Receiving E-mail is almost as easy as sending it. Think for a moment about how your favorite E-mail program works. When you first run it, it loads message headers from your InBox and shows them to you in a summary list. To view a message, you double-click to load it into a window.

IDSMail works much the same way. You start by executing LoadMessageHeaders. This gives you the summary information such as the subject, sender, read status, and date. Use GetHeaderItems to retrieve these.

Select the specific message to read by setting the MessageIndex property. Execute LoadMessage which makes the message, recipients, file attachments, etc. immediately available. Use properties such as Message, Subject, etc. to get the message items, or call GetMessageItems to get a list of them.

If you plan to display the received E-mail in a receive form/window, use GetMessageItemString to retrieve each of the items in a convenient comma-delimited list suitable for direct display.

If you are like me, you probably have hundreds of old messages languishing in your InBox. Use the UnreadOnly and MaximumHeaders properties to limit your search to the most recent messages. When you are ready to do some housekeeping, try the DeleteMessage and MoveMessage methods. Oh, and if the Folder you move your messages to doesn't exist, IDSMail creates it for you automatically.

Want to just check up on things? The UnreadCount property will query your mail system to see if there are any new messages for you. And, if you want to sneak a peek without marking the message as read, the PeekOnly property is for you.