EMAIL: Instant Communication
Today, Getting Connected Is Essential.
Critical Path Internet services was first created to provide free Internet access, email, and webspace to people all over the Philadelphia region living with HIV/AIDS. In some neighborhoods of Philadelphia, where the rate of HIV infection approaches that of Sub-Saharan Africa, having access to the Internet is essential to get the best, most up-to-date information on both prevention and treatment.
Email (Electronic Mail)
Today we can send and receive messages instantly from computer to computer, across the country and around the world.
With email, you can send a message to a friend, relative, boss, or all of these people all at once, provided that they also have an email account.
Critical Path provides a web-based email account. This means that you can get to your email on any computer that has Internet access. Hotmail and Yahoo, the two biggest free web-based email providers, are designed similarly to Critical Path email.
Unlike these two email services, Critical Path does not have any advertisements popping-up and disrupting your message.
- Go to the Web site for Critical path at: www.critpath.org
- Click on "Critical Path Internet Services"
- Click on "Check Your Critpath Email" or the "Check Email" tab.
IMP is the email service Critical Path uses.
Just type in your username and password and click on "log in."
*If you speak another language, you can adjust IMP to the language with which you are most comfortable!
Every email service (IMP, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo) needs a username and password. At Critical Path your username is also part of your email address.
To send a message to someone, you must know his or her email address. Generally there are two parts to your email address: your username and the identity of the domain. These are separated by the symbol @. An email address for someone who uses Critical Path, for example, looks like this: username@critpath.org
Extensions:
- org - organization
- com - commercial establishment
- gov - government users
- edu - educational users
- biz - businesses
- co.uk - International (Great Britain)
Information cited from the "Microsoft Product Insider."
http://www.library.jcu.edu.au/InfoHelp/Guides/imp/
What You First See
Inbox: This is where messages come in. Every message is displayed by the date it was sent, who it is from, and its subject.
Compose: Writes a new message.
Contacts: Stores a list of important email addresses. Type the email address, the nickname, and the full name of the person. From the contacts list you can insert a name into a new message or into the cc field of a message. From received messages you can add that email address to your contacts by clicking on the little green book icon.
Folders: Separates email messages and files them any way you like. You can create new folders or open up existing folders.
Preferences: Allows you to have a signature, edit your email address, or edit your name that will appear in the emails you send. You can also select a preferred language to send and receive your email in.
Delete: Email messages are crossed out but they still remain in your inbox.
Expunge: Gets rid of a message for good. Once you hit expunge, the message cannot be found again.
Log out: When you are finished checking your email you must log out so that nobody else can see your messages.
Composing A Message
From: Your email address is automatically written in the box.
To: Write the email address of a person you would like to send a message.
Cc: Type another email address here and the message gets copied and sent to another person.
Subject: Write a brief description/heading to the message to let the person receiving the email knows what the message will be about.
Attachment: Send another document along with the message, such as a letter written in MS Word or a spreadsheet created in Excel.
Cancel Message: Simply get rid of the message you were working on without sending it.
Save Draft: Sometimes you may want to save the message before you send it and work on it later (particularly a message to your boss or to important people). Here you can save the message in order to work on it at another time.
Send Message: Once your message is completed, just need to click on "Send Message."
Receiving Messages
Delete: Deletes the opened message right away. Once you go back to the inbox the deleted message will appear with a line through it. You must Expunge to be rid of it for good.
Reply: Replies directly to the person who sent you the message.
Reply To All: If you are one person in a list of people that received the same message, you can reply to all the people on that list, not just the person who sent the message.
Forward: Copies and sends the message onto another person. This also allows you to write, edit, or change the message before sending it along.
Bounce: Copies the message and sends it onto another person. You cannot change or comment on the message if you bounce it.
Back to Inbox: Closes the message you are reading and brings you back to your inbox to see other messages.
Move/Copy: Moves or copies the message and puts it into a folder that you have already created. This gets it out of your inbox.
