Click Yes to restart your computer. Double-click the My Computer icon on your desktop.

Chapter 5 Mr. McFeeley’s Guide to E-mail In This Chapter 䊳 Using e-mail 䊳 Reading and sending e-mail messages 䊳 Scheduling and conferencing electronically 䊳 Watching smileys and e-mail etiquette I n ancient times B . P . C . Before Personal Computers, a typical office worker often returned from a long lunch to find the desk covered with little pink “While You Were Out” notes. By the end of the old millennium, early com- puter screens were often plastered with stick-on notes — but even then, relief was in sight: electronic mail. If you’re a secret twentieth-century holdout, maybe the time has come for you to bite the bullet and find out how to use your computer network’s elec- tronic mail e-mail program. Most computer networks have one. If yours doesn’t, hide the network manager’s stone axe until he or she gets e-mail up and running. This chapter introduces you to what’s possible with a good e-mail program. So many e-mail programs are available that I can’t possibly show you how to use all of them, so I’m focusing on Microsoft Outlook, the e-mail program that comes with Microsoft Office. Other e-mail programs are similar, and work in much the same way. E-mail and Why It’s So Cool E-mail is nothing more than the computer-age equivalent of Mr. McFeeley, the postman from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. E-mail enables you to send messages to and receive messages from other users on the network. Instead of writing the messages on paper, sealing them in an envelope, and then giving them to Mr. McFeeley to deliver, e-mail messages are stored on disk and electronically delivered to the appropriate user. Sending and receiving e-mail Sending an e-mail message to another network user means doing several electronic chores. These used to be simple, but they’re a bit more complex nowadays: ⻬ Activate the e-mail program. Normally, this entails double-clicking the program’s icon. If the program asks you for a password, you’ll have to type one in before the program can do its thing. If you have no pass- word, check with your network administrator to get one. ⻬ Compose the message. You can, of course, work it up beforehand in a text editor such as Notepad, but today’s typical e-mail program pro- vides you with a nice blank New Message screen for the purpose. ⻬ Type an address for the message to go to. This is usually the network user ID of the user to whom you want the message sent. Most e-mail pro- grams also require that you create a short comment subject line that identifies what the message is about. ⻬ Send the message when it’s ready to go. Normally, there’s a handy, obvious Send button just waiting for you to click it. When you receive a message from another user, the e-mail program copies the message to your computer and then displays it on-screen so you can read it. You can then delete the message, print it, save it to a disk file, or forward it to another user. You can also reply to the message by composing a new mes- sage to be sent back to the user who sent the original message. Here are some additional thoughts about sending and receiving e-mail: ⻬ When someone sends a message to you, most e-mail programs immedi- ately display a message on your computer screen or make a sound to tell you to check your e-mail. If your computer isn’t on the network or your e-mail program isn’t running when the message is sent, then you’re notified the next time that you log on to the network or start your e-mail program. ⻬ E-mail programs can be set up to check for new e-mail automatically — when you log on to the network, and periodically throughout the day say, every 10 or 15 minutes. ⻬ You can easily attach files to your messages. You can use this feature to send a word-processing document, a spreadsheet, or a program file to another network user. For details, see “Dealing with attachments,” later in this chapter. Be careful about attachments other people send to you. E-mail attach- ments are how computer viruses are spread. So don’t open an attach- ment you weren’t expecting or from someone you don’t know. 52 Part I: Getting Started with Networking