WebMail Revisited

Yes, we introduced WebMail in the last issue of the A3C Connection and we're back again with it now. This time we're introducing a new, improved WebMail, using a WebMail template that we designed specifically for UIC. WebMail is worth spending time on because it's by far the easiest way to do electronic mail at UIC -- all you need is a Web browser and your icarus, tigger, or mailserv account.

(1) If you have an existing email address book (CMS, Eudora, or Pine), you can convert it for use with WebMail. (See WebMail Address Books.)

(2) If you want a signature to automatically be added to your outgoing messages, enter it in the Change Options window. (See To change a WebMail option.)

Do you already do your email with Eudora or another email system? No problem. Use your regular program when it's convenient to do so, and use WebMail when it's not. But a warning: Don't use WebMail and Eudora or Pine (or any other email program) at the same time.

Logging In to Web Mail

Logging in is really easy; use any Web browser to go to: https://webmail.uic.edu/

Type your netid and password in the spaces provided, click in the circle beside the name of the server machine where your email account is located, then press Enter or click the Login button.

(Want to find out more about WebMail, convert your address book, change your icarus, tigger, or mailserv password? There are links on the WebMail login page for these too.)

Logging Out of WebMail

That's easy too. On one of these WebMail windows:

• a mail folder index window (either your Inbox -- the WebMail - yrnetid New-Mail Messages mailbox folder -- or any other mailbox folder)
• the Read Message window (Be sure to either send or save the message you're working on before you logout.)
  
  
• the Create Message window

To logout from WebMail: click  .

Be sure to logout every time you leave WebMail.

Standard WebMail Window Buttons

To go to the next or previous "page" (mailbox folder indexes), click  or .

To go to the next or previous message (when you're reading an email message), click  or .
To work with email mailbox folders, click  or use the Switch to Mail Folder box at the top of any mailbox folder index.
To change a WebMail option or to enter your default signature, click , make your changes, then click  or . Change the "Number of Days to Retain Messages in Outbox Folder" option to 0 to keep copies of the email messages that you send forever (or until you delete them yourself). Check "Read Messages in Preview Mode" to keep the status of incoming messages as until you reply to them. (I use this option.)

To get help, click . This opens the ACCC document Using WebMail at UIC in a new browser window, at the description of the window you're using. You can leave the help's browser window open so you read it and use WebMail at the same time, or you can close the help window when you're finished. Don't minimize the help window; if you do, it won't automatically open the next time you use help.

And to logout, click . Be sure to logout every time you leave WebMail.

WebMail Dialog Box Buttons

WebMail also has a number of dialog box windows, including Changing Options, Search Messages, Address Lookup, and File Message in Folder. Make your selections or changes in these windows, then click  to save or . to cancel them.

When WebMail opens, it displays the first 20 messages in your Inbox in your New-Mail Messages folder window; Ada Byron's is given in figure 1.

In the  New-Mail folder window:

To read a message, click on the name in its From: column. (Figure 1.)

To delete a message, click in the box beside its Subject: then click .

To check for new messages, click . (Your browser should do this automatically.)

To compose a new message, click .

To sort the index by the values in any column, click on the column's header (the first row of the table). By default, the items in your Inbox are first sorted by category: drafts, new urgent messages, urgent messages that you've already read, new messages, and then non-urgent messages that you've read. Within each category, the messages are sorted by day and time, from the newest to the oldest.

To search for messages that contain a specific text or are from a specific person, click . This opens the Search Messages dialog box. Type all or part of a name in the From: box and/or type a word or phrase in the Text: box, and, if you wish, select a Match to: option, a range of dates, and/or a folder, then click .

For example, type ste in the From: box to search for anyone whose name is or begins with "ste", such as Steven, Stephen, or Stephanie. You don't need to use a wild-card character. Ste smith won't do, though, unless you know someone whose first name is "Ste"! (The WebMail User's Guide has more information on searching.)

And to logout, click . Be sure to logout every time you leave WebMail.

