e-mail help

Part 2: In part one of e-mail help we set up an account, looked at the labeled picture of the e-mail environment, previewed an e-mail, read an e-mail in full screen and finally returned the screen to the preview mode.

In Part 2 we will set up contacts, prepare an email and send it. Below is a picture of your email environment.

Sometimes we all need e-mail help with different programs. If we are going to send an e-mail to someone we need to have information about them. We also need someplace to keep this information, that is what contacts is for. In the mail area find the icon called contacts and click on it. The screen will change and you will see the picture below.

In this screen you will see all of your contacts and at the moment you do not have any. If you use another program for email you can import all the contacts you do have from there if you would like if you run into problem see the e-mail help.

To import all of your existing contacts click on the import contacts text. A new window appears and I would suggest using option1 for outlook or outlook express user. You simply download the program onto your desktop and run it. The program then runs and finds all of your contacts in this program.

When finished it shows you all of your contacts that it found and you can choose to import all of them or some of them. Once done click finished and the next time you log into Live mail all of your contacts will be there.

Option two is a more complicated and you may need to review the e-mail help. You need to go to your email system and export your contacts to a CSV file. You can do this through the file menu on your mail program. Then you browse for that CSV file on your computer and then click Import contacts at the bottom of the page and the next time you run Live mail your contacts will be there.
Watch for my e-mail help video on this

Ok so lets add a contact. In the top left hand corner of the window is an icon called New click on it and a window that looks like the picture below pops up.

Enter the information for the contact you want to add. Personal e-mail is used if they are not a Live mail user or If they have multiple e-mail addresses like a home e-mail and a work e-mail. If you need to enter more information about them click on the show all fields text link and the form expands and there are all kinds of extra information you may add. If you do not know an e-mail address right now use mine I will e-mail you back to let you know it's working and you did it right. Dan Michaels net-wise-parents-1@live.com

Once you have entered the information in the top left hand corner click the save icon (it looks like a little computer disk). You should now see a screen like the one shown below in this e-mail help.

You now have an email contact. Your doing great so far. If you imported an existing list you will have many contacts in the list. If you click on different contacts the preview pane on the right will change showing information on each one.

If you look at the bar at the top of the page you will see different icons.
Each one does something different but it does it to the currently selected contact. If you wanted to delete my contact you would click on my name in the list and then click the red "X" that says delete beside it. If my e-mail address changed and you wanted to update your information click on my name and then click the edit button that is beside the new icon.

Merge allows you to merge two or more existing contacts into one. You only use this if you have more than one contact in your list for the same person.

Add to group allows you to make a group of contacts. We will talk about this function later in another e-mail help page.

Now we know how to add contacts. Hey we can send an email now! Lets do it. Click on the Mail icon and return to the e-mail home page. In the top left hand corner click on New and you should see a screen like the picture below.

 As you can see the mail has a fully functioning word processor in it. If you took my computer lessons on word processors you should recognize almost all of the buttons. If you did not take the word processor lesson you should go back and take it and then return to this e-mail help tutorial.

You want to send this to someone so click on the To button and a screen pops up that lists your contacts click on the contact you want to send your e-mail to and then click the "X" in the right corner of the pop up.

If you want to send it to more people you can click on the text in the right upper corner that says show Cc & Bcc and two more lines will appear in your e-mail. Cc if you don't know means carbon copy and who ever is in this line gets the mail to.

Bcc is special it is Blind carbon copy whoever you put in this line gets the email to, but the person in the To line and Cc line do NOT see who was Bcc. This is a long e-mail help tutorial if you have questions please use the contact form on the home page and ask me.

I know sounds confusing doesn't it. Lets say you wanted to send an e-mail to an employee who has been late to work many times to ask them to make an attempt to come to work on time. You would send the e-mail To him / her and you would Cc your boss and you would Bcc your human resources person to add to the employees file. The employee would see that your Boss got a copy but they would not see that human resources got a copy.

Ok we have it addressed to who were sending it to. Now in the Subject line type in a title for your e-mail. Now click below the tool bars choose your formatting and type away. Play with the options and see what it all does. The smiley face at the end are emoticons click on it. It shows all different kinds of faces pick the one you want and it gets inserted exactly where your cursor is. They are a fun way of spicing up an e-mail.

Well were almost there and we are about halfway through this e-mail help tutorial. Are you done writing your e-mail? Ok lets continue. We need to know how to attach a file to an email. To attach a file click on the paper clip icon "attach" and a drop down list that says file or photo appears. To attach a Photo click on the word photo. The screen will change and it will want to install some software allow this software to be installed. Once installed a screen like the picture below appears.

This screen is a picture viewer for pictures on your computer. It opens by default in the My Pictures folder for the current user. If your pictures are somewhere else on your computer simply browse to the folder or drive where they are and in the right window you will see a preview of all the pictures in that folder.

Each picture has a small box in the upper left hand corner you must put a check mark in the pictures you want to attach. You will also notice that when you move your mouse over a picture options will appear in the bottom left and right corners as well as in the middle.

These options in the right and left hand corners allow you to rotate your picture if needs to be rotated and the middle option allows you to rename the picture.

Put a check mark in one of the pictures. You will notice that you now have two new options. Upload now and edit, If your picture is good the way it is you may choose upload now and the picture will be uploaded to your email. If you don't like the look of the picture you can choose edit.

Editing your picture allows you to change the contrast, brightness and also allows you to crop the picture. My video on this will show these options in detail please check back for this or subscribe to my RSS feed and get kept up to date when things change on this site. Make sure you do this e-mail help tutorial a few times to make sure you understand it all.

Now we have a picture we want uploaded and have put a check mark in the corner and we now press the upload now button. A few boxes appear and show some progress and depending on how many pictures you chose to attach you get returned to your email shortly.

Looking at your email you will notice a new box has appeared and your screen should look like the picture below.

Do you see it? Under your subject matter there is a new box that shows your attachments. In this case it is only one file in your case you may have attached many pictures.

NOTE: It is always good to keep your email size below 5 Megabytes. If you want to send more pictures than that send multiple e-mails.

Now choose the other option choose to attach a file. When you pick this option a file manager type of window opens. Browse to where your file is located and click on the file itself and then choose open the file will be uploaded and attached to your email.

Check your e-mail once more to ensure you have written everything you want to and in the top left hand corner press the send button. Your e-mail is sent and a copy of it is placed in your sent folder. We will stop here and continue this in the next part. Lets continue onto part 3 of e-mail help.