Section:

E-Mail

1. Introduction to InfoGears Web Mail
InfoGears Web Mail provides a way of checking your E-Mail over the World Wide Web.

2. Message Index
The name may sound complex, but this is just the list of email messages that are in a particular folder.

3. Reading an email message The ability to read an email message is one of the most basic features of any email client. However, InfoGears Web Mail provides quite a few features for you to utilize while reading messages. This explains what they all do.

4. Compose With this feature, you can send messages to different people from within InfoGears Web Mail.

5. Addresses Address books can save a lot of time and typing. You can put the addresses of people you write most often in them, and reuse them over and over.

6. Folders You can store messages in different folders. This is especially useful if you have a lot of email and want to keep it organized. The folders option allows manipulation of your folders.

7. Options You can customize the way that InfoGears Web Mail looks and responds to you by setting different options in this section.

8. Search Searches through a folder for given criteria.

1 - Introduction to InfoGears Web Mail

       So what exactly is InfoGears Web Mail? It's a web interface to email that was designed
       to allow email access through your server from anywhere in the world via the Web. More
       information about exactly how it does this and the IMAP protocol can be found here.

       1.1 - The Basics

             If you just have a quick question, you might want to look at the FAQ.

             InfoGears Web mail is layed out in two main sections called frames. The left frame lists the currently
             subscribed folders. More information about the left frame may be found under the "Folders"
             section of this help documentation.

             On the right is where most of the action will take place. At the top of the page is a menu bar.
             Sign out will safely log you out of the program when you are finished. The Current Folder
             displays which of the folders listed in the left frame you are currently in. Right after you log in,
             by default your INBOX will be shown.

             Under the top bar is a row of menu choices:
                   Compose - Make and send an email which may include attachments.
                   Addresses - Holds a list of addresses that are contained in your personal address book.
                   Folders - All folder manipulation takes place under this. You can delete, create, rename,
                   subscribe, and unsubscribe folders.
                   Options - Change settings of how InfoGears Web Mail responds and looks.
                   Search - With this tool, you can search through a mailbox for given criteria.
                   Help - You are already here!

       The name may sound complex, but this is just the list of email messages that are in a particular folder.

       2.1 - The Message Index

             After you click on a folder, you will be taken (in the right frame) to the message index. This lists
             messages in the selected folder. Below the menu choice is a line which informs you which mails
             you are viewing numerically and how many total you have.

             For example: Viewing messages 20 to 30 (45 total).

             Notice that the total message count might be different from the unread mail count which is to
             the right of the main mail folder.

             A bar containing three buttons is next. On the left side is a drop down list box. This box lists
             your currently subscribed folders. Any selected message will be moved to the selected folder
             when the move button is pushed. Multiple messages may be moved at once. On the right side
             of this bar is a button used to delete selected messages. Just select the junk mail and press
             the button.

             A bar three fields (From, Date, and Subject) is next. These Headings seperate the message
             table into logical parts. From tells you who sent you the message. Or at least what email
             address it came from. Date shows the day which the email was sent. Subject displays what the
             sender entered as the subject. Note: Between the Date and Subject columns is a small column
             that is unlabeled. There could be a "+", "!" or an "A" in there. If you see the "+", that means
             that the message has attachments, if you see the "A", that means that you have answered the
             message, and if you see the "!", then the message was marked as urgent!

             What remains is the actual message table. You will notice that unread messages are bold
             while viewed messages are in normal text. Four fields form this table. On the far left is a select
             box. When selected the message on the same line is subject to the actions previously
             discussed, (moving and deletion). Under the From header is listed whom the message is from.
             Surprising, we know. But hey, you don't have to read this. Next is listed the date, and finally
             the subject.

       Click on the subject of a particular mail and that message is displayed. One thing you will notice is
       that email and web addresses are live links so you can click on them and send an email or open a
       page. Another really nifty feature is that mail threads are color coded. The standard for a reply is
       to quote the previous message with ">" before every line. InfoGears Web Mail sees this and color codes
       them. A replied message will have a different color on the reply than the new text. This works two
       layers deep. Another menu bar is now presented below the main menu choices. This bar is in
       three sections. On the left side you may delete or return to the summery. In the middle direct
       navigation between messages is made possible. On the right, various mailing functions are
       presented.

       3.1 - Message List

             Click this link to return to the folder from which you came.

       3.2 - Delete

             Click this link to delete the message being currently viewed. All attachments of deleted mail
             are deleted as well. Prevent the loss of attachments by Downloading them first (explained
             further in this chapter).

       3.3 - Navigation

             In the middle of the bar are navigation buttons. Previous will be an active link if it can be
             utilized and plain text otherwise. Clicking this link will display the previous message withou
             the need to go back to the summery display of messages.

