Understanding E-mail

The first time I thought about working with E-mail, I couldn't understand why I would set down and write someone a letter when I could call them on the phone.  Well! Not until I really understood what e-mail was, did I appreciate learning to use it.  In this lesson we want to inform you what is e-mail and how can you use it.  Hopefully you will learn to appreciate it as well!

What is E-mail

E-Mail is an electronic way to send someone a note or letter directly to their computer and they can read it when they want.  The neat thing that helped me to begin enjoying e-mail was you can also attach pictures and other documents or forms that are already written to your message.  You can send greeting cards, advertisements, announcements and fliers as well.  One problem that can occur, is people or companies can send advertisements or other things that we call junk mail without your asking them.  This kind of e-mail is called SPAM.  There are programs that can block unwanted e-mail or SPAM.  You need to install something like SpyBot or Addaware and hopefully you have a program on your system already to prevent or at least keep the SPAM to a minimum..

How can I use e-mail?

You can send attachments as mentioned above and You can use e-mail to send the same letter to more than one person.  This is good for communicating to board members, committees, alumni, many family members, etc.  A very helpful concept is to forward the same e-mail that you have received, to another person.  You also could have your receipts of bills, that you pay online, sent to you by e-mail so you can read them.  For that matter, you can have an electronic receipt sent to you, by e-mail, from anything that you buy online!  It is a really good way to give or receive information to a lot of people in a short amount of time.

How does e-mail work?

An easy way to think of e-mail is the same as you would with postal mail.  You need an address label of a person its from, and who you are writing too.  You  need a letter or document of some sort and the extra item that you could add is a brief phrase or sentence that explains what the letter is about.  This is called the "subject" of the e-mail.

E-mail requirements

You will need two things set up on your computer before e-mail will work properly with these lessons. 

1. An internet provider: such as, Knology, comcast, Time Warner Rode Runner, AT&T, AOL, Toast.net, etc. should be installed and working on your computer system.
2. An e-mail program should be configured to manage your e-mail: such as Outlook or Microsoft Outlook.

If you are running Windows XP, Windows 2000, or Windows 98, you will have at least, Outlook Express on your system.  Hopefully, you have this e-mail program or another one called Microsoft Outlook set up on your computer to manage your e-mail.  If you do not, then the following lessons about e-mail will not work with your computer even though you have the internet set up.  You will need to skip to the next set of lessons in Part 5, how to use the internet until you can get one of these two e-mail programs set up on your computer.  You also may have another e-mail program set up already on your system; but, the lessons only teach how to use the two programs listed above.

You will also need to have an Internet provider set up on your computer as well.  If you do, then your internet company most likely had configured Outlook express or Microsoft Outlook to work with their service.  The internet provider is needed for your computer to send and receive e-mail.  The e-mail program is used to manage your e-mail when it comes into your computer better known as an e-mail client. 

If you are there when they install everything, then ask them to turn on the feature that checks your e-mail before it sends and receives and also, ask them to make your In-Box the default folder that opens when you first start the program.  Once you have all these adjustments configured, The following lessons should work well for you.

Have fun with sending your first e-mail!

End of lesson