In the WebMail Read Message Window:

To reply to the message or forward it to someone else, click or , respectively.

To print the message, use your browser's Print function, often: File -> Print

To look at or save an attachment, click on its name, but read Warning on Attachments first.

To visit a Web URL in the message, click on the URL.

To save the message in another folder, click  to display the WebMail File Message dialog box window. (See Working with Folders.)

To delete the displayed message, click .

To save the message's From: address in your WebMail address book, click the Add to Address Book button beside the From: address.

To return to the folder's index, click .

And to logout, click . Be sure to logout every time you leave WebMail.

The Message: box in the Create Message window is pretty wide; you might want to maximize your browser window while you're working with it. The easiest way to do this in Windows is to double-click on the blue bar at the top of the browser window (where it says WebMail - Create Message); double-click on the blue bar again to return the window back to its previous size.

To address and send a message, in the WebMail - Create Message window:

1. In the To: field, type the name and email address of the person you want to send email to. In figure 3, Ada is creating a test email message to send to herself so she has typed:
   
   Ada Byron Lovelace [adabyron@uic.edu]
   
   You can also select the To: address from your WebMail address book or look it up in the UIC phonebook database as described in Using WebMail Addressing Tools.
   
   
2. Press Tab. If you want to send a Cc: (carbon copy) or Bcc: (blind carbon copy; the name and address of the Bcc: recipients won't be included in the copy of the message sent to the To: or Cc: addresses), type them and press Tab to move to the next field. You can also use the WebMail addressing tools to select these addresses.
   
   
3. Tab to the Subject: box and type your subject.
   
   
4. Move down to the Message: box; either press Tab five times or use your mouse.
   
   
5. Type the body of your mail message in the Message: box. WebMail will automatically move the cursor to the next line as needed, or you can press Enter to add a line and move your cursor to the beginning of the new line. WebMail will also scroll the screen when you fill the Message: box.
   
   
6. If you wish, click  to check the spelling in the body of your message. WebMail will offer to correct the spelling of each word that it doesn't find in its dictionary (English only) or to add that word to your personal dictionary. (See the WebMail User's Guide for more information.)
   
   
7. Click  to send the message.
   
   
8. The message is sent and a copy is saved in Outbox, WebMail's sent messages email folder, where it will be kept for 15 days only. To keep a copy of one of your outgoing messages for a longer period, go to the index of your Outbox folder, click on the message's From: name to open it, then use to move it to one of your other email folders. Or you can change the "Number of Days to Retain Messages in Outbox Folder" option.

Using Other Create Message Functions:

Drafts are a purely WebMail thing. Even though they appear to be in your New-Mail folder (your Inbox), they won't show up when you look at your Inbox with Eudora or Pine or another email program.

To attach a file to the message, click . This displays the Add/Delete Attachments dialog box window; on this window, either type the name of the file to be attached in the Filename: box or click Browse... to open a standard file dialog box. Click the Add File button, then click .

(Note that this only works, and you will only see this button, when you are using a Web browser that supports attaching files to mail message.)

To cancel the message, click  .

And to logout, click . Be sure to logout every time you leave WebMail.

From the list of addresses in the Personal Addressbook Entries select box (on the left), select a To: recipient, then click the TO button. Repeat to select Cc: (carbon copy) recipient(s): select recipient(s) from the list on the left, then click the CC button. And repeat again to select the Bcc: recipients (blind cc; their names and addresses won't be included in the copies sent to the To: or Cc: addresses): select recipient(s) from the list on the left, then click the BCC button.

The easiest way to select multiple recipients is to select them one at a time.

To delete a recipient, click on their address in the Selected Recipients select box to highlight it, then click the Del button.

When you're finished, click . WebMail returns to the Create Message window and displays the addresses that you selected.

To look someone up in the UIC online phonebook database while you're composing a message, click . A small window will open; type all or part of the person's name in the box provided then click the OK button. For example, you could use ste* smith to search for anyone named "smith" who has another name that begins with "ste", such as Steven, Stephen, or Stephanie. Each entry in the list returned includes a button; click it to add that person to your message's To: header and return to the Create Message window. (To go back without selecting a recipient, use your browser's Back button.)