       3.4 - Next

             Click this link to advance to the mail immediatly following the one currently being viewed.
             Next will be an active link if it can be utilized and plain text otherwise.

       3.5 - Forward

             On the right, the forward link when pressed opens the Compose page with the previously
             viewed email in the text box below a tag of "--Original Message--". Fwd: is appended to
             the original subject line and placed in the correct field. The various fields for sending to an
             address await your completion. You may position the curser in the text box in order to add
             comments to the already exhisting text. You may also use the attachment feature.

       3.6 - Reply

             Click this link to return a new message to the originator of the previously viewed message.
             Re: is appended to the original subject line and placed in the subject field. Again, the text of
             the original message is qouted in the text box. This time the ">" symbol is placed in front of
             the original text. You may note that some of the original text doesn't have the ">" symbol.
             This is due to line wrapping and may be unavoidable. Try setting the value of Wrap
             incoming text in the Options page to a larger number, this may help. Comments can be
             made anywhere in the text box in addition to the qouted message. You may also use the
             attachment feature.

       3.7 - Reply All

             Same story here as "reply" with the exception that all addresses listed in the header will
             receive the mail.

       3.8 - View all headers

             This will display the entire header for the email message. This includes the route that the
             message took to get here, and a lot more detailed information about the message itself.

       3.9 - Download this as a file

             At the bottom just above the bottom bar you will find this link. Clicking this link allows you to
             save this email to your local hard drive as a plain text message. A simple header will be
             attached to the top of the message as well.

       3.10 - Attachments

             Any attachments sent with a received email will be displayed at the bottom of the message
             inside a colored box. The file is presented as a link with a description of the file type to it's
             right. Clicking on the file name will either display the attachment or present a download
             dialog depending on the file type. If you wish to download the file (rather than possibly
             viewing it), click on the "download" link on the right side.

The Compose menu choice will take you to a new Compose page. Here you will find several fields and a couple of buttons. Depending on how you got to the compose view, some of these fields may already be filled in.

4.1 - To First among these is the To: field. In this field you should enter the email address of the person or persons you are sending a message to. You may enter as many addresses as you like, seperating them with a coma. One may also press the "Addresses" button to fill in the field. Don't worry if the entire address is not displayed. The field is a fixed length but everything you put in it will be used, even though it might scroll to the right or left.

4.2 - Cc

Next is the CC: field. CC is an abreviation for Carbon Copy. If you wish to send someone else a copy of the message here is where you would do that. Think of this in the same way a memo is laid out. You can have as many people as you like in the To:, CC:, and BCC: fields. Only the people to whom the message has direct impact would be in the To: field while recipients to whom this is possibly only informative would be in the CC: and BCC: fields.

4.3 - Bcc

BCC is an abreviation for Blind Carbon Copy. Use this to send someone a copy of the email without the recipients in the To: or CC: fields knowing about it.

4.4 - Subject

Type in a relevent heading here. Remember, email can be a great time saver and an accurate subject line is one big reason.

4.5 - Addresses Button

This button will open the address book after a search box is presented. Something must be entered in the search box to retreive a result. If all addresses in the address book are required enter a space here and click the submit button. The address book has enough functionality that it deserves it's own section. More detailed information is available in the "Addresses" chapter.

4.6 - Message Body

The large empty box is for whatever you want to put there. If a signature file has been saved it will appear here as well. This is where you type the body of your message.

4.7 - Attach

Located at the bottom of the Compose page, this feature allows you to include a file with your email. The file must be located on your local machine or network to be attached. A browse button is present so you may search through your directory structure and click on the file to include. Alternatively you may type directly into the attach field if you know the full path and exact file name. Simply press the Add button to list the selected file as an attachment and it will appear below. Once at least one file is presented for attachment another button is revealed. Deletion of one or more attached files is accomplished by selecting the offending file or files and pressing the delete selected attachments button.



5 - Addresses

Address books are a great time saving feature. Frequently used addresses may be stored here. LDAP servers (Often used in companies and universities to make organization-wide addresses easily available) are supported as well.

If your Browser supports Javascript then you might want to enable the java based address book under the Options menu item. It is a really nifty little popup thing. Pure HTML address lists are supported so even browsers without Javascript support can use SquirrelMail without any loss of function.

5.1 - Nick Name

Put a familiar name here. Something to help jog your memory. Anything that will give you an accurate idea to whom this email address belongs.

5.2 - Email Address

This must be the persons' fully qualified email address. Guessing here just won't cut it. There are three parts to an email address. First is the recipients identifier, such as "johnq" Next is the domain name section, which could take the form "tayloru". Last comes the top level domain, which could be one of a ton of things like au, cc, us, com, org, net or might look like edu. So if we put all those together it must be in the form of johnq@tayloru.edu. If this is not correct you are likely to get your mail back in the form of a bounced message.

