E MAIL

Chapter 6

E mail
Contents

• Email introduction
• Types of email
• Accessing email accounts
• Working principle of email
• Email protocols
• Components of email
• Signature
• Address Book
• Mail Boxes
• Smiley
• Acronyms
• Sending/Replying/Forwarding mails
• Configuration of Outlook Express
• Different folders of Outlook Express
• Checking the incoming mails
• Reading the mails
• Deleting the mails
• Composing mails
• Replying and Forwarding mails
• Setting up a web based account
• Checking the incoming mails

Objectives
After completion of this module you will be able to know:
1. what is Email
2. what are the types of email
3. how to access email accounts
4. the working principle of email
5. the different email protocols
6. the components of an email message
7. how to introduce Signature
8. what is Address Book
9. the different Mail Boxes
10. how to introduce Smiley

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11. how to introduce Acronyms

12. how to Send/Reply/Forward mails
13. how to configure Outlook Express
14. the different folders of Outlook Express
15. how to check the incoming mails
16. how to Read/Delete/Compose the mails
17. how to Reply and Forward mails
18. Set up a web based account
19. Check the incoming mails

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6.1 What is email?

Email is the method of electronically sending messages from one computer to another.
You can send or receive personal and business-related messages with attachments, such
as pictures or formatted documents. You can even send music and computer programs.

Email is the one of the popular service offered by Internet. It is the replacement of Postal
mail. Postal mail is known as Snail Mail because it is very slow. Email is cheaper and
faster than Postal Mail, less intrusive than a phone call, less hassle than a FAX.

Because of its speed and broadcasting ability, Email is fundamentally different from
paper-based communication.

Using email, differences in location and time zone are less of an obstacle to
communication.

Through Email you can exchange:

• Ideas,
• Agendas,
• Memos,
• Documents and
• Attachments

Just as a letter makes stops at different postal stations along its way, email passes from
one computer, known as a mail server, to another as it travels over the Internet. Once it
arrives at the destination mail server, it's stored in an electronic mailbox until the
recipient retrieves it. It is Store and Forward System. Copies can be sent automatically to
names on a distribution list. Advise delivery a confirm message when opened by the
recipient.
This whole process can take seconds, allowing you to quickly communicate with people
around the world at any time of the day or night.
To receive email, you must have an account on a mail server. This is similar to having an
address where you receive letters. One advantage over regular mail is that you can
retrieve your email from any location. Once you connect to your mail server, you
download your messages to your computer.

6.2 Types of Email

There are two basic types of email accounts: paid and free.
• A paid account includes a mailbox and access to the Internet. You pay an Internet
Service Provider (ISP) like BSNL, AOL for this service.

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• A free account includes only a mailbox. Companies like Yahoo and Hotmail
provide free mailboxes; in return, you will see advertising. To use a free mailbox,
you have to be able to get on the Internet. This type of mail is called as web-mail.

6.3 Accessing the two types of Email Accounts

If you want to send an Email you should have 2 things.

• An Email address.
• Email Programme at the client side.

To access your email account, you must be on the Internet. You can send and receive
email messages through an email program like Outlook Express or through a browser like
Internet Explorer. If you go through a browser, you are using web-mail. Most email
accounts can be accessed either way.
• If you access your mail through an email program, the messages are downloaded
to your computer and removed from the company’s mail server.
• If you access your mail through a browser (web-mail), the messages remain on the
company’s mail server until you delete them. Most web-mail accounts have a
maximum storage space. When your mailbox is completely filled, you will not be
able to receive any additional messages. You must regularly delete some
messages and empty the trash in order to free up storage space.

6.3.1 Mailers
• The following are Unix Mailers:
• Mail
• elm
• pine

• These are provided for the Shell Account Internet Users. They are Character
Based and we have to work on-line only, and no-off line working. Now all
the ISP are not providing Shell account.

• Graphical Mailers, Used by the TCP/IP Internet Account users

• Eudora
• Pegasus.
• Out Look Express

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The standard protocol used for sending Internet email is called SMTP, stands for Simple
Mail Transfer Protocol. It works in conjunction with POP servers. POP stands for Post
Office Protocol.

6.3.2 Email address or Email ID

If you want to send mail to some one on a different network you need to address the
address in a specific way. Address has 2 parts separated by @

Username@domain name
cksundar@sancharnet.in
ksundararajan@yahoo.com

First there is the user name that refers to the recipient's mailbox. User name should not
contain space or any special character except underscore. Then there's an at-sign (@).
Next comes the host name (sancharnet.in, yahoo.com), also called the domain name. This
refers to themail server, the computer where the recipient has an electronic mailbox. It's
usually the name of a company or organization.

