Windows 7 : Email and Newsgroups with Windows Live Mail - Windows Live Mail Quick Tour

From the start, the Internet has been touted as a means for enhancing human communications, and among the many communication protocols available in the online world, few have had the impact of electronic mail (email). You already know email and Web (its official protocol name is HTTP), but do you remember FidoNet, NNTP, Gopher, UUCP, Archie, Jughead, Veronica, or WAIS? All of these are, in one form or another, antiquated methods of communicating over the Internet. AOL had its own technologies, which weren’t compatible with CompuServe’s or Prodigy’s technologies. Email was the great level playing field which was available to all, so it became the standard we now know.

To fully understand the nature of email, keep in mind that, at its most basic level, it is simply a way for users to send messages to each other over a network. This network could be a local area network (LAN) run by your company using Microsoft Exchange Server software. In this situation, the network server manages all message traffic. The server can also act as a gateway to other servers, allowing you to send mail beyond the LAN. If you have an email account with an Internet service provider (ISP) or other Internet-based service, the provider’s server acts as your gateway to other mail servers across the Internet.

Given that email is here to stay, you must decide which email client you plan to use for reading, composing, and sending messages. A number of options are available to you, and which one you ultimately choose will depend not only on your personal preferences but also on professional needs. This choice is made all the more critical because Microsoft has removed Outlook Express from Windows 7. In fact, Windows Mail, MSN Messenger, and Photo Gallery are no longer part of Windows 7. To have access to these programs, you must download the Windows Live Essentials package of applications from Microsoft.

Windows Live Mail is a multifeatured program designed to appeal to a variety of email users, but it isn’t for everyone, especially if you work in a corporation that requires tight integration of email with its communications infrastructure (for example, mobile communications devices such as the iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm OS or WebOS, Symbian, and Windows Mobile smartphones). Windows Live Mail can also function as a newsgroup client, making it a “one-stop” program if you routinely communicate via email and use newsgroups.

Windows Live Mail includes some important improvements over its predecessor, Windows Mail from Windows Vista, although it is essentially an update of the same program. One of the most significant additions to Live Mail is the inclusion of a calendaring system, which makes Live Mail more like Outlook than ever before.

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2. Windows Live Mail Quick Tour

Getting Windows Live Essentials

Once you have an Internet connection configured and can access websites, go to www.windowslive.com and download Windows Live Essentials for free. The initial download is just the installer (1.08MB). The speed of your Internet connection and the components of Windows Live Essentials you choose will determine how long it takes for the installation. By default, all components are selected (see Figure 1) except Movie Maker Beta, for a total of 164MB. If you have Outlook installed, it will also offer you the Outlook Connector and the Office Live Add-in (which requires a free Office Live account). If you choose everything, including Movie Maker Beta, the download is 184MB. If you’re still on dial-up, I would start the process before you “close shop” for the night. It should be done by morning.

Figure 1. Windows Live Essentials program selection screen in the installer application.

Launching Windows Live Mail

After Windows Live Essentials is installed, it will be located in your Start menu. You can launch it by clicking Start, All Programs, Windows Live, and selecting the Windows Live Mail item. Once it’s running and you can see its icon on the taskbar, right-click the icon and select Pin This Program to Taskbar so that it will always be available there.

Setting Up an Email Account

Before you can send or receive email, you need to have an email account. Microsoft assumes that when you download Windows Live Essentials you have a Windows Live account. There is also a good possibility that your account has already been set up for you by your ISP. You’ve likely been using an email account for some time. If that account happens to be from one of the numerous free online providers, all the better.

Wherever you get your email from, Windows Live Mail can likely handle it rather easily. If you have a Hotmail, Messenger or MSN Messenger, Windows Live, Xbox Live, or even an old Passport account, you can log in to Windows Live. If you don’t have any of these accounts, you can create one for free at www.windowslive.com. You can sign up for an @live.com or @hotmail.com address or, such as Passport used to allow, you can use your own email address.

