Managing Your Email (Return to Help Menu)
Managing your email message view (Back to Top)
You can view your email messages as single messages or as conversations. If you are using the Conversations feature, the default view is by conversation.
To change how messages are grouped for this session, click the arrow next to View in the box above the Overview pane. To change the default view, go to the Preferences, Mailbox tab.
Message view
The traditional view displays a list of messages with the most recent message displayed first. Unread messages are shown in bold. The information displayed on the one line includes, flags, tags, from, attachment presence, subject, folder location, size of the message, including attachments, and the time the message was received.
Conversation view
Conversation view displays your messages grouped by subject. The number of messages in the conversation is displayed in parentheses after the subject. Each conversation consists of the original message and all replies. Conversations containing unread messages are shown in bold.
Double-click the conversation to display the messages within the conversation. Click on a message to display its contents.
All messages related to the conversation are displayed, even if the messages are stored in other folders. The Folder column shows the folder where the message is stored.
Each message, in message or conversation view, has a separate line that displays the following columns of information:
Conversation indicator. Is this email part of a conversation?
Flag indicator. Did the sender flag this message?
Priority indicator. Did the sender mark this message as high priority?
Tags. Did the message get marked by a Tag you defined?
Status. Open or closed envelopes indicate whether a message has been read. Bold text also indicates that a message has not been read.
From. Name or email address of the sender.
Attachment indicator. A paper clip indicates that a message has an attachment.
Subject. Brief description of the email message. If Snippets is enabled in your account, the first line of an email message is displayed.
Folder. Shows the name of the folder where the message is located. For conversations, no folder name is displayed because messages can span multiple folders.
Size. Size of the message or number of messages in the conversation.
Received. Date or time the message was received.
Categorizing your email messages (Back to Top)
The Web Client provides several methods for categorizing email messages. You can use these along with the Search feature to quickly locate and retrieve messages. Methods you can use are:
Filters. In your Preferences, Mail Filters tab, you can create rules for classifying inbound mail according to items in the subject line, sender, recipient, or other characteristics.
Folders. You can create folders to organize your messages and you can move mail from one folder to another, for example taking a mail out of a "To Do" folder and moving it to a "Done" folder.
Tags. You can use tags as labels on email messages and then use the Search feature to show all mail with a certain tag.
Conversations. You can have messages grouped by conversation. This built-in feature automatically groups all sent and received email messages with the same subject into a single conversation
You can create shortcut keys from your Preferences,Shortcuts tab for mail, saved searches, and tags..
Sorting messages in the Content pane (Back to Top)
Any pane containing email messages, such as your Inbox, can be sorted by the Subject and the Received columns. Sortable columns are highlighted as you pass your mouse cursor over them.
To sort by a particular column, click the column title. The column shows an arrow indicating whether the sort is in ascending order (up arrow) or descending order (down arrow).
You can only sort by one column at a time.
Customizing your initial email page (Back to Top)
By default, your mailbox opens with the Inbox view. All messages in your Inbox are displayed in the Content pane. You can change the initial view to be any of the folders, searches, or tags in the Overview pane. For example, if you would like to see only your unread messages when you open your mailbox, go to Preferences>Mail>Default Mail Search and in the field type the search as is :unread.
Or, to see mail tagged with the "ToDo" tag you created when you log in, enter the search as tag:ToDo. To see mail in a folder other than your Inbox, enter a folder search, for example in:Work.
Use quotes if the folder or tag is more than one word. For example in:"Unread Email."
How Conversations work (Back to Top)
The conversation view displays your messages grouped by subject. Because all messages in a conversation have the same subject, the subject displays only once in the conversation view pane. All messages related to the conversation are displayed, even if they are stored in different folders.
Grouping messages into Conversations
You can read messages grouped together in context and ordered by date, including replies and forwarded messages. In order for a message to be grouped in a conversation, the subject of the message must be the same.
For example, the following subject lines would be considered part of the same conversation.
However, if you change the title to "who's in charge of the project? - ask Mike," the message would not be included in the conversation. It would be part of a different conversation.
Conversations do not continue indefinitely. If the last message in the conversation is 30 days old or older, messages sent with the same subject begin a new conversation.