The end of the domain name consists of a dot (".") followed by three or more letters
(such as .com and .gov) that indicate the top-level domain (TLD). This part of the
domain name indicates the type of organization or the country where the host server is
located.

6.4 How Email works?

When you send an email message, your computer routes it to an SMTP server. SMTP is
part of TCP/IP family by which delivery of mail is standardized. Sending and receiving e-
mail at Server is done by a program called Transfer Agent. The server looks at the email
address (similar to the address on an envelope), then forwards it to the recipient's mail
server, where it is stored until the addressee retrieves it. You can send email anywhere in
the world to anyone who has an email address. Remember, almost all Internet service
providers and all major online services offer at least one email address with every
account.

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SMTP
SMTP Mail
SMTP
Server Client
POP 3 POP 3
Mail
Client Server

PC
SMTP Mail Mail
With
Server Client ShellA/C

ISP UNIX host

Message flow from one end to another end

Transfer Agent ensures that the messages are transferred orderly fashion according to
SMTP. Mail Servers runs Transport Agent 24 hours. There are four types of programs
used in the process of sending and receiving mail. They are:

• MUA - Mail users agent. This is the program a user will use to type email. It
usually incorporates an editor for support. The user types the mail and it is passed
to the sending MTA.
• MTA - Message transfer agent is used to pass mail from the sending machine to
the receiving machine. There is a MTA program running on both the sending and
receiving machine. The MTA on both machines use the network SMTP (Simple
Mail Transfer Protocol) to pass mail between them, usually on port 25.
• LDA - Local delivery agent on the receiving machine receives the mail from its
MTA.
• Mail Notifier - This program notifies the recipient that they have mail.
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME)
Emails are usually just text but can contain pictures, or other files. These 'attachments' or
'insertions' sometimes need special programs to be read.
SMTP cannot transmit executable files or other binary objects. There are a number of ad
hoc methods of encapsulating binary items in SMTP mail items, for example:
o Encoding the file as pure hexadecimal
o The UNIX UUencode and UUdecode utilities which are used to encode
binary data in the UUCP mailing system to overcome the same limitations
of 7-bit transport

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o The Andrew Toolkit representation

None of these can be described as a de facto standard. UUencode is perhaps the
most pervasive due to the pioneering role of UNIX systems in the Internet.
• SMTP cannot transmit text data which includes national language characters since
these are represented by codepoints with a value of 128 (decimal) or higher in all
character sets based on ASCII.
• SMTP servers may reject mail messages over a certain size. Any given server may
have permanent and/or transient limits on the maximum amount of mail data it
can accept from a client at any given time.
• SMTP gateways which translate from ASCII to EBCDIC and vice versa do not
use a consistent set of code page mappings, resulting in translation problems.
• Some SMTP implementations or other mail transport agents (MTAs) in the
Internet do not adhere completely to the SMTP standards defined in RFC 821.
• The Common problems include:
o Removal of trailing white space characters (TABs and SPACEs)
o Padding of all lines in a message to the same length
o Wrapping of lines longer than 76 characters
o Changing of new line sequences between different conventions (for
instance <CR> characters may be converted to <CRLF> sequences)
o Conversion of TAB characters to multiple SPACEs.
MIME is a standard which includes mechanisms to solve these problems in a manner
which is highly compatible. Using the MIME you can send attachments in your email.
Attachments to emails can contain viruses! Do not open an attachment in an email unless
you know what it is and who it is from.

6.5 Protocol for Incoming Mail

The POP3 mail protocol is the most commonly used mail protocol used for retrieving the
mail from the server to the client machine over PPP.

IMAP is also can be used for retrieving the mail from the server to the client machine.
But most of the Internet Service Providers support only POP3 and not IMAP.

6.6 Components of Email

Email messages are similar to letters, with two main parts:
• Header
• Body

Header consists of Number of special Lines

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Date Automatically inserted

Time Station Time and GMT
From: Automatically inserted.
To: The address of the receiver.
CC: Carbon copy. Copy to whom to be sent.( not the primary recipient)
BCC: Blind Carbon copy / Secrete copy. The primary and CC recipient
will not see the name of the people who receive the Blind Copy of
the mail.
Subject: Brief description of the message
The header contains the name and address of the recipient, the name and address of
anyone who is being copied, and the subject of the message, your name and address and
the date of the message.
The body contains the message itself.
Just like when sending a letter, you need the correct address. If you use the wrong address
or mistype it, your message will bounce back to you -- the old Return to Sender, Address
Unknown routine.
When you receive an email, the header tells you where it came from, how it was sent, and
when. It's like an electronic postmark.
Unlike a letter, which is sealed in an envelope, email is not as private. It's more like a post
card. Messages can be intercepted and read by people who really shouldn't be looking at
it. Avoid including any confidential information unless you have a way to encrypt it.

