How to Compose a Message

In this lesson, we'll learn how to compose e-mail messages. We have already become familiar with the beginning of the e-mail process and the function of each toolbar.

We will first begin by clicking on the "New MSG" button located in the Navigation toolbar. This will take us to the "Composition" window.

Before we begin composing a new message, we have one more toolbar to learn. We will begin with the Message toolbar in the "Composition" window.

The first icon on the left is the Send icon. This icon is useful for sending messages that have been composed.

The "Quote" icon is used to include the text of a previous selected message in the new message.

The "Address" icon is useful for selection e-mail addresses from your address book.

The "Attach" icon is useful for sending any documents, web pages or other files as attachments to the e-mail message (like e-mailing an assignment to your professor).

The "Spelling" icon is used as an editing tool. Its function is very similar to the spell checker in any word processing program. It simply checks for spelling errors. (If you are unfamiliar with word using spell check, you may find it useful to review the "Word Processing Basics" tutorial on this CD-ROM.)

The "Save" icon is useful for saving a message as draft (if you must leave before you have finished creating your e-mail message). You may retrieve the message and send it at a later time.

The "Security" icon is useful when working in a computer with multiple users. The security function in the composition screen is used to secure information that is privileged to you.

The "Stop" icon is used when you are sending a message and would like to stop its transmission before it is sent.

Below the toolbar, all the way to the left of the screen is a small group of three icons: a card file, a paper clip, and a piece of paper with checkmarks.

Clicking the icon that looks like a card file, displays the "Addressing" area which is used to specify the e-mail address of the person you are sending the message.

Clicking the paper clip icon, displays the "Attachments" list.

Clicking the last icon displays the "Message Sending Options" in which you can specify priorities for message sending.

Moving down the page, we see a long white space labeled "Subject." This is where you will enter the title for your e-mail message.

Below the "Subject" line is an area which looks like a standard word processing toolbar. (With this toolbar, we can increase the font size and formatting of our message.)

Finally, the large white space at the bottom of the screen is where you will enter your actual message.

Now we are ready to begin writing our message! (Remember that we got here by clicking the New Message icon from the Mail Messenger in-box window.)

We begin by entering the email address of the recipient. (We need to make sure to click on the icon for the "Addressing" area in order to display the space labeled "To:")

We want to send a message to another UCF student, so we enter the Pegasus e-mail address for the student.

(If we wish to add this address to our "Address Book" we could do that by clicking "Communicator" from the menu bar at the top of the screen and choosing "Address Book." We would choose "New Card" and then, we would complete all the contact information and click "OK." We aren't going to do that right now.)

Notice that the label "To" next to our recipient's e-mail address is a button. If we click the "To" button, a list of other labels appears.

• "CC" means "carbon copy" and indicates that the message is not intended primarily for this person.
• "BCC" means "blind carbon copy" and is used to send a copy of a message to someone without the primary recipient's knowledge.
• The other options (Group, Reply To, and Follow-Up To) are used for discussion groups, not e-mail.

We want to send a word processing document to the recipient, so let's click the "Attachments" icon at the top of the screen. (We can attach a computer file, a web page, or an address book card. A word processing document is a computer file, so we'll choose "File" from the list.)

A file management window will appear which allows us to locate the document we want to attach.

We're looking for a document called "practice.txt" located in the "My Documents" folder.

Once we locate the document, we double-click it in order to attach it to our message.

We're now ready to type a subject. (We'll use "My First Message" for the subject line.)

To write the actual message we click in the large "Message" area at the bottom of the screen and start typing. (We'll stay in a creative mode and simply type "This is my first e-mail message.")

We have successfully composed an e-mail message!

Before we're ready to "send" the message, though, we must make sure that it is edited properly. In our next lesson, we'll introduce you to the importance of editing and demonstrate the editing functions available in Netscape Mail Messenger.

See you then!