFAULT PROGRAMS Control Panel in order to associated a file with
a program. In this case, associate a .jpg photo file with an image viewer (photo viewing program).
Another scenario of the above can be when you don't have the actual program associated with a particular file type installed on your computer. For example.
In this next example Fig 2.5 shows I have Adove Reader installed on my computer, denoted by the red adobe reader icon, and can therefore open the
License_Agreement.pdf file as normal.
Fig 2.6 on the other hand shows what happens when I don't have Adobe Reader installed. A white psuedo icon is used in place of the red adobe reader icon
to denote adobe reader is not installed. When I double click on the white psuedo icon the Open With program requester appears instead of the default Open
message requester (as above). This is because windows live mail 2011 is giving me the chance to select, or BROWSE for, a program that could possible open
the attached .pdf file (such as a PDF Viewer).
As long as your computer is up-to-date with the latest, common, software you should find that most people will send you attachments whereby you already
have the common software installed to open most, if not all, of the attached files. And you should also find that messing about with program association
and browsing for installed programs is a rare event.
With regards to file size it is a good idea to ask your friends, and so on, not to send you large photograph files for example. Many people just attach
a file, unaware of file size and your e-mail account's INBOX storage capacity. This can lead to them getting errors: "Could not send e-mail",
"Recipient's account is too small or full" or words to that effect. This is especially true when people forward you an e-mail whereby they want you to
see the e-mail message but forget the e-mail has a large file attached to it. Or they know but do not consider your e-mail account's storage capacity.
To save an attached file simply right click on it, to bring up its Options menu, and then left click on the SAVE AS menu-item. The SAVE ATTACHMENT AS file requester will then appear.
Despite its name the SAVE ATTACHMENT AS file requester is a normal file requester that saves an attached file as a normal file. For example. An attached .xlsx file would be saved as a Microsoft Excel 2007 file, even though Microsoft Excel 2007 might not be installed on the computer. Why? Because Windows 7 knows you might want to send that .xlsx file, as an attachment, to someone who does have Microsoft Excel 2007 installed on their computer. Or that you might install Microsoft Excel 2007 at a later date on your computer.
Beware of the PRINT menu-item. Sometimes an attached file might not print, or print directly, due to the following reason(s).
Due to windows live mail 2011 and/or Windows 7 security/normal settings sometimes an attached file does not get printed - This could be because windows
live mail 2011 and/or Windows 7 is blocking the attached file due to it being classed as harmful or because no direct-printing program is associated with
the file's extension. In these cases you can always save the attached file onto your computer and later sort out its program association and security
issues.
Another reason why an attached file might not be able to be printed, or opened, is because another program is using its association. For example. When you
install some media software it might ask you if you want all media files to be associated with its media playing program. Clicking on its YES button can
be a mistake because it might not have the same playing power as your previous (default) media player and/or may not have a print option. In some cases
they don't have a certain CODEC (decoder) installed which means the player cannot play a certain type of media file.
This attachment area section has hopefully given you some insight into what you should be aware of with regards to Attachments in general. Remember. If
you keep your software up-to-date and give a little thought for your recipient's software and e-mail account storage capacity you should not come across
too many problems. Basically, the chances of you coming across someone who has exactly the same software as you, the same storage capacity as you, the
same computer settings as you and the same nature/personality/thoughtfulness as you are slim. So expect the odd attachment to be too large, the odd file
not to open and so on.
Microsoft product screen shot(s) reprinted with permission from Microsoft Corporation. As stated here by the Microsoft Corporation.