6.7 Adding Signature to the Outgoing email

If you want to add your name and address at the end of each message that you send, you
can make use of the signature option provided. A signature is a few lines of text usually
including your name or postal address. You can store the information that you want to
attach at the end of the messages as your signature. Then you can program your system in
such a way that all out going messages will have your signature at the end of the
message. Only one signature will be added to one message at a time.

6.8 Address Book

Email programs also have address books, where you can keep a list of email addresses.
An address book is a place you can store the information about the people to whom you
want to send mail. Each time you send mail, you can just select the persons name and the
Email id will be automatically inserted.

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6.9 Sending Mail to More then one person

If you want to send mail to more than one person, you can add more than one mail id in
the To: address. To separate from one mail id to another, some email program support
semi colon and some program support comma.

6.10 Replying Email

When you are reading a mail and want to send reply you can click Reply Button in your
Email program. It will automatically includes the original message preceded by a ">".
The To: address will be automatically added. The text “RE” will be added in the subject
to indicate that it is a reply for the original subject.

6.11 Forwarding mail

If you are receiving a mail from some body and you would like to send a copy of it to
someone else you can forward the mail. In the Subject the text “FW” will be added to
indicate that it is a forwarded message.

6.12 Mail Boxes

Most of the Email program will have the following Mail Boxes

Inbox It will list all the incoming messages.

Out box All out going messages composed and yet to be sent out from your
PC to SMTP Server.
Send box All the messages dispatched from your PC to the SMTP Server.
Delete box When you delete a message it will go to delete Box. You can retrieve
the messages from the Delete box at any time. If you Delete he
messages from delete Box you can not retrieve them latter.

6.13 Smiley
When we are talking to people face to face our body language, the tone of our voice,
gesture and facial expression will play important role. But through email you can
personalise your messages by using emotion icons called smileys. You can see some of
the

Smiley Meaning

:-) Smile
:-( Frown
:-| Expressionless

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:-D Surprise laughing

:-/ Perplexed
:-Q Smoker
8-) Eye glass
:- Male
>- Female
:-e Disappointment

6.14 Acronym

You can use some abbreviations or acronyms in your email. The common acronyms are:

AE In Any Event
BTW By the way
FM Fine Magic
FC Fingers Crossed
FWIW For what it's worth
FYI For Your Information
FUA Frequently Used Acronyms
IAE In any event
IMO In my opinion
IMHO In my humble opinion
IMCO In my considered opinion
IOW In other words
NRN No Reply Necessary
OTOH On the other hand
PITA Pain in the butt
ROFL Rolling on floor, laughing.
RSN Real Soon Now [which may be a long time coming]
RTFM Read the Fine manual
SNAFU Situation Normal: All [bleeped] Up
SITD Still in the dark
TANSTAAFL There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
TIA Thanks In Advance
TIC Tongue in cheek
TLA Three Letter Acronym (such as this)
YMMV Your Mileage May Vary

6.15 Draw Back in Email

Email also does not convey emotions nearly as well as face-to-face or even telephone
conversations. It lacks vocal inflection, gestures, and a shared environment. Your
correspondent may have difficulty telling if you are serious or kidding, happy or sad,
frustrated or euphoric. Sarcasm is particularly dangerous to use in email.

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6.16 Getting a free Email Account and understanding

the Login Process

The procedure to get a free email account is furnished below:

1. Learn the proper formatting of an email address before you register:

Examples: gsmithson@yahoo.com, rajan8481@hotmail.com,
nandersan@checkers.org.
2. Select a login name that you can remember. It is NOT case sensitive, but why go to
the trouble of holding down the shift key when it isn’t necessary? You will have
several different login names and passwords to keep up with. When you are assigned
an email address, your login name will follow this pattern: first initial, last name. For
example, if your name is Rajan Sundar, your login name would be rsundar. When
you sign up for a free email account, it could be helpful to use this same pattern.
Unfortunately, some of you will find that someone else has already been assigned the
same login name. Simply add a number to the end, like rsundar26.
3. Select a password that you can remember. Usually, it should be about six characters
and contain at least one number. No spaces. Passwords are case sensitive, so if you
type in “Jupiter44,” you will always need to type the capital J. It will be helpful if you
follow this guide for login names and passwords: No caps, no spaces.
4. Get a free email account from Yahoo or Hotmail. Do not use someone else’s email
address. Free email accounts are readily available.

