Electronic Mail

Receiving Electronic Mail

Sending Electronic Mail | Receiving Electronic Mail | Attachments | Finding Addresses | Mailto Links | Going Further

After logging in to your web email site, look for a button or a link that indicates the location of any mail you may receive. The link may be something like "Inbox" or "Check Mail." Click on the link and a list indicating all your new messages and your remaining old messages (ones you haven't deleted) will appear. On Yahoo, the message subjects will be listed; each will be a link to the corresponding message.

Handling Mail

At this point you have several options. (The numbers in the following list correspond to the numbered items in the figure.)

1. Click on a subject to open and read the message.

2. Delete the message. (At Yahoo click the checkbox beside the message subject, then click the Delete button.)

3. Move the message to another folder.

4. Write or "compose" new mail to someone else.

Reading and Replying to Mail

Once you've brought up a message to read, you have several options in handling it:

1. Compose a new message (which may or may not be related to the received message you've displayed).

2. Reply to the author of the displayed message.

3. Reply All -- reply to both the author of the displayed message and anyone that it was copied it to.

4. Forward the displayed message to someone else.

5. Check the mail server for new mail.

6. Delete the displayed message.

The control buttons allow us to initiate most basic mailing operations just by clicking with the mouse. If some of the commands seem unclear to you, check Help for the site (the link at the top right of the above figure for the site we've shown) for further information.