Conversations can span folders
If a conversation includes three mail messages, one of those messages could be in your Inbox, your reply (which is also part of the conversation) will most likely be in your Sent folder, and another message could be in a custom folder.
What this means:
If you search for mail messages and one message is found that matches your search, but that message is in a conversation with several other messages that do not match your search, the entire conversation and all messages within it are listed under the search results. When you open the conversation, only messages that match your search criteria are highlighted.
The same conversation may appear to exist in more than one folder. This can happen if the mail messages are in different folders, either because you moved them there, or you applied a filtering rule that put them there when they were received.
Because a conversation is a group of related messages, if you move a conversation from one folder to another, all messages within that conversation are also moved to that folder.
Printing a conversation (Back to Top)
To send all messages within a conversation to the printer:
In the Conversation view, right-click the conversation to be printed.
From the list, click Print.
A separate window appears showing all the messages in the conversation in a single scrolling window with the total number of messages being printed displayed at the top.
In the print dialog, choose a printer and click Print, to send the message to the selected printer.
Close the message window.
Viewing messages in Message view(Back to Top)
The traditional Message view displays each individual message that you receive.
If you have the Conversations view feature, the default view is by conversation. To change views for this session, on the toolbar click the arrow next to View. To change the default view, go to Preferences, Mailbox tab
.
To change views using the View menu:
Click View, and then choose By Conversation or By Message.
Selecting the Reading Pane option toggles the bottom pane on and off.
Moving email messages between folders (Back to Top)
You can transfer email messages or entire conversations from one folder to another.
Drag and drop the item over the desired folder in the left-hand pane
Select the items, right-click, select Move. In the Move Message box, select a destination folder, and click OK.
If you are moving a few messages within a conversation, the conversation appears in both places. The Conversation Detail View window shows the new location of the message that was moved.
Setting a forwarding address (Back to Top)
You can identify an email address to forward your messages and choose to retain the message in your mailbox or automatically delete the message when forwarded.
To forward your email
Open the Preferences tab and select the Mail tab.
Scroll down to the Receiving Messages section and in When a message arrives:Forward a copy to, add the complete forwarding address.
If you want to automatically delete the email from your account, enable Don't keep a local copy of messages.
Click Save.
Subscribe to RSS/Atom feeds (Back to Top)
You can subscribe to Web sites that provide your favorite RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and podcast feeds to send updated information directly to your mailbox.
You create a folder for each RSS feed.
Before proceeding, know the URL for the RSS.
Above the Folders heading in the Navigation pane, click New Folder.
In the Name field, type the name of the RSS feed folder
Check Subscribe to RSS/ATOM feed.
From the folder menu select where to add the RSS feed folder. Choosing the root folder creates a folder that displays at the highest level in your folder view, that is the same level as your Inbox folder.
In the URL field, enter the URL for the feed.
Click OK.
The RSS feed icon,
, displays as the folder in your Navigation pane. Open the RSS folder to access the link. To update the content, open there RSS folder and click Load Feed.
Managing your account identities (Back to Top)
When you send new email, reply to, or forward an email message, one identity is always associated with the email. This is the default identity created as the account name and is used unless you set up different identities. Creating different identities, called personas, allows you to use multiple email addresses from your mailbox. You might want to do this to manage different roles in your job and personal life from this single email account.
You can also add external account addresses to retrieve email from your other POP or IMAP accounts, and you can configure the external account settings so that when you reply to those messages, the corresponding address is in the From field.
If you have set up more than one persona or added external accounts, when you open a new compose window, your identities are listed in the From field in the header.
Personas, external accounts, and signatures are configured from the Preferences, Accounts tab and from the Signatures tab.
Recovering deleted email messages (Back to Top)
When you delete messages and contacts, the file is moved to the Trash folder. You can recover files from the Trash by dragging and dropping them into another folder..
Messages left in the Trash may be automatically purged, in which case you cannot recover them.
Purging email messages (Back to Top)
To delete messages from Trash, right-click on the Trash folder and select Empty Trash. All messages are permanently deleted.
In addition, messages older than 15 days are purged from the Trash folder automatically.
Purged messages cannot be recovered.