5.3 - Info

This is another field where you can put something to remind you about who this person is. This is made to be longer than the "Nick Name". For instance, if you meet a business contact, you could put "Met at the Tomatoe Symposium".

5.4 - Edit or Delete

These two buttons allow you to select a single address and then change any of the above fields, or delete the entry entirely. You are only allowed to select one entry at a time for the edit button.

5.5 - Add to Personal address book

Fill in the fields as they are listed. The first three (Nickname, E-mail address, and First name) must be filled in. Both Last name and Additional info are optional.

5.6 - LDAP

LDAP is a protocol for central unified storage and remote access of information. For example; a university might use LDAP as the single place where all students, staff, and faculty email addresses are stored and made available. If configured to use the universities LDAP server, SquirrelMail would then be able to list all campus email address (along with the other address book fields if available). Squirrelmail's LDAP use is truelly powerful in that it combines your local address book and the LDAP address server information to present all of the information as if it was a single address book. The LDAP setting may be configured to use any LDAP server, or disabled as a feature altogether. You will need to talk to you system administrator about this feature if you have specific questions. LDAP setting's affect the entire SquirrelMail system; as a result they must be set up or altered by someone with administrative authority.




6 - Folders

You can store messages in different folders. This is especially useful if you have a lot of email and want to keep it organized. The folders option allows manipulation of your folders.

6.1 - Subscribed Folders and the Left Frame

Currently subscribed folders are listed in the colored area to the left. This frame may be set to automaticly refresh in the Options page. At the top of the left frame is large and bolded heading. If changes have been made to the subscribed folders using the folders menu item, this list can be refreshed with the link below the title. Oddly enough this link is titled "refresh folder list". The first folder listed contains received mail. To the right of the first folder is a number in parenthesis "( )" reflecting the count of unread emails. This number is likely to vary from the total number of emails displayed in the right frame. Under the main folder are likely to be other folders or subfolders. Colors for these folders will change with theme choices made in the options page.

6.2 - Delete

You may delete any folder displayed in the drop down list box to the left of the Delete button. Notice that this list may not include all the folders displayed. The special folders such as your sent or your trash folder cannot be deleted, and of course, you cannot delete INBOX.

6.3 - Create

Folders may be created by simply typing the desired name into the text box and pressing the Create button. If you wish that this folder be a subfolder of another one, you can choose that in the drop-down box with the list of folders. On some mail servers, there are two types of folders. One that contains messages, and one that contains folders. You may see an option called "Let this folder contain subfolders." If you do and you check that, the folder you create will only be able to contain folders and not any messages. Otherwise, you will only be able to store messages in it and not folders.

6.4 - Rename

You may rename any folder displayed in the drop down list box to the left of the Rename button. Notice that this list may not include all the folders displayed in the left frame. For obvious reasons, you cannot rename the sent, trash, or INBOX folders.

6.5 - Unsubscribe and Subscribe

Definitions:

Subscribe: To register a folder with the mail server, allowing you to view it in the folder listings. Unsubscribe: The opposite of subscribing. This unregisters a folder with the mail server. You may choose as many folders as you wish from either the subscribe or the unsubscribe box, then click the button under the box to make the action take effect. You will notice that the folders move to the other box. You can then re-subscribe to them, or unsubscribe again as you wish.




7 - Options

       One of the great things about SquirrelMail is the degree to which it may be customized.
       Depending on the configuration, you may have several choices of themes, languages, folders,
       and other prefrences. All of these may be changed without affecting any other users on the
       system. There are four main parts to the Options: Personal, Display, Message Highlighting, and
       Folders.

       7.1 - Personal Information

             Full Name
             You should put your entire name here. For example, "John Doe". This is what is shown to
             people that you send the message to. They will see that it is from "John Doe". If you don't fill
             this in, they will see it is from your email address, "jdoe@mydomain.org".

             E-Mail Address
             Optional - If your email address is different than what is automatically assigned, you can
             change it here.

             Reply To
             Optional - This is the email address that people will reply to when they reply to your
             message. If this is different than the email address you are sending from, you can enter it
             here. This is useful if you want people to reply to your Yahoo account rather than your
             office address.

             Signature
             Optional - Signatures are attached at the bottom of all messages you send out. If you want
             a signature, you must make sure that the checkbox beside "use a signature" is checked,
             and then fill in what you want your signature to be in the box below it.

       7.2 - Display Preferences

             Theme
             SquirrelMail offers different color themes for your viewing pleasure. You can choose
             between the many listed there if you so desire.

             Language
             If English isn't your native tounge, you can easily change the language that most things
             display in. If your desired language is in the list, you can choose it and all future SquirrelMail
             related messages will be in that language. Note that this doesn't translate incoming email
             messages or folder names.

