Communicator Help: Getting Started With AOL<sup><font size=-2>®</font></sup> Communicator

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Getting Started With AOL Communicator

Getting Started With Mail

Tutorial movie:
Explore AOL Communicator Mail

These sections introduce some of the most useful features of AOL Communicator Mail:

Viewing Your Messages
Reading and Organizing Mail
Addressing and Sending Mail
Training Your Spam Filter
Setting Up Message Filters
Searching Messages
Using Multiple Accounts

Viewing Your Messages

If you're not already viewing the AOL Communicator Mail window, open the Window menu from within any other AOL Communicator application and choose Mail.

At least one account is listed at the upper left of the Mail window, in the Navigation pane. Click the arrow beside the account name, if necessary, so it points down and you can see its folders.

When you click the Inbox or any other folder, you see the messages it contains displayed in View pane on the right.

When you click a message, its content is displayed in the Preview pane at the bottom of the screen.

Layout Styles: If your ISP account has a lot of folders and you want more room to display them, open the View menu, choose Layout Styles, and choose Narrow Preview from the submenu.

Text Size: To increase or decrease the size in which message text is displayed, open the View menu, choose Text Size, and choose the size you want.

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Reading and Organizing Mail

Reading Mail

To read mail in the Mail window:

1. Locate the account whose mail you want to read in the left column.
2. If no folders show up under the account name, click the triangle beside the name so it points downward, then click the folder whose messages you want to view.
   The messages in the selected folder are listed on the right side of the window.

By default, Communicator Mail retrieves mail for all your accounts every ten minutes. For information on changing this and related options, see Adjusting Check for New Mail Settings.

Unless you are using mail filters, new mail shows up in the Inbox for each account (or in New Mail for AOL accounts). Click the Read button (near the top-left corner of the Mail window) at any time to check mail immediately for the currently selected account.

To increase or decrease the size in which message text is displayed, open the View menu, choose Text Size, and choose the size you want.

To print a message, select it, then click the Print icon near the top-right corner of the window.

Organizing Mail

It's often convenient to organize the mail you receive into different folders.

To create a new folder:

1. Open the File menu and choose New.
2. Choose Folder from the submenu.
   The New Folder dialog box appears.
3. Type the name of the folder, then use the drop-down list to specify the account or folder in which you want to place the new folder. Click OK to confirm your settings.
   Note: You cannot create new folders for AOL accounts.

To move mail in your Inbox into different folders:

- Select the messages you want to move, then drag them to the folder where you want to keep them.
- Select the messages you want to move, click the Move icon near the top-right of the Mail window, and select the folder to which you want to move them.

Related topics:

Training Your Spam Filter
Setting Up Message Filters

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Addressing and Sending Mail

To send a one-line reply to a message:

1. Click Reply Now.
   The Reply Now button is located near the upper-right corner of the message body.
   When you click it, the Reply field appears at the top of the message body.
2. Type your message in the Reply field.
3. Click Send (or press Enter) to send your reply to the sender of the original message.

To send a longer reply:

1. Select the message in the View pane.
2. Click Reply (or Reply All) in the toolbar near the top of the window.
3. Type your message and click Send.

To compose a new message:

1. Click the Write button near the top-left corner of the Mail window.
   You'll see an empty Write Mail window. Notice the From: field near the top of the window. If you have set up more than one account, select the one you want to send this message from by selecting it from the drop-down list.
2. Start typing a name in the To: or Cc: field.
   If you have any relevant entries in your AOL Communicator Address Book, you'll see "type-down addressing" in action.
   When you stop typing for a brief interval, a list of matching names and e-mail addresses appears just below the field.
3. To choose the name and address you want, click it; or use the up and down arrow keys to select it, then press Enter.
4. To enter more than one recipient in the To: or Cc: fields, repeat Steps 2 and 3 above. You can use the tab key to move between fields. (Note that recipients listed in the same field must be separated by commas, which are inserted automatically.)
5. Enter any recipients whose addresses you want to keep private in the Bcc: (blind carbon copy) field.
6. Enter a subject and the text of your message.
7. When you're ready to send your message, click Send.

In addition to using type-down addressing to enter addresses for people in the corporate directory, you can also look up addresses in any of the other address books you have set up in Address Book. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Click the Address button near the top of the Write Mail window.
   The Address Book opens.
2. In the left column, click the name of the category you want to search.
   To search all contacts in all categories at once, click All Contacts.
3. Click in the field labeled Name or E-mail Contains (near the top of the window) and start typing the name of the person whose address you want to find.
   As you type, the most closely matching names are highlighted in the right column.
4. When you locate the name and address you want, select it (or hold down the Ctrl key and click to select multiple addresses) and drag it into the To or Cc field of the Write Mail window.

Related topics:

Changing Plain Text Settings
General Mail Preferences

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Training Your Spam Filter

Tutorial movie:
Control Spam with AOL Communicator

Many e-mail users are frustrated by the increasing number of spam messages they receive—unsolicited messages that clutter their inboxes with unwanted advertising.

AOL Communicator Mail automatically detects messages that appear to be spam so you can move them out of the way and delete them at your convenience.

