Folders allow you to easily organize mail that you receive. At the top of the InBox is a tab pop-up which initially says “In.” This is your folder pop-up. It allows you to define named folders in which you can store your mail; transfer mail from one folder to another; set the status of mail items; and view your mail by a number of different criteria.
• The Basic Folders
Two basic folders are always available: “In,” which is the folder where all new mail appears, and “All,” which is a special folder that displays the contents of all other folders (except for mail in the “Trash” folder–see below).
There are also three special built-in folders that you can activate as preferences: “Trash,” “Return Receipts,” and “Self Sends.” If the “Trash” folder is activated, mail will be transferred to this folder when you delete it. (To purge your “Trash” mailbox, choose “Empty Trash” from the bottom section of this pop-up.) If you turn on the “Return Receipts” folder, all return receipts you receive will automatically be placed in this folder. The “Self Sends” folder works the same way–it automatically files away mail that you have sent to yourself. Both of these automatic filing folders mark the mail as read when it is filed.
• Creating and Deleting Folders
You can create your own folders by choosing “New...” from the folder pop-up menu. This will bring up a dialog box asking you to enter the name of the new folder. After you have entered it, you will see that your folder has been added to the list of folders in the middle section of the pop-up.
To select a folder, simply choose its name from the pop-up. To delete a folder, select the folder from the pop-up and then select “Delete” from the bottom section of the pop-up. A folder must be empty in order for you to delete it.
• Transferring Mail Between Folders
To transfer mail items from one folder to the another, select the mail that you want to transfer and then choose the “Transfer To” item in the folder pop-up. This is a hierarchical menu that will bring up a list of folders to which you can transfer the selected mail. Select the destination folder from that pop-up and your mail will be transferred.
• Setting the mail status
To the left of each mail item is an icon that indicates the mail’s status. When a mail item is first received, its status is “unread”; the icon for this is an arrow. When the mail is read, the arrow is removed and the status is considered “read.” You may also see an “R” here indicating that the mail has been replied to, or an “F” indicating that the mail has been forwarded.
Snap Mail also lets you set the mail status to a number of pre-chosen icons. This gives you the ability to annotate your mail in a way that has meaning to you. To set the status of your mail, first select the mail item or items. Now choose the “Set Status To” item in the folder pop-up and select from the hierarchical menu the status that you want the mail item(s) set to. The following status types are available to be set by the user:
Unread: This status is indicated by an arrow and it means that the mail has not been read yet. You might use this if, for example, you have opened a mail item but really didn’t get a chance to read it, to remind yourself to read it at a later time.
*: This status symbol is intended to mean that this mail is “Important” or “Starred.”
!: This status symbol is intended to mean that this mail is “Important.”
Read: This status is indicated by no status icon. This simply means the mail has been read.
Checked: This status is indicated by a check mark and its intended purpose is to signify that a mail item has been dealt with. As an example, if a mail item told you that you should hand in a report by Tuesday, when you hand in the report you could set the status to “checked.”
• Ordering mail in the folders
Snap Mail allows you to view the mail in each folder according to a number of different criteria. The viewing methods are saved with each folder. To set the viewing order of a particular folder, choose the “View By” item from the folder pop-up and then select the desired criterion from the hierarchical menu. The following criteria are available:
Date: When you view by date, the mail will be listed in the order it was recieved. This is the default setting for each folder.
Sender: Viewing by sender allows you to group together all messages that were sent by the same person.
Subject: It is often the case in Snap Mail that an “electronic discussion” will take place regarding a particular issue. This usually takes place when two people write back and forth to each other by using the reply mechanism. Snap Mail tracks these back-and-forth replies. If you view by subject, your mail items will be grouped according to these discussions.
Icon: When you view by icon, all mail items with the same notification icon will be grouped together.
Type: Viewing by type groups all mail items with the same mail-type icon together. The ordering used for type is Enclosures, followed by Returned Mail, Return Receipts, Alerts, and finally regular mail.
Status: When you view by status, the mail items are ordered by the status icon of each mail item. See the section above, “Setting the Mail Status,” for the meaning of the status icons. The ordering by status is intended to reflect the importance of the mail. The ordering used is Unread, *, !, Read, Checked, Replied to, and Forwarded.