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Configuring POP3 client

In order to get access the email server for sending and receiving the mail, you have to
configure the Email client software. There are many mail client software.

Outlook Express is most commonly used POP3 client software. It is coming along with
Internet Explorer. If you install Internet Explorer, Outlook Express will be automatically
installed in your Computer. We will see how to configure the Outlook Express in order to
send and receive mail.

6.17 Configuring Outlook Express

1. To launch the Outlook Express: Click Start  Programs  Outlook Express.
Outlook Express application will be opened as shown in figure 6-1.

Fig 6-1

2. Now from the Tools menu select the Accounts. Internet Account Dialog Box will
be opened as shown in fig 6-2.

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Fig 6-2

3. Click the Add button; you will get a cascade menu as shown in fig 6-3.

Fig 6-3

4. Select the Mail… from the cascade menu. Internet Connection Wizard will start
as shown in fig 6-4

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Fig 6-4

5. Type your name which will display when you send a mail that will appear in the
header. Click Next button.
6. In the next step you have to type your valid Email address as shown in fig 6-5.
After entering your email address click Next Button.

Fig 6-5

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7. In this step you have to tell the Outlook Express to which Mail Server it has to
contact. You have to specify the Incoming Mail Server (POP3, IMAP or HTTP)
and Outgoing Mail Server IP address or Domain name here. This will be provided
by your Internet Service Provider at the time of getting your Internet Account.
You can specify the Incoming mail and Out Going mail as shown in Fig 6-6.

Fig 6-6

8. After entering the entries for POP3 server and SMTP server click the Next button.
In this step you have to give your Mail Account User Name and Password as
shown in Fig 6-7.

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Fig 6-7

In this step don’t click Remember password check box if you computer is shared
by some body in order to avoid that others may check and read your mails. Click
next button.
9. Finally click the Finish Button to complete the configuration.

10. In the Internet Account Dialog box click the Mail tab and check that the account
you have created just now will appear as shown this the fig 6-8. If more than one
Account is created, all the accounts will be displayed. Select an account and click
Set as Default button. Now that account will become your default email account

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Fig 6-8

11. You can close the dialog box by clicking the Close button.

6.18 Checking the Mail

1. Connect your computer to the Internet.
2. Open the Outlook Express if it is not already opened. From the
3. Click Tool  Send and Receive  (your Account Name) as shown in fig 6-9.

Fig 6-9

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4. Logon dialog box will appear as shown in fig 6-10. Type your user id and
password and click OK button.

Fig 6-10

5. Your Outlook Express will contact your POP 3 Server and down load the emails
to Inbox as shown in the fig 6-11.

Fig 6-11

6.19 Folders in Outlook Express

The Outlook Express is having 5 local folders called Inbox, Outbox, Sent Items, Deleted
Items, and Drafts.

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Inbox: All the incoming mail will be listed here.

Outbox: Out going mails from this PC and yet to be delivered to the SMTP
server.
Sent Items: All the out going mails sent out (delivered to the SMTP server).
Deleted Items: List of deleted messages. When you delete a message it will be
moved in this folder.
Drafts It contains the saved draft of your message (To save a draft of your
message to work on later, on the File menu, click Save).

6.20 Reading the Mail

Click the Inbox that will show the list of mails received. The List shows the mail received
from, subject and date and time of receipt of the mail. The icon in front of each mail will
indicate whether the mail is already read or not (the ‘cover’ icon will be opened/closed
condition). In the left pane next to the Inbox icon some number will be there with in
bracket in blue color which indicates that many new mails (Unread) are there in your
Inbox

Click on the mail. Outlook Express will open the mail in the bottom pane of the Inbox
Window. If you want to open the mail in a separate window double click on the mail. It
will open in a separate window as shown in fig 6-12. In this fig an undelivered message is
opened. When the message is not delivered, an undelivered message will be sent to you
from the postmaster stating the error conditions.

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Fig 6-12

6.21 Deleting the Mail

If you don’t want to keep the unwanted mail in you inbox, you can delete the mail. If you
delete a mail it will go to Deleted Items folder. For deleting the mail select the mail and
press delete key or click the Delete button in the tool bar or from the Edit menu select the
Delete command. After selecting the mail, you can delete the mail by pressing Ctrl + D
also.

