Hints and tips

Reading and editing during an exchange
Unlike earlier versions of BulkRate, you can actually do other things while a mail exchange is taking place.  You can work in other open applications, or you can read mail from another BBS, or you can read mail as it comes in during an exchange.

Try not to leave a dialog box or alert on the screen for too long while an exchange is in progress; they do not allow any processor time to be devoted to the exchange and certain actions can then timeout.  In most cases, BulkRate allows a full minute before timing out, so as long as the dialog box or alert is acted upon in less than a minute, you should be fine. 

Moving files around
BulkRate has to keep track of the location of a lot of files.  If you move or rename mailboxes or settings files(or the folders they are within), BulkRate may not be able to find them when running an exchange or script.

You can force BulkRate to update the location of mailboxes by using the "Service setup.." dialog under the Service menu.  To update the location of a Service file in a Script, you must delete the Service file from the Script list and re-add it.  If you move an Address Book file, you'll need to re-open it in order for BulkRate to use it as the default address book file.  Otherwise BulkRate will continue to look in the OLD location for the file.

Adding a “signature” to your messages
BulkRate supports a “tagline” feature, in which a randomly chosen single line “tagline” is appended to the end of your message.  On the Internet, multi-line “signature” files are very popular ways to end newsgroup postings and e-mail.  You can have BulkRate automatically add a “signature” to the end of each outgoing message you send.  To do so, you must create one or more text files and place them in the same folder as the BulkRate application.

The file names must end in “.sig”.  When BulkRate sends a message, it first looks for a “.sig” file with the same name as the “Host name” of your Service file.  If you have a Host name of “LAMG BBS”, BulkRate will look for a file named “LAMG BBS.sig”.  If it doesn’t find a file with this name in the same folder as the BulkRate application, it then looks for a file named “BulkRate.sig”.  Failing that, it does not append any .sig text to your outgoing message.

Be sure that the filename of the signature file (if it isn't named “BulkRate.sig”) is the same as the Host name , not the service filename .  For example, if your service filename is “LAMG”, but the Host name (as it appears in the service window) is “LAMG BBS”, a signature file named “LAMG.sig” won't work, but a signature filename of “LAMG BBS.sig” will work.

Also note that a specific service signature file will be used in place of   the BulkRate.sig file, not with  it.

You can use any word processor or even TeachText to create your “.sig” files; just make sure that the file is saved in “TEXT” format.  Unfortunately, there is no easy way to create a .sig file from within BulkRate.

However, there is a way to create a .sig file from within BulkRate, though it will require a little extra editing on your part to do so.  Select ‘Compose new’ from the Message menu.  Ignore the message header info and just enter the text you want into the body of the message.  When you're satisfied with your signature, select ‘Save as text’ from the File menu and save the message with the .sig name you wish to give it.  The file will be saved as a SimpleText text file.  Once it is saved, click the close-box of the message window, and when prompted to save the message, click the Don't Save button so that the message will be eliminated from your outgoing mail.  Since the Save as text feature includes the message header, you'll have to edit the text file once it is saved to remove the header information.