Navigating Your Writing.Com Email Box

Understanding your email preferences and how to set them up.

Welcome to Your Writing.Com E-mail Box

So other than send and receive mail, what else can be done with it? Believe it, or not, your e-mail box comes with some really neat features, to help you maximize, minimize, and organize almost everything you receive or send out.

Do you Know What Your Limits are?

Free Members: 4 Megs (4,128 kb) / 500 Messages

Basic Members: 10 Megs (10,240 kb) / 1,250 Messages

Upgraded Members: 20 Megs (20,480 kb) / 2,500 Messages

Premium Members: 40 Megs (40,960 kb) / 5,000 Messages

Let’s take a look at your e-mail preferences:

Interface Options:
If you have your options set up effectively, you can breeze through your email at your leisure. Have you ever taken a moment to look at this section in your preferences?

Language: This a general box, where you can select the language of your email; currently set at English. But includes other languages such as Slovenian, Czech, German, French, Italian, Swedish, Hungarian, Dutch, and Japanese.

Theme: There is only one – Writing.Com

Message Display: To set your mailbox for maximum effectiveness check all boxes, with the exception of ‘Read messages in new window’. Only check that one if you want a new window to open every time you open a new e-mail to view.

Message Composition: Again if you want a new window to open up every time you go to write an email check ‘Open a new window for message composition’. You should have ‘Use Java script for address book’ checked. The character length that you set here will determine where your written line automatically does a wrap to the next line. 80 Characters is a good setting.

Message Index Options:
This section allows you to set up your visual of messages in your email box. When these options are set the feature will be present in all your folders contained inside your email box.

Mails Per Page: Is a great option, especially if you don’t like to click next page. You can pre-set anywhere from 30 to 200 visible e-mail messages per page. However, the more emails you have set to a page, the longer the page may take to load. Base this decision on, how much mail you actually receive, and the speed of your computer.

Default Set Order: Choose date, from, subject or size. This will set up the order of how your e-mail appears in your box. The most common setting here is date. Now below this is a little check box for reverse order. Check this box if you want most recent to appear first. Did you know? … The arrow beside subject, from, date, and size will resort your mailbox for that one time view, without affecting your default set order.

Refresh List: Again, you can choose a variety of time frames for your page to refresh itself. This can be a convenient feature, if you are working in your email box. The page will automatically refresh itself per your setting, so you will know when new mail arrives, as you are working on old mail. This feature only works while you are actually in your email box.

Icons instead of Text: Check this box, if you want to have icons for actions, instead of a drop down menu for things like copy, move to, and trash.
Display ‘Delete all messages’ action: Check this box if you would like to have a link in your email box to do this action.

Plug In Options:

Clock Plug In: Do you live in a different time zone? Do you want to know what Stories Time is? This option allows you to place a clock in your email box, that runs on the time zone of your choice. You can choose a variety of appearances including current date. You even have a choice as to where you would like to see it in your email box.

Plugins: Here you have a variety of options that must be either enabled or disabled by you. Two that you should have enabled are ‘Clock plug in’ and ‘Spelling’. The address grabber is great if you want addresses automatically put in your address book. You will be prompted every time a new e-mail address is added, which will ask for confirmation if you want this person added or not.

Folders:
You have three pre-set folders, trash, sent mail, and drafts. If you are an upgraded, or premium member, you will leave these settings at their defaults. Non-upgraded members might want to use this option to give them an extra folder. Keep in mind that the system will automatically purge both, in box and sent mail automatically every 90 days, so if you are using this feature as a storage house for your e-mail … don’t do it. Also your trash can empties when you close your email window, so not a good folder to rename.

Non-upgraded members have a limit of 2 new folders in addition to your pre-set folders within your email box.

Upgraded and Premium members have an unlimited number of folders!

If there is email that you have received, or sent, and you would like to keep it for editing purposes, or facts and reminders, then be sure to move it to a folder that you have set up for this purpose. Retaining excess email in your inbox, and sent box, requires a lot of space, and becomes unmanageable quickly.

It is in your best interest to sort your inbox regularly, and delete what does not need to be retained. Be sure to move email to a keeper folder; those things which require additional attention, editing, or are needed for record purposes.

On the same note, your sent box retains a copy of each and every email that you send out. Most times these are quick messages back and forth to friends, and don’t need to be kept. Drop into your sent box regularly, and delete those clutter bugs.

Message Highlight and Folder Assistant (a.k.a. Spam Filter!):

Folder Assistant: Removing Spam from your e-mail box: This page looks scary, but if you take the time to read it, and follow the guidelines provided, you can fix your email box for Spam that you are receiving. Make sure that you read this fully, and understand it before doing anything that may be permanent.
"Invalid Item" 
If after reading the above article, you are still uncertain, or need help, then post your questions here:
"Technical Support Forum" 

Message Highlighting: This is a great feature to sort your email box, and keep on top of your email. Here you can choose a colour highlighter that will automatically colour code your messages as they arrive. Know in an instant if you are receiving a group email, survey response, or email from a friend. You can not set-up multi highlight in one step. To get to this feature, just click on the ‘add’ link at the bottom of the Message Highlight and Folder Assistant page, and your screen will refresh, scroll down the page and you will see a preference form to fill out.

Name: give your colour coding a name to recognize what group or survey or email you are coding.

Pick a background colour, and a text colour, do not choose the same colour for both!

Match: here you have a variety of choices to catch the e-mail as it enters your in box. For the following You must use their exact email address or subject line.

Subject - catches the words in your subject line. You must use the exact words, numbers, and signs that are used in the subject line for this to work.
From - catches the sender.
To - catches the receiver.
CC - catches who the carbon copy was sent to.
Reply - catches who the email went to.

Move Messages: this allows you to set up received email to automatically go to a specific folder when received in place of going to your in-box. Only use this feature if you check all your folders, otherwise you could have received an e-mail and not realize that it arrived.

Match Messages: this allows you to set up the colour coding in all your folders, helpful if you have more than one group, or survey, going into a storage folder. Only check those folder, where that e-mail might be found or stored.

Be sure to click add once you have finished setting up, your colour coding for an e-mail. Each e-mail group, or survey, or friend, must be set up individually. Once you have set the preferences for the first one, all future emails from that source will be colour coded, and waiting in your e-mail box as they arrive. Once you have completed setting up all the colour codes that you would like to do, be sure to hit done, to be returned to the preference window.

Remember your email box is a temporary storage house. Anything that is worth keeping belongs in a saved file, disk, or CD. Turn your email box into an effective working tool, and use the features available.