4.7 E-MAIL

Emailing is one of the most important utilities in today’s world. It is used widely and utilized by almost each and every one of us not only as professionals but also in our personal lives. Emailing software like MS Outlook , Outlook Express etc, not only provides emailing facility but also used for scheduling appointments, maintaining contacts, setting task reminders, sending attachments with emails etc.

4.7.1 Introduction

Email Accounts can be from the Internet Service provider, employer, or webmail services like yahoo, Gmail etc. Outlook doesn’t have its own accounts but uses these email accounts. Outlook uses POP configuration to access the web based servers for emails. Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by local e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a remote server over a TCP/IP connection. 

POP supports simple download-and-delete requirements for access to remote mailboxes. Although most POP clients have an option to leave mail on server after download, e-mail clients using POP generally connect, retrieve all messages, store them on the user's PC as new messages, delete them from the server, and then disconnect. 

To send or receive email messages with Microsoft Outlook, these email account information has to be added. Email Accounts are contained in profiles. An email profile consists of email accounts, data files and settings as to where the emails are to be stored. There can be one profile or more than one profile depending on the requirement of the user. There can be one or more email accounts within a single outlook profile.

4.7.2 Creating Email Accounts and Profiles

Before using Outlook, an Email profile and account has to be created.

1. In MS Windows, go to control panel and select Mail option.

2. Click Show Profiles

3. Click on Add and Type a name for the profile and then click OK

4. Add email account to use in your profile by following the directions on the screen.

4.7.3 Create a new Email Message

The most important feature of Email software is to send and receive emails. Once the email account has been configured, the same can be used to send and receive emails.

1. On the File menu, select, New ->Mail Message

2. In the Subject box, type the subject.

3. Add the recipient’s name in the To, CC, Bcc box. Separate the names with semicolon.

4. To select the recipient’s name from a address book, click the To or CC button

5. The level of importance for message can also be set which appears as an indicator by selecting High Importance or Low Importance in the Options group in the message tab. This is only an informational flag and does not expedite or affect actual message delivery.

It is also possible to put file attachments along with the email message or include website links or links to documents present on a shared network.

4.7.4 Manage Contacts

New Contacts can be added to the Address Book. It is possible to make groups of Contacts and create distribution lists to ease selection of contacts when sending messages.

1. To add a new Contact, select File Menu, New->Contact

2. Fill in the Contact Details on the contact form that appears.

It is also possible to create a contact from an email message received. To do this:

1. Open or preview the email message that contains the Contact name that is to be added to the Contact List

2. Right Click the name of the sender and then Click Add to Contacts through the shortcut menu.

4.7.5 Calendar Management

Using the Calendar feature, one can schedule activities as appointments, meetings, events or tasks. This choice will depend on who is involved and how the entry should appear. To view the activities of any day, click on Calendar in the Navigation Pane. And then choose the date for which the activities need to be shown.

It is possible to view the activities, day wise, month wise or week wise as required. 

Right Click on the time and date the activity has to be set and choose the activity type whether it will be an appointment, meeting or event or task. 

A meeting occurs only at a schedules time and includes other people and a meeting location. An Appointment is an activity where only one person is involved. A task is an entry that is seen in the calendar but doesn’t need to be scheduled for a specific time. An event is an activity that lasts all day and do not occupy schedule time in the calendar but appear as banners on the top of the date specified for the event like conferences, business travels, holidays etc.

If any particular activity is occurring again and again, it can be set as a Recurring activity using the Recurrence feature. To set up a recurrence pattern, open the appointment and click Recurrence button in the Options group in the Appointment tab.