You can delete a group of mails at a time. For deleting a group of mails click on the first
mail and hold the Shift key and click on the last mail. All the mails (the first and the last
and in between mails) will be selected. Now you can press Delete key to delete them. For
selecting mail at random use control key instead of shift key.

6.22 Un-deleting a mail from the Deleted Items folder

Some times you might have deleted some mails that may require for you at latter stage. In
that case you can see the deleted mails in the Deleted Items folder. Form there you can
open the mail and read by double clicking on the mail.

If you want to move the mail back to your Inbox, right click on the mail. You will get a
short cut menu as shown in fig 6-13

Fig 6-13

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From the short cut menu select Move to Folder. You will get Move dialog box as shown
in fig 6-14

Fig 6-14

In the move dialog box select Inbox and click Ok button. The mail will be moved to your
Inbox. You can move a group of mails also.

6.23 Composing a new mail

For composing a new mail click the Create New button from the tool bar or from the File
menu select New  Mail Message. New Message Window will appear as shown in fig
6-15.

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Fig 6-15

The “From:” address will be automatically inserted. If more than one account is
configured in your PC the default account address will be inserted. If you want to change
the other address you can select from the drop down list in the “From:” address drop
down list box.

In the To: address test box, you type the email id to whom you are going to send the mail.
You can type multiple addresses also here if you want to send to more than one person. In
that case use semi colon “;” to separate each mail id.

In the Cc: text box type the email id of the person to whom you want to send the copy of
this mail. Here also you can type multiple mail id separated by semi colon incase if you
want to send the copy to more than one person.

Some times you may want to include BCC, to send blind copies of the mails to many
persons. To include the Bcc box, click the View menu, and then select All Headers.

Type the relevant information in the Subject: text box. This will help the recipient to
understand the topic of the mail so that he can decide to read the mail immediately or at
leisurely.

The bottom portion of the window is for the body of your message. You can type the
message here. You can use the formatting tool bar for formatting the message what you
have typed.

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After finish typing your message, click the Send button at the left top corner of the
window to send the mail.

The mail will go to the Outbox if your computer is not connected to Internet. If your
computer is already connected to the Internet, Outlook Express will contact the SMTP
Server and send the mail. Once the mail is delivered to SMTP server, then the copy of the
mail will be moved to Sent Items folder.

6.24 Replying and Forwarding mail

If you want to reply a mail to the person who has send the mail, select the mail from the
list of Inbox and click Reply button in the Tool bar.

If you want to reply to all the persons mentioned in the To: address column and, CC:
column click Rely All button.

If you want to forward the mail click Forward button.

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Web-based Mail
Some of the web sites are offering free email. Such mails are called as Web-based Mails.
With Web-based e-mail, to send and receive messages, you have to access the website.
For example the following web sites offer free email services:

http://mail.yahoo.com
http://www.mail.com
http://www.hotmail.com
http://www.rediff.com
First visit the web site from where you are having the Email account. Then log on to the
site by entering your account name and password. Now you can read your messages,
view attachments, send replies, forward messages. Most services offer online address
books to store your e-mail addresses and contact information. You can also set up folders
to manage your messages.
6.25 Setting up an Account
Establishing a new e-mail account takes only a few minutes and could be easier. First
visit the web site from which you want to create the Email account. Then click the Sign
UP button of that site. You'll have to provide information about yourself and choose an
account name and password. Your account name or ID becomes part of your e-mail
address.

6.26 Checking the Mail

To login to your web mail account, open a web browser, such as Internet Explorer and
type in the URL of the web site into the address bar. For example, if you are having an
email account in Yahoo website type the address http://mail.yahoo.com

Type your User Name (or ID) in the text field beside UserID:, and your password in
the text field beside Password:.

Note: Your user name is not necessarily the same as your e-mail address. If you do not
know your user name, please contact your system administrator.

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Now you are in your inbox. If not, click the Inbox link. The list of messages you
received – which are available in Inbox ─ will be listed. See the above figure. Now click
the link of any one of the mail you received. The content of that message will be
displayed. See the figure below:

For using the web based mail, you need not have neither Internet Account nor Personal
Computer. You can go to Internet Browsing center, visit the web site where you are
having the email account and then login to your account. Since it is free account you will

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be getting unwanted junk mails called spam mails. Some web sites provide the spam
guard to protect you from getting unwanted spam mails.

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