RECEIVE  E-MAIL

Assuming you have been following the last three sections, and have connected to (dialled up) your ISP's computer and then opened windows mail, I will now show you how to Receive E-Mail.

When people want to receive e-mail from their ISP's computer they simply click on the SEND/RECV button, which is wrong. As they only want to receive they should only be using the RECV (receive) part of this button. It does not make sense to tell windows mail to check if any e-mail is in the OUTBOX ready for sending when all they want to do is receive e-mail. Also. The SEND/RECV button sends and receives e-mail for every e-mail account in windows mail, so if you have four e-mail accounts but only want to receive e-mail for one particular e-mail account you should not get into the lazy habit of clicking the SEND/RECV button. In this example I will show you how to receive e-mail the proper way.

Start by clicking on the right-side of the SEND/RECV button to activate its menu. From there, select the RECEIVE ALL menu-item (Fig 1.1).


Fig 1.0  Click on the right-side of the SEND/RECV button



Fig 1.1  Select the RECEIVE ALL menu-item

After clicking on the RECEIVE ALL menu-item you will see the following progress windows appear. These tell you what is happening between Windows Mail and your ISP's computer (server), which are useful for diagnosing problems.


Fig 1.2  Trying to connect to the Host Computer (your ISP's computer)



Fig 1.3  Connected to the Host Computer (your ISP's computer)



Fig 1.4  Authorizing the User Name and Password for the E-Mail Account



Fig 1.5  Authorization passed. Check how many e-mails are in this E-Mail Account's INBOX.



Fig 1.6  Download those e-mails from the ISP's computer (e-mail account's INBOX) to the windows mail INBOX



Fig 1.7  Disconnect from the Host computer (your ISP's computer)

Figures 1.2 to 1.7 show the process of receiving e-mail. Most of the progress windows will fly past at such a speed you probably will not notice them - This is quite normal. In fact, the speed at which the progress windows go by indicates whether or not your ISP's computer, your computer and/or your internet connections (main and extended) are slow or fast.

Basically. Windows mail makes a request to your ISP's computer to RECEIVE ALL (download all) the e-mail inside an E-Mail Account's INBOX, which resides on your ISP's computer, and place that received/downloaded e-mail into the windows mail INBOX for that particular e-mail account. This request happens for each e-mail account. Before any receiving (downloading) can be done though your ISP has verified/authorized the e-mail account (User Name, Password and so on) first. When all the e-mail has been received (downloaded) the extended internet connection between your ISP's computer and windows mail is disconnected (Fig 1.7).

In this example I am checking (receiving from) two e-mail accounts, my Contact John e-mail account and my OneTel e-mail account. If I only wanted to check one of my e-mail accounts I would of clicked on it's account name only.



Fig 1.8  RECEIVE ALL e-mail for the Contact John e-mail account only

In the above example I am also only using one INBOX for all the e-mail accounts. If I want each e-mail account to have its own INBOX I will need to set up each e-mail account as a seperate Identity (User Account). Windows mail is only set up to use its default identity, which is the identity you are using now. Identities are explained in the WM Identities section.

THE  STATUS  BAR

After clicking on the RECEIVE ALL button look immediately at the bottom-right corner of the windows mail status bar (window) and you will see various status notifications appearing.

The first status notification is Connecting... which means windows mail is trying to connect to your particular E-Mail Account (in this example the contactjohn e-mail account). Or put more precisely. Windows mail is trying to connect to the INBOX belonging to this particular e-mail account, which resides on the ISP's computer. This connecting process uses an extended internet connection.


Fig 2.0  Connecting... to this particular E-Mail Account's INBOX

The second status notification is Authorizing... which means windows mail is now verifying/authorizing, with your ISP's computer, the User Name and Password of this particular E-Mail Account.


Fig 2.1  Authorizing... access to this particular E-Mail Account's INBOX

The third status notification is Receiving Mail... which means windows mail is now receiving (downloading) the e-mail to from this e-mail account's INBOX which resides on your ISP's computer to the windows mail INBOX. Your ISP's computer is allowing the e-mail to be received (downloaded) because the user name and password for this particular e-mail account has been verified/authorized. If there is a problem receiving the e-mail, for whatever reason(s), you will see an Error notification instead with a seperate window providing details about the error.


