Basics

Advanced E-Mail Features

To switch Advanced features on:

1. From the main Mail screen, click Setup, on the sidebar
2. Click Advanced Features
3. Check the checkbox
4. Click Done

Address Book

Frequently, you can add an address to the book by clicking on the blue address at the top of an e-mail you receive, and clicking the button on the prompt that pops up.

When you're addressing an e-mail, you can pull up your address book by just clicking on To: (or Cc: if you have advanced mail features enabled, see above), hitting the key for the first letter of the name you want to add ("V" for Victor, etc.), and hitting Return. Then click Continue, and go on.

Write

And quick way to get a Write a Message screen from the main Mail page is just to hit the Send key, and Return.

Reply, Attach, and Forward

Reply is simple enough, it preaddresses your message back to the person who wrote the message you're replying to.

If you want to include the message they sent, click Reply, then Attach (you'll need to enable advanced mail features for this, see above), type your message and send it on (you can also Detach the appended original before sending it off, but keep their message onscreen while you compose your reply to aid in answering their message completely).

Forward is much like Reply/Attach, but the original sender's address isn't included at the top, you will need to either type the intended recipient's address into the blank, or use your address book; the message you were "inside of" will be appended to your message. A quick way to Forward a message you're reading is to hit the Send key, and then Return.

Reply All is used when there are addresses in the Cc: line of the message you received, clicking this on the sidebar automatically addresses your reply to all the people in the original header (make sure you really want to use this feature before selecting it, don't send to everybody by accident). You'll need to enable advanced mail features to get the Reply All option, see the above explanation of how to do this.

Message Watch

To set Message Watch, from your Main mail screen, click Setup, click Message Watch, then select an hour for the terminal to check (it "wakes up" and dials in by itself to do this), or select "Don't check" if you'd rather not have this feature operational.

The Plus will also check for mail around 5 or 6 am when it dials in to get TV Listings (unless you've elected to turn automatic retrieval off from the TV Home page).

If there's a VideoFlash Video Spot advertisement available for download (to be viewed the next time you log on to the service), when your terminal checks for mail with Message Watch, it will "fetch video." If you'd rather not have these ads downloaded, you'll have to set Message Watch to "Don't check."

You will currently only be able to receive Video Spots if you are (a) on a Classic terminal; (b) using WebTV's regular local numbers (not OpenISP); and, (c) not dialing in via a toll number (or a number WebTV thinks is a toll number).

Why Can't the Red Light Come On for Every Message With the Unit Off?

If you're online and a message comes into the mailbox of the account you're in at that time, the light will blink and remain on, and you'll hear the "chirp." If mail comes into another user, you won't know about it until you switch users, or log off and back on again (or Message Watch checks while you're offline).

If you're offline, unless the box dials in to check, the red mail light will remain off; if the box checks and finds no new mail, and then mail comes in after the check is completed, you won't know about it until the next time the box connects.

How Much Room?

To make more room, you'll either have to delete or save some or all of the messages currently in your mailbox. To delete, either click Discard while inside an individual message, or click Clean Up on the sidebar of the main Mail page, check some messages, and click Discard.

To save messages, either click Save while inside a message, or click Clean Up on the Mail page, check some messages, and click Save.

Saved mail has the same 2 megabyte limit as Current mail. To see your Saved messages, click Storage on the sidebar of the main Mail screen.

If you've sent out a message, and you want to see what you wrote again, on the main Mail screen click Storage, then click Sent. The Sent Messages area will hold an apparently unlimited number of messages, with the messages here being deleted as they exceed seven days after the sending time.

To see Discarded Messages, click Storage, then click Discarded. Again, these messages will be kept for seven days from the time you discard them, and there's unlimited space for messages discarded within that time. If you accidentally threw out a message you wanted to keep, you can enter a message in Discarded and click Save on the sidebar, to move it to Saved Mail. You can also Forward messages from Sent and Discarded mail to anyone.

Permanently Discarding Messages

• From the main Mail page, click Storage
• Click Sent
  • Click Clean Up
  • Click Check All
  • Click Discard
  • Repeat until Sent is empty
• Click Storage, and click Discarded
  • Click Clean Up
  • Click Check All
  • Click Discard (you'll have to click through one or two warning screens for each page of 100 messages you discard at this point–you're warned that this step is permanent–and a second time if any messages you're discarding are unread)
  • Repeat until Discarded is empty
• Hit Mail

Signature

An Important Note

Accessing Your E-mail from Somewhere Else

You can't get your WebTV e-mail from another WebTV terminal, or a computer (there's a smart card in development that may in the future allow you to use other WebTV terminals to get your own mail; computers can't access WebTV mail accounts because it's not POP3 compliant). You can get another account outside of WebTV, though.

Getting an Additional E-mail Account Outside of WebTV

• You'll have an e-mail address without webtv.net at the end of it (some people care about this).
• You can organize your mail in folders, save drafts of e-mails before you send them out, and filter and block mail from specific addresses.
• Hotmail can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection in the world, including at work, schools, and Internet cafes.

Electronic Junk Mail: Spam

Any time you sign up for something online, sign a guestbook, post in a newsgroup, join a mailing list, forward a chainletter, post to a messageboard, reply to another spam, send or receive an electronic greeting card–you're putting your e-mail address in public view where it will easily be harvested by spammers.

You can limit the impact of spam by never using your primary e-mail address for any of these things, use another user on your terminal so spam will remain separate from your important mail. You can also fill one of your secondary users' mailboxes with messages, so that no spam will fit in it (just remember that no nonspam messages will fit in it then either). You'll find some more information on spam-proofing mail on this page.

You can also get a Hotmail account to do some of these "public" things (see above), and Hotmail allows you to automatically filter and dump spam.

Spam messages usually have invalid return addresses, so trying to complain to the source is often pointless. Discarding is a great method of handling these messages (you can Discard without opening them by clicking Clean Up, checking the boxes next to the messages, and clicking Discard).

I don't recommend you follow up on any suggestions within a spam to request removal from their list, because all you're usually doing is confirming for the sender that your address is valid (and they may sell a list of "good" addresses to other spammers).

You might wonder why many spams lack your own address in the To: line. This is because they enter all the addresses they send bulk mailings to in the Bcc: field (which we don't have in our own mail setup); this is "blind carbon copy," and no addresses entered there show up in any copies people receive.

To learn more about spam, visit my Privacy Links page.

POP3 Mail Fetch

POP is short for Post Office Protocol, a method used to retrieve e-mail from a mailserver. Most e-mail applications use the POP protocol; however, WebTV's mail isn't POP3 compatible–mail you receive at an @webtv.net addy can only be retrieved from your own WebTV terminal. For information on setting up the POP3 Fetch feature on WebTV, visit this page.

WebTV's Fetch feature can only be set to retrieve from a single external mail account at a time; to fetch messages from a different POP3 account, you would have to reenter Mail Setup and change the server and account information. You won't see the mail light or hear the chirp when messages come in to the external mail account, the only way you'll know if you have messages there is to click Fetch; if there were messages, they would all "pop" right into your WebTV mailbox (make sure you have enough room to receive them first).

For a list of free POP3 mail providers, click here.