Here are a few Web sites about Email Etiquette:
Writing Effective E-Mail: Top 10 Tips
E-Mail Etiquette
Email Etiquette
You just crafted a letter in MS Word. You spent hours creating a chart in Excel. Now you want to send your work to someone through email.
With IMP, sending an additional document - called an attachment in email lingo - is a piece of cake.
Three Simple Clicks to Attach:
Need a little more detail?
- First know what the document is called that you want to attach. For Example, If you send a resume as an attachment, know that you called the MS Word "resume4."
- Write your email. Once you are finished, click on "browse" to find the document you want to attach.
- A window will pop up. It will have all the files that are located on your computer. Once you find "resume4" for example, either double click on it OR highlight it and click "open." It will appear on your email.
- Click "Attach" to finalize the attachment process. Once your document is attached, a button called "Remove Attachment" will appear and you can get rid of the document if you made a mistake.
Reading an Attachment
If someone sends you an attachment, you can open and read it by clicking on the disk and pencil icon on the RIGHT side.
If you have to fill out the attachment and send it back, you can SAVE the attachment as a file on your computer. Then reply to the original message and attach the document you saved and worked on to your reply.
You have a passion for Basketball or Cooking. You want to communicate with other people who do too.
An Electronic or Mailing List allows you to do this.
A Mailing List is simply a list of email addresses of people interested in the same topic. There are two kinds:
- Announcement Lists: A master of the list sends you messages but you cannot post a message to the rest of the group.
- Discussion Lists: You and anyone else can post a message and the rest of the people on the list will receive that message.
Be Wary
Some mailing lists have low rates of traffic, but others can flood your mailbox with several hundred messages per day. If you don't check and delete your email, IMP will shut you out.
Subscription to Discussion Lists should be kept to a minimum. Too much email can drive you crazy!
Some Words of Wisdom
- When you join a list, monitor the messages for a few days to get a feel for what common questions are asked, and what topics are deemed off-limits. When you feel comfortable with the group, start posting.
- Follow any and all guidelines that the listowner has posted; the listowner establishes the local "netiquette" standards for her/his list. Save these instructions.
- Keep your questions and comments relevant to the focus of the discussion group.
- When going away for more than a week, unsubscribe or suspend mail from any mailing lists or LISTSERV services.
- Anybody who has a Critical Path email account can easily get a Critical Path Internet account at home for FREE! If you have a computer and you are using a dial up service such as AOL, sprint Earthlinks, Juno to connect to the Internet you can get the same service with us for free.
- You can check your email from any computer with Internet Access.
- Our Internet service includes free web space as well if you want to create a Web site for yourself.
Included below is how to configure Critical Path Internet Account at home. There is no software and nothing to install. It is easy. But, if you have trouble, you can always call us for help.
I Can't Access my Email.
- If the account is not in use for three months it will become inactive.
- Make sure they are using the correct username and password. Passwords are complicated and easy to forget.
- Have someone else type it in.
- Perhaps they need to use the shift command in their password.
- Is the caps lock on? All Critpath accounts are usually all lowercase.
- iv. If nothing seems to work, call the Library. They will look up the password/username for you.
- c. If you are using Outlook or Eudora, the configurations could be wrong.
- d. If all of the above are all fine and you still cannot send or receive mail, it is probably either a fault of your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or your browser (ie; Explorer or Netscape) is not working correctly.
I Can Send Messages but I Can't Receive Them.
- Most likely your email is full to the brim and it has locked you out.
- If you use Outlook or Eudora, try to check your email using the web-based IMP account. Erase and expunge all unnecessary messages. In Outlook or Outlook Express: go to "Tools"/ "Accounts"/ "Properties"/ "Advanced". Make sure that the box next to the sentence, "Leave a copy of messages on the server" is NOT checked.
- If you use IMP, you can telnet to your account to erase the messages. Go to "start," click on "run" and type in "telnet critpath.org". You will be asked to type in username and password. It looks techie, but this is just another way of checking your email.
I Can't Save An Attachment.
- This occasionally happens when an excel document is sent. Try to right-click on the attachment icon and open it in a new window. Then you should be able to save it to your hard drive.
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