How to send an email

foggy

Valued Member
How to send an email:

1. Depending on your email client, you will need to click the button saying something like "Compose," “New,” etc.

2. A compose screen will appear either in the same tab or in a new one (or even a new window).

3. If you have previously set up your email service to send from different addresses, the top line in the compose window will be the “From” line. Here you will choose which of your email addresses you wish to use as your sending/”from” address.

4. The next line will be the “To” line where you will fill in the email address of the recipient. You may do this each and every time you compose an email, or you can put email addresses of frequent contacts in your address book. You may enter more than one address in the “To” field. After entering one address, use a comma and proceed to enter the next address.

When you want to send an email to someone whose address is in the address book, you can usually enter that address in the “To” field easily by either

a) starting to type the recipient's name or address in the “To” field, in which case you will see a drop-down list of address options that match what you have typed thus far; you simply select one,

or b) email and webmail clients will have an address book or ‘contacts’ icon next to the “To” field that you can click to open the list of recipients’ addresses that you have saved. Select one or more as desired.

5. The next field is the CC or (Carbon Copy) field, which may be hidden, but can be revealed by clicking the available “cc” link. If you wish secondary recipients to get this email you can enter their addresses in this field.

Note: if you have multiple recipients for your email, all recipients will be able to see all the addresses of the other recipients. This is true whether all addresses are put in the “To” field or some are put in the “CC” field.

6. The next field is the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) field. Addresses entered in this field will NOT be viewable either by the primary recipient of the email (whose address is in the “To” field), nor by other recipients whose addresses are in the BCC field. Many people put their own address in this field if/when they wish to send a copy of their email to another one of their own email accounts for back-up purposes.

7. The next area is the compose area where you will type your message. The ‘formatting bar’ directly above it (in most cases) provides options for changing the style, size, and color of font, using bold, italics or underlined font, inserting a picture, creating a numbered or bullet list, etc.

8. If you have an attachment (like a photo or other file) that you want to send along with the email — instead of putting it directly IN the email body — a link at the top or bottom of the compose area will accomplish this. You will be asked to browse to the location of the file/photo (e.g. somewhere on your computer). Once selected, this file will be added/uploaded to the email.

9. Most email clients (and webmail) will display any misspelled words in red, so you can check your spelling before sending the email. Right-clicking on the underlined word will produce a menu of spelling options that you may choose from.

10. Most email and webmail clients also auto-save your drafts at regular intervals to prevent you from losing any of your message in the event of a computer problem or connection issues.

If you find your draft is NOT saved by the service/program, you must (and should !) save it manually by clicking the “Save Draft” (or similarly worded) button. You can also save a draft in most cases by holding down the Ctrl button on your keyboard while pressing “S” (Ctrl + S) — a very simple options, since your hands are already on the keyboard anyway !

11. If you don’t wish to finish & send your email right away, you can simply save your email and come back at some future time to finish it. When logging in to your webmail (or opening your email client), just click on your draft folder, then on the draft in question (or double-click if necessary for most offline clients) and resume your message.

12. When you’re finished typing your email, double-check your information: sending address, recipient’s address, attachments, and the message itself. Then click “Send.”

Webmail clients will send messages right away, so be sure you’re done before ‘sending’ ! Offline clients, however, like Outlook and Thunderbird might only put the finished draft in the Outbox, requiring you to click “Send/Receive” to have the message actually sent.

After sending, you should be shown a message saying that the sending was successful. You should also find a copy of this email in your “Sent” folder (which you can move to any folder you wish).
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
Which email service would you recommend someone create their first email account at if they do not have an email address yet?
 

foggy

Valued Member
I don’t know if this question is for me specifically, but if it is… I’m not sure ! A first-timer — unless he/she is otherwise pretty internet savvy and/or requires some sort of business email set-up — should probably just go with a reliable and safe free account somewhere. The ones that usually come to mind are: Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail and AOL/AIM.

Since (I think) these are the most popular providers out there, they are also the most attacked, cracked, and hacked. So any new ‘emailer’ should be aware of the need for good, strong security: long, complex passwords, impossible-to-guess answers to security questions, etc. Because Gmail has two-factor authentication it certainly makes it significantly better at preventative security. (I believe Yahoo has enabled it as well, but I don’t know much about that service and have no idea if there are any major differences in the way 2FA can be enabled. Perhaps one is better than the other ??)

But might process of enabling 2FA be a bit too much for the newbie ? If so, they could always sign up for the service anyway and forego 2FA until they get to know their way around the service and account settings better.

Getting help with any of these services from those who run it is a bit more difficult (for account recovery, for example). Sometimes it’s impossible. So, best to have the best preventative security measures possible.

One could always look at one of the “smaller” providers and use their services to ‘get to know’ the way email works. Hushmail, VFemail, Lavabit, MyOpera all offer free accounts.

I personally really like MyOpera’s interface. Lightning fast ! And their forums (and contact form) provide good support for various issues.

But if one signs up for MyOpera one must realize that he/she is signing up for a member account to ALL of Opera’s services (files, forums, etc.). It’s not just email. So one should go into the account settings and profile settings to modify things for one’s convenience and privacy. In fact, I myself have two MyOpera accounts: one I use just for email, one for forum posts. I do this just to keep my main email account a bit less public, even though all member usernames are available through a member search, including those used for email only.

I suppose if I were setting an email account up for someone, I would choose Gmail, mainly because of its popularity (so, lots of helpful Gmail advice out there – and here ! :D), and its security features (like 2FA). If I were simply recommending a service for someone that he/she is going to set up for themselves, it would depend on how many features they want. For all the bells and whistles, go with Gmail. For just email (but with a bit better support), I’d probably lean toward MyOpera.

Just my 2¢. :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:

neiltaylorss

New Email
Which email service would you recommend someone create their first email account at if they do not have an email address yet?
I would suggest creating your first email account on Gmail if this is your first Email ID. It is accessible to almost every application whether you're using Android or iPhone. Gmail gives you one of the best storage capacities to store all of your important information and Data. If you consume all of your google storage you can always fix if Gmail storage is full or create a new Google account and access more storage.
 
Top