When you run Windows Live Mail the first time, the New Account Wizard will run to walk you through setting up access to your account. These steps also work for setting up a second or third account on the same machine:

1.	If this is your first time starting Windows Live Mail, skip to step 2. If you have already configured Windows Live Mail for an email account and would like to add another, click the Add Another Email Account link in the sidebar. You’ll see the dialog box shown in Figure 2. Figure 2. Starting the New Account Wizard to set up your email account.
2.	Enter your email address, that account’s password, and your display name (for example, Simon LeBon, Eric Idle, or Darth Vader), and then click Next.
3.	If Windows Live Mail recognizes the service provider you have entered, it already knows how to reach those servers and will complete the configuration automatically. In most cases, however, Live Mail can generally figure out your mail server settings by using a kind of “best guess” technology. If it is capable of doing so, click Finish. If not, you will receive the server configuration pages and jump to step 4. You should have this information from your ISP or email service provider (you may also choose to do this manually if you prefer). Tip Most ISPs provide this information on their websites. So if you cannot locate the documentation you received when you signed up for service, your easiest option is to visit your ISP’s website to find your incoming and outgoing email server names.
4.	The next wizard box asks for your incoming mail server type (either POP3, IMAP, or HTTP), the address of your mail server and whatever settings it requires to allow you access, what your username is, and how to connect to the outgoing server (see Figure 3) as well as any other settings specified by your provider. Click Next. Figure 3. Enter your mail server details here. This information should have been supplied by your ISP or other email provider.
5.	If you have successfully configured the account by filling out the dialog box, you will be informed that you have completed the setup. Click Finish. You will know for sure once you click Finish and Windows Live Mail tries to connect to the server (see Figure 4). Figure 4. Now you can see your email.
6.	If any settings were not correct, you will not be logged in and you will receive warning dialog boxes alerting you to check your settings again. You can find these settings by right-clicking the account name in the sidebar and selecting Properties.

Reading and Processing Incoming Messages

After you have an account set up, you are ready to begin downloading and reading mail. To get started, open Windows Live Mail and go to the Inbox. By default, Windows Live Mail automatically checks for new mail when it first opens. If your installation is configured otherwise, click the Sync button on the toolbar. As your mail is coming in, a dialog box appears indicating which account is being checked and shows the progress of the sending and receiving. It will also tell you how many messages are being transferred. New messages will then appear in your inbox as well as in the Unread E-mail Quick View folder, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. The Unread E-mail Quick View has three new messages and is displaying the first message, which was marked unread but now is marked as read because it appears in the viewer pane.

When you reply to a message, you need to be wary of a few things. First, note that if the incoming message was sent to a group of people, clicking the Reply button will send your message to the single person who sent it to you; clicking Reply All will send your message to the entire list of people who received the original message. Although this can be a helpful tool when communicating with a group of people, it could get you in trouble if you think you are writing to a specific person and accidentally click the Reply All button. Before you send any message, make sure the correct person or persons are listed in the To: and Cc: fields. Anyone listed in those two fields will receive a copy of the message as well as a list of the other recipients and their email addresses, so make sure you aren’t airing your dirty laundry more publicly than you intended. 

The rest of the reply process is straightforward. You just type in your own text and click Send on the toolbar when you are ready to deliver the message. By default, Windows Live Mail automatically places the text of the original message in the reply.

When you’re composing your reply, keep in mind these important points:

• Consider editing the quoted text in the reply by cutting it down to the text you actually intend to respond to. Most people don’t appreciate reading four pages of quoted text followed at long last by “Me too.”

• Include enough of the original text to help the recipient understand exactly what you are replying to. If the recipient doesn’t read your reply for several days, he might not remember what the original statements were.

• Breaking up quoted text with your own inserted comments is usually acceptable, but make sure it is obvious which words are yours. Figure 6 illustrates this reply technique in a plain text message. Windows Live Mail inserts the > sign before each line of the email you’re responding to. In an HTML email (sometimes mistakenly called rich text), a solid vertical bar runs down the left side of the original text, and writing new text between paragraphs doesn’t break that bar, so it’s difficult to tell what text is newly written. In that case, use colored text or another font (choose Format, Font).

  Figure 6. Highlighted text and reply text are interspersed throughout the message, but there is little doubt as to who wrote what.

  

Deleting Messages

How and when messages are deleted depends on what kind of mail server you use. If you receive mail from a POP server, deleted messages remain in the Windows Live Mail Deleted Items folder indefinitely, similar to “deleted” files in the Windows Recycle Bin. You can permanently delete messages by right-clicking the Deleted Items folder and choosing Empty ‘Deleted Items’ Folder from the shortcut menu that appears.

You can change the way Windows Live Mail handles items in the Deleted Items folder. To do so, choose Tools, Options, and select the Maintenance tab to customize when and how mail messages are deleted.

If you have an IMAP mail server, deleted messages are moved to an online Deleted Items folder or Trash folder, depending on what it’s named on the server itself.