WebMail Address Books

But you're in luck if you already have a CMS names file or a Eudora or Pine address book. Then you can use the ACCC Email Addressbook Conversion Utility Web page to convert your existing address book for use with WebMail, Eudora, Pine

To use the ACCC Email Addressbook Conversion Utility, go to http://www.uic.edu/depts/accc/ecomm/addbookconv.html , click the Login button, log in with your netid and icarus, mailserv, or tigger password, select the conversion you want from the table of contents, then click the appropriate Convert whatever to whateverelse" button. That's all. (Note, however, if you already have a WebMail address book, the one created by this utility will replace it.)

Building a WebMail Address Book

You can also add addresses to your address book by hand: Click  to open the WebMail - Address Book Lookup dialog box window, and use the Add or update personal address book entry: form at the bottom of the window.

Receiving attachments in WebMail is easy -- it displays attachments as Web links, so you could just click on the attachment's name to open it. But that's not a good idea. "Opening a URL" in a Web browser can involve opening an application on your computer and "running" the attachment. (This varies depending on how your Web browser is configured.)

Opening/Running an attachment such as a Word document or a program without checking it for viruses first is a very bad idea. What you should do instead is save the attachment to your hard drive, run a virus checker on it, and then, if it checks out OK, open it yourself.

To be sure that your Web browser offers you the option to save the attachment rather than automatically opening it, don’t click on the attachment’s URL. In Windows, when you’re using either Netscape or MS Internet Explorer, right-click on the attachment URL and select Save as... from the menu. (It’s Save Target as... in IE.)

Opening an attachment does not delete it from the server machine nor does it automatically save the attachment on your disk.

New-Mail folder,

what WebMail calls your Inbox.

Deleted folder,

the folder that WebMail moves deleted messages into. See Deleting and Undeleting Messages below.

Outbox folder,

where WebMail keeps copies of all the messages you send. (But, by default, they're only kept for 15 days; see Step 8 in To address and send a message.

WebMail uses IMAP (see IMAP: What's New in Electronic Mail in the October/ November/ December issue of the A3C Connection), so when WebMail is used with any other email system that's also set up to use IMAP, in particular Eudora or Pine, all the mail folders that you keep on the email server (not the ones that you keep on your personal computer) will be available to you, regardless of whether you're using WebMail or your other email system.

Figure 5. Using a WebMail Folder Selection Window Ada is in the process of opening her Outbox mailbox folder index, the folder that WebMail keeps the messages that she's sent in the last 15 days (or for however long she's specified in her "Number of Days to Retain Messages in Outbox Folder" option; see To change a WebMail option). She clicked in the gray box with the down arrowhead to the right of the drop-down box to display her choices -- the names of her email folders in this case, slid her mouse down until Outbox was highlighted, and clicked on Outbox to select it. Now she must move her mouse pointer up and click Select to open the index of her Outbox mailbox folder. (The title of the window that it opens will be WebMail - adabyron's Outbox Messages.) (Click on the image to see it full size in a new browser window.)

Using Folder Selection Boxes

In each case, you select the folder you want to work with (or that you want a message moved into) from a Folder: drop-down box as described in figure 5.

The folder dialog box windows also allow you to create and delete email folders. To create a folder, type its name in the Folder Name: box (one word is best, no spaces or special characters), type a short description in Description: box (if you want; it's only used in WebMail), then click the Create button.

You can also use the copy of a deleted message in the Deleted folder to undelete a message. Go to your Deleted folder, open the message, then select and move the message to the proper target folder as described in Using Folder Selection Boxes above.

To use WebMail:

https://webmail.uic.edu/

The ACCC document Using WebMail at UIC:

http://www.uic.edu/depts/accc/software/webmail/

More information, including a FAQ and seminars:

Related Links in Using WebMail at UIC.

 
Comments are welcome; please send them
to Judith Grobe Sachs, judygs@uic.edu