             Use Javascript address book?
             One of our main goals in creating SquirrelMail was to have no Javascript in any of our
             pages. However, some of our developers made a very good address book searching utility
             that uses Javascript. Rather than remove it, we now give you the option of using the HTML
             address book or the Javascript one. If you don't know what this means, you are safest to
             choose the HTML address book, but most likely Javascript will work for you.

             Number of Messages to Index
             This is the number of messages to show at a time in a folder. If there are more than this
             number in the folder, you will see a "Previous" and "Next" link above and below the listing
             which will take you to the previous or next messages.

             Wrap incoming text at
             How many characters should we allow before wrapping the text. This prevents messages
             from scrolling way off the screen. 86 is usually a safe thing to put in here, but you are free
             to change it to whatever you desire.

             Size of editor window
             How wide do you want your "Compose" box to be? This is the number of characters per line
             that you will be able to type before wrapping in the Compose section.

             Width of left folder list
             On the left side of your broswer window, you will see the list of folders. With this option, you
             can select how wide that will be. If you have very long folder names or large fonts, it is good
             to set this pretty high. Otherwise, you should set it low so you don't waste screen space.

             Auto refresh folder list
             SquirrelMail has the functionality to automatically refresh the folder listing on the left side of
             your browser window. This will also update the number of unseen messages that are in each
             folder. This is a good way to check for unseen messages in the Inbox without having to click
             on it every time.

       7.3 - Message Highlighting

             The idea for this came because if you are subscribed to many mailing lists, it is very hard to
             distinguish which messages came from where while reading through the list of messages.
             With Message Highlighting, you can have the background color of all messages from one
             mailing list different than the color of another list.

             Just click on [New] to create a new one, or [Edit] to edit an existing one and the options will
             appear below.

             Identifying Name
             This is simply the name that you see which describes what it is. For example, if you are
             highlighting messages from your mother, you might set this to "From Mom".

             Color
             This is the actual color that the background will be. You can choose between a number of
             pre-defined colors that we have selected for you, or you can enter the HEX code for the
             color that you desire (i.e. a6b492). If you choose to enter your own color, you must also
             select the radio button in front so that it is checked.

             Match
             Here you can choose the matching phrase. From the drop-down box, you can choose
             which header field to match against (to, from, subject...) and in the text box, you can enter
             the phrase to match (mom@yahoo.com).

       7.4 - Folder Preferences

             Folder Path
             On some system this will not be displayd. If you don't see this option, just ignore this. On
             other systems, this is quite a necessary feature. Usually the option that is in there is what
             should be there. This is the folder in your home directory that holds all your email folders. If
             you don't understand this, just leave it what it is.

             Trash Folder
             You can choose which folder messages will be sent to when you delete them. If you don't
             want deleted messages to go to the trash, set this to "Don't use Trash".

             Sent Folder
             You can choose which folder your sent messages will go to. If you don't want these, just set
             it to "Don't use Sent".

             Unseen message notification
             This option specifies how to display unseen messages in the folder listing on the right side of
             your browser window. If you set this to No Notification, you will not be notified of unseen
             messages. If you set it to INBOX, when you have new messages, the INBOX will become
             bold and a number will appear to the right of it to say how many new messages are in it. If
             you set it to All Folders, this behavior will happen on all folders. If you notice that loading the
             folder list is really slow, you can set this to INBOX or None and that should speed it up.

             Unseen message notification type
             When new messages are in a folder, this option tells how to notify you of that.

 



8 - Search

       With this useful tool, you can search through a specific folder for given criteria that match against
       different header fields.

       8.1 - General Overview

             You simply choose the folder you wish to search, type in the search criteria, and then
             choose the part of the message to search. When you submit your data, the list of messages
             will come up below the search form. You can choose the message you wish to view, and
             read it just like a normal message.

             Notice that when you are reading messages and then go into the search section, your
             currently active folder will be the default to search through. For example, if you were
             browsing through your "Friends" folder and then click on "Search", "Friends" will already be
             selected for searching.

       8.2 - What to search through

             To the left of the input field, you see a drop-down list of places that are possible to search
             through. This includes: Body, Everywhere, Subject, From, Cc, To.

             Body - Searches through the body of the message. This is the main part of the message
             where the important stuff is located.

             Everywhere - This searches everything, including the entire header for the message.
             Unless you are sure this is what you want, it probabaly isn't. It can return results that you
             wouldn't normally expect.

             Subject - Searches through the subjects for all the messages.

             From - Who the message is from. Note that this might be more than is actually displayed in
             the folder list. A normal "From" field includes the name AND email address, but SquirrelMail
             usually only displays the name. If your criteria matches the email address, but it is not
             displayed, that message will still return as having matched.

             To - Who the message was sent to. This can be many addresses, and is not always just one
             email address.

             Cc - Same as "To", except who the message was carbon copied to.




---

Search knowledge base for other articles...