Revised: September 15, 2000

Email

Introduction

Email is electronic mail sent through a computer network, generally either the internet or an internal computer network for a company.  The popularity of email has skyrocketed within the past 5 years so that now more email messages are now sent each day than mail through the postal system.  To use email, you use an email program.   As in any category of computer software program (e.g., word processing, spreadsheets, browsers, etc.), each email program is a little different, but has much in common with other programs in the category.

There are two different ways to access email.  The first is through the use of an email program that is installed on your computer's hard drive.  If you are accessing email at the office through a company computer network, the email program might instead be installed on the network  Your email account is provided by your internet service provider or your company.  The second method of accessing email is through the use of a browser (such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer) -- no email software is installed on your computer.  I will term the first kind of email "traditional email" and the second kind "web email" and describe each in turn.

How to Use Traditional Email on a Computer at Home

You will need 4 things:

Email Addresses

All email addresses have two parts, separated by an @ sign.  The part before the @ sign is the mailbox, following it is the domain.  At present, the domain name for providers in the U.S. will have one of the following endings (extensions):

.com commercial
.edu 4 year colleges and universities
.gov U.S. federal government except for military
.mil U.S. military
.net networking organizations
.org non-profit organizations
.us K-12 schools, junior/community colleges, and state government

Outside of the U.S., domains generally end with a 2 digit country code.

Capitalization never matters in domains and rarely matters in mailbox names.  If you're not sure of your address, try sending yourself a message, then examine the return address on the message.

Email Programs

There are a variety of email programs that can be used with virtually all internet service providers.  When you sign up for internet service with an internet service provider, they will generally provide you with an email program.  Among the more popular email programs for home use are the following:

AOL has their own email program to use with their email.  Up until very recently you could not use one of these other email programs with your AOL email.  While simple to use, the AOL email program was more limited in its capabilities than the programs listed above.  However, you now can download for $20 a program from www.enetbot.com to allow you to use any of the above email programs to read and send AOL mail.  

Common Features of Email Programs 

Components of an Email Message

Email messages can have a number of sections.  In some instances, which are optional and which are required depends on the email program.

Multiple addresses within a single recipient field (TO, CC, or BCC) are generally separated by commas.  Recipients listed in the  TO: block or the CC: block see the addresses of the other recipients listed in the TO or CC: block.  BCC recipients see the email addresses listed in the TO: or CC: block, but not other BCC recipients, if any.  

If one wants to email a picture, Word document, spreadsheet, PowerPoint presentation, database, etc., one must send these as an attachment to an email message.  Attachments thus can be very useful.  However, they are almost always the way that viruses are transmitted through email, so a good general rule is not to open an attachment from someone you don't recognize.  Furthermore, since a number of recent viruses (e.g. ILOVEYOU) send the virus to everyone listed in the individual's address book, one must be careful about opening attachments to emails from those who one knows.  Most email programs can accommodate multiple attachments to a single message, although some cannot or require the recipient to perform an additional operation to view them.

Address Books

All email programs have address books that allow you to save the address from an incoming message, use addresses you have saved without having to type in the address into a message, edit your address book, and create lists where mail goes to multiple addresses.

Comments to William Pegram, wpegram@nvcc.edu