Fig 2.2  The e-mail is now being received (downloaded) into the windows mail INBOX



Fig 2.3  Oh dear! There seems to be an Error.

At this stage, because unknown e-mail is being received, the receiving time from the ISP's computer is also unknown. It is times like these, especially if an e-mail has an attachment, when a simple Receiving Mail... notification is not adequate. You could be looking at the Receiving Mail... notification for 10 seconds (broadband) or 10 minutes (P.A.Y.G) for example. So it would be nice if windows mail had some sort of guage. And fortunately it does. Just double click on the Receiving Mail... icon and the guage will appear.


Fig 2.4  Double click on the Receiving Mail... icon to see the progress guage



Fig 2.5  The progress guage shows how much of the e-mail has been received

You may of noticed this is the same guage as in Fig 1.6 above and that is because it is the same guage. If the guage has been hidden behind by another window, or is naturally hidden (closed) because the HIDE button was previously clicked on, clicking on the Receiving Mail... icon brings the hidden guage back into view.

The final status notification tells you how many new e-mails have been received (downloaded) into your windows mail INBOX.


Fig 2.6  The number of new e-mails that have been downloaded into your windows mail INBOX


LOCAL  FOLDERS

Another thing to look at, after clicking on the SEND button, is the main windows mail folder called Local Folders. It contains the sub-folders INBOX (Recieved E-Mail), OUTBOX (Waiting to be sent E-Mail), SENT ITEMS (Sent E-Mail), DELETED ITEMS (Deleted E-Mail), DRAFTS (Stored/Unfinished E-Mail) and JUNK E-MAIL (Unwanted/Unread E-Mail). These sub-folders are main folders in their own right and function just like any other "Normal" folder. In this example you need to be looking at the INBOX sub-folder.

Once an e-mail has been received (downloaded) the number next to INBOX increases by one and the e-mail headings (From, Subject and Received) are filled in for that e-mail.


Fig 3.0  Two e-mails have been received (downloaded)

As you can see, the two e-mails are from my friend Capili. He has replied to my e-mail that had the subject Photograph Attached and also sent me an e-mail with attachments. I know he has replied (clicked on his Hotmail REPLY button) to my Photograh Attached e-mail because of the RE: (Reference) at the beginning of his subject which is automatically prefixed to a subject when you click on the REPLY button. If he had created a new e-mail (clicked on his Hotmail NEW button) his subject might of been Photograph Received or whatever without the RE: at the beginning. Another thing to note is that when an e-mail is replied to any attached files it has are automatically removed from the e-mail. This is because it would not make sense to keep replying to each other with the same files attached all the time, especially if the files are big, as the downloading of them would slow things down. The reading and replying of e-mails are explained in the next sections.

So just to recap. You click on the RECEIVE ALL button to receive the e-mail for each e-mail account created in windows mail. In this example the e-mail for my Contact John and OneTel e-mail accounts. Your ISP's computer then verifies/authorizes the e-mail account currently being used before downloading its e-mail into the windows mail INBOX. This is done for each e-mail account you have. Once the e-mail has been downloaded (received) for a particular e-mail account your ISP's computer then stops communication with that e-mail account by disconnecting from its extended internet connection (Fig 1.7 above).

One important thing to remember. When you sign up for an Internet Account your INBOX (on your ISP's computer) will probably be limited, to 250MBs of storage for example, depending on the Terms & Conditions. This should be taken into consideration when e-mailing in general. For example. When you use windows mail to receive e-mail it downloads your e-mail from your INBOX, on your ISP's computer, to your windows mail INBOX. As long as you regularly download your e-mail, in order to remove it from your ISP's computer (INBOX), there should be no problems when people send you e-mail. Meaning. If your INBOX, on your ISP's computer, becomes full the next person to send you e-mail may get an error: "Cannot send e-mail", "Recipient's INBOX is full" or errors to this effect.



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