Spam filtering is turned on by default for POP accounts, and you can choose to turn it on while you are setting up AOL or IMAP accounts. To make sure spam filtering is turned on for a given account, see Turning On Spam Filtering in AOL Communicator.

When spam filtering is turned on, AOL Communicator Mail marks the messages it identifies as spam in each inbox like this:

At first, the spam filter may make some mistakes, identifying messages you want to keep as spam, and not marking real spam messages.

To improve your filter's accuracy, train it as you observe it in action:

- One message at a time: Right-click any message whose spam marking is currently wrong, and choose either Mark as Spam or Mark as Not Spam.
- Multiple messages at a time: Hold down the Ctrl key and click to select multiple messages. Then right-click the selection and choose either Mark as Spam or Mark as Not Spam.

To train the filter while reading a message:

- If the message is marked as spam but shouldn't be: Open the Spam menu and choose Mark as Not Spam; or click This Is Not Spam at the top of the message.
- If a message isn't marked as spam but should be: Open the Spam menu and choose Mark as Not Spam; or select the message and click the Spam button near the top of the window:

If you have a slow connection: When spam filtering is turned on for an AOL or IMAP account, AOL Communicator Mail downloads the content of each message in your New Mail folder (or Inbox) to determine whether the message is spam. If you are using a slow dialup connection, this may cause mail retrieval to seem a bit slow the first time.

The slowdown is proportional to the number of messages in your Inbox—the more you have, the longer spam filtering takes. If you have fewer than a hundred or so messages in your Inbox at any given time, you probably won't notice any slowdown due to spam filtering.

Related topics:

For information on turning off spam filtering for individual accounts, see Turning Off Spam Filtering in AOL Communicator.

If you use both AOL Communicator and AOL client software (such as AOL® 9.0 Optimized or later versions) to read e-mail messages, see Host-Based Versus Local Spam Filtering.

Viewing Spam

Messages marked as spam are marked with a special icon and color, as described in the preceding section.

In addition, the special Mail Views category at the bottom of your list of accounts in the main Mail window lists all spam messages by account.

When you're viewing messages in any regular account folder, you can take these actions:

- To show or hide spam messages in the selected account folder: Open the Spam menu and select Show Spam Messages. This menu item toggles on or off each time you select it.
- To group all spam messages together in the folder: Click this column icon:You may have to scroll up or down to see the spam messages grouped together.

Deleting Spam

Once you delete spam messages, you can't get them back. Therefore, make sure messages marked as spam really are spam before deleting them. For information on viewing spam messages, see the preceding section.

To delete mail marked as spam from the selected folder: Open the Spam menu and choose Delete Spam From This Folder.

The special Mail Views category at the bottom of your list of accounts in the main Mail window lists all spam messages by account. When you delete spam messages in one of these spam folders, the same spam messages are deleted in the corresponding account, and vice versa.

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Setting Up Message Filters

Tutorial movie:
Set Up Filters for My Mail

If you get a lot of e-mail, AOL Communicator Mail can help you keep it organized by automatically moving, deleting, or marking messages according to your message filters.

To create a simple message filter based on an e-mail address:

1. Right-click any e-mail address in any mail message header and choose Create Filter from Message from the pop-up menu.
2. Use the drop-down lists beside the label Perform the following action to choose the account and folder to which you want to move filtered messages. (The first drop-down list allows you to select some other action, such as deleting the message.)
3. Click OK.

From now on, AOL Communicator Mail automatically sorts all incoming messages from that e-mail address according to the filter specifications.

To examine your existing message filters and create new ones:

1. Starting from the AOL Communicator Mail window, open the Tools menu and choose Custom Message Filters, then Setup.
   The Setup Custom Message Filters window appears
   From the drop-down list labeled Filters for messages on, choose the account that you want the filter to apply to.
2. Click New Filter
   The Custom Message Filter window appears. You can use it to name a new filter and construct rules for it to use:
   The first row of drop-down lists specify the action the filter should take when the conditions specified below apply to an incoming message.
   The remaining options determine the conditions that a message must meet for the filter to perform the specified action.
   The Add and Remove buttons add a rule to the list of conditions or delete the bottommost rule.
3. Click OK to confirm your new filter settings.
4. Click OK to close the list of filters.

Related topic:

Using Message Filters

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Searching Messages

To find a message in a folder quickly:

1. Select the folder you want to search.
2. Click in the field at the top of the Mail window labeled Subject or Sender contains:
3. Type the first few letters of the sender's name or the subject line.

As you type, only the messages that match what you have typed so far are displayed.

Related topics:

Advanced Search

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Using Multiple Accounts

You must set up at least one AOL® member mail account to start using AOL Communicator

To set up another account:

1. Open the Edit menu in AOL Communicator Mail.
2. Choose New Account.
   The first screen of the Account Setup Wizard appears.
3. Click Next as you complete the information requested on each screen.

Repeat this process for as many accounts as you like.

Related topic:

Make sure you type the information correctly for each new account. For background information, see Setting Up Mail Accounts.

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Last Updated September 18, 2003