Sending an E-mail Message

Now that you have read your mail you will most likely want to send a message to someone. You will generally have three options for sending a person a message. If you have already received a message from them and you want to respond to their comments, you can use the "reply" button or option, which automatically addresses your message to the sender so that you don't need to type in their email address. Or, if you want to send someone a message from whom you don't have a message, you can choose the "new" button or option to send them an original message. You will need to know their email address though, and enter it in the To field. And finally, if you want to pass along a message from someone to another person who might be interested in seeing it, you can "forward" a message.

Replying
If you currently have an email message in the In box of your mailreader to which you'd like to respond, you can just click on the Reply button or find it on a pop up menu in most Windows or Macintosh based mailreaders. In Eudora, the Reply button has a yellow diamond shaped icon with an upside down U shaped arrow on it as shown below.

When you reply to a message the address of the person or mailing list which sent you the original message will automatically be placed in the To: field. It will also fill in the Subject field with the same subject as the original with a "Re:" in front of it, for reply.

Sending a New Message
When sending a new message, you will be presented with the same type of format as the reply except that none of the blanks will have information in them. You need to know the email address of the person to whom you want to send the message. If the person has the same host computer as you, then all you need type in is that person's ID. If the person is on a different host, then type in the full email address. You can use more than one email address in the To line in order to send the message to multiple people. Normally you must separate the multiple email addresses by commas or spaces.

You can type anything you want for the subject. Generally it should be no more than one short line of text describing the content of the message.

Often you will be asked if you want to send a "carbon copy" or see a Cc: field. The carbon copy option is so that you can send someone else a copy of the message in addition to the primary recipients. Generally the Cc line is used to send the message to someone who might be interested in seeing part of an ongoing discussion but is not a participant. You may send a copy to yourself should you wish to have a permanent record of the message. Below are graphics pointing to the "new message" button in Eudora Light and showing the header section of message being entered.

Forwarding
On occasion you may want to pass along a message you receive to someone else who might be interested in the information. Like sending a new message you will need to enter the email address of the person to whom you are sending the message. However, like a reply, the subject line will already be entered for you and the text of the forwarded message will appear in the body of the message. If need be, you can add additional text to the body in order explain why you are forwarding the message to the person. As with replies, you can change the subject from the one automatically assigned if you desire.

Sending prewritten text
Sometimes you may wish to send an email message containing something that you have already written. For example, you might already have written a memo about an upcoming event, and now want to send it to someone by email. In order to do so, use the following steps:
1. Use your word processor to save the memo as a text or ascii file.
2. Open your mail reader and go to New Messages. Address the message to the person.
3. You may either upload the text file into the body of the message, or you may add it as an attachment. See you mail reader manual for instructions.

Failed Mail
If you make even a slight error in the email address, the message will not be delivered. In this case it will be returned to your In box with a Failed Mail indicator. Study the headers to determine where the mistake occurred.

Activity
1. Send yourself a new message to make sure that your email works. When you get the message look at the headers for the To:, From:, and Subject: lines.

2. Reply to the message you just sent yourself. Notice how the To: and Subject: lines are automatically filled in. You may also notice that your mail program also automatically quotes the original message in the body of the reply with ">" symbols in front of each line to make them stand out from any new text you type in.

3. Send yourself, or someone else, a message in which you make a deliberate mistake in the email address, preferably in the domain section. Take a careful look at the Failed Mail reply, noting where you made the original mistake.