Exploring Ameol Email	< Previous  |  Next >

• High and low priority messages
• Attaching the original message to an email reply
• Using the Address Book
• Attaching files to email messages
• Decoding attached files
• Creating new mailboxes

The header information of an email message can include a priority level code although not all email messages will contain this.

When Ameol receives a mail messages that is marked high priority, it shows the title of the message in red in the message window. With Ameol, you can also mark the mail that you send.

To send an email select New Message from the Mail menu or press CTRL+M. To mark your mail high priority, click the upwards pointing triangle button next to the signature list. To mark it low priority, click the downwards pointing triangle button.

When the mail is viewed by the recipient, it will be marked accordingly. Note that the recipient will only see the priority marked if they have an email reader that recognises the priority of an incoming mail message.

When you reply to email messages that you have received, you can add the original message (the one that you’re responding to) to the end of your reply. For those who don’t have programs like Ameol to organise their messages, this can be extremely helpful.

To respond to an email, select the message in the message window and then select Reply to Message from the Message menu or press C.

Type your email as normal and choose a priority level if you wish. To append the original message, click the chain symbol button.

You won’t see the original message added to the end of your reply, but you can check that it has appeared by going to the Out Basket, selecting your reply and clicking the Edit button. You will see the message that you created with the message that you’re responding to added to the end.

Using the Address Book

To help you keep track of people you email, Ameol has an address book that you can use to store email addresses and other information.

To open the address book go to the Mail menu and select Address Book. To add someone to the book click the New Entry button. Fill in the box with the person’s name, address and any comments. Click on Ok and they will be added to the address book.

Another way of adding entries to the address book is to select a message from the person that you would like added from the message window. Go to the Mail menu and select Add to Address Book. The address book ‘Add New Entry’ dialogue will appear with the name and email address already completed.

To edit or view an existing entry in the address book, double click the entry or click the Edit button.

You can also add groups to your address book so that it’s easier to email a group of people. To do this, click the New Group button. You will need to supply a name for the group. To add people to the group click on the add button and select those that you wish to add and click Ok. Once you have added all the people you want in that group click Ok you will now see your group in the address book in bold.

When you are sending an email message, you can click either the To: or CC: to see all the current entries in the Address Book. Select the name of the person you wish to mail and click the top Add> button to copy their email address into the To: field. You can copy several addresses into this field. The CC: field at the bottom right of the dialogue works in exactly the same way.

It is possible to attach a file, such as a picture or a spreadsheet, when sending an email message. The file that you attach doesn’t have to be of any particular type, but it is worth bearing in mind that the recipient should have a program to interpret the file format that you choose to send, e.g. if it is a BMP they will need a picture viewer which can open BMP files.

To send an email with a file attached, select New Message from the Mail menu or press CTRL+M. Fill in the email dialogue box as normal and then click the Attachment: button. You will be prompted to locate the file that you wish to attach. When you click OK, the path and filename of the file that you wish to attach will appear in the field next to the Attachment: button.

Now select the type of encoding that you would like to use from the list box to the right of the filename.

Email messages can only contain text characters. Almost all files generated by spreadsheets, graphics packages and even word processors contain non-text characters so, before they can be sent with an email message, they need to be converted to text. This conversion process is known as encoding.

Ameol offers two sorts of encoding - Uuencoding (pronounced You - you - encoding) and Mime/Base64 encoding. Mime is a more efficient standard, but Uuencoding is more commonplace. If you’re not sure whether the recipient of your email has Mime encoding it’s probably safer to use Uuencoding. Note that if you’re sending email via Conferencing you will not be able to use the Mime encoding option.

You can also send a file without any encoding (binary format) to another Conferencing user. To send a file in binary format, select Send File from the Mail Menu. Using this option will upload the file to your Mail Directory on CIX and then copy the file to the Mail Directory of the person to whom you’re sending the file. Ameol will also send an email message informing them that you have sent a file to their Mail Directory.

Once you have selected the coding type, click the Save button to save your message and place it in the Out Basket.

When you receive an email message with an attached file, the message may be split into several parts. This is because email messages can be limited in size and this size is often too small to contain the entire encoded file.

To decode the file, go to the message window and select the email message containing the file. If the file has been split into several messages you should select the first one in the list.

Now choose Decode Binary Attachment from the Message menu or press U .

Ameol will decode each part of the encoded file and put the completed file in the Ameol attachment directory. It will then put an icon at the top of the message that shows the program associated with this file type. To look at the file, simply double click the icon. Ameol will also put an paper clip symbol next to the message in the threading to show that there is a file in that message.

If the file was split across several messages, each message will contain the program icon and each will be marked with the paper clip symbol.

If there is no program loaded onto your computer that has an association with the file type attached to the message, Ameol will display a generic icon but will still mark the message with the paper clip symbol. To look at the file, you will have to install a program that can read that file type and then open it from the Ameol/Attach directory.

With Ameol, you can direct your incoming email to different mail folders. For instance, suppose you want to separate your personal and work related email. Ameol makes this very straightforward.

To create a new mailbox, go to the Folder menu and select New Mailbox. Type the name of the mailbox that you’d like to create, for instance ‘work’. Click OK and your new mailbox will appear in the In Basket’s mail folder.

To automatically place messages into these mailboxes, however, you will need to apply a rule that checks incoming messages and moves the selected messages to these mailboxes. See "Setting Rules" in the Customising Ameol section.