Using Eudora: A Quick Guide

Using Eudora is fairly uncomplicated, and for the most part independent of whether you're using IMAP or POP or Windows or Macs. The only exception is deleting email when you're using IMAP, which is discussed below for both Windows and Macs in The Biggest Difference: Deleting Email If You Use IMAP.

Start -> Programs -> Eudora -> Eudora (or wherever it is on your computer)

To close Eudora, select File -> Exit or or click the Close button.

Eudora will open the way you closed it, so if you want your Inbox open when you open it, leave it open when you close it.

When you get into Eudora for the first time, be sure to turn off the Preview pane: turn off the Show message in preview pane option in Tools -> Options -> Viewing Mail. Also unselect Use Microsoft's viewer.

Figure 1: Eudora for Windows To give you an idea of what Eudora looks like, here's Eudora 6.2 for Windows as Ada Byron uses it. Notice that the Preview window has been turned off, by turning off the Show message in preview pane option in Tools -> Options -> Viewing Mail. Also you must unselect Use Microsoft's viewer. It's unsafe. In, Out, Junk, and Trash (at the top) are local (POP) Eudora mailboxes. You won't use In if you use IMAP. Even if you don't have any local mailboxes (such as family and funstuff), you will use Out and perhaps Trash. Ada uses Eudora with IMAP, so she has additional mailboxes that live on her email server; they're named "Heath", "Junk", "sent-mail" and so on, under <Dominant>. Only the Inbox, Heath, and the rest of the mailboxes below <Dominant> are IMAP mailboxes, and only they will be available when using WebMail, pine, or when using Eudora with IMAP on different machines. The messages marked with the blue dots in the first column are unread. The one with the yellow envelope with a paper clipped to it in the third column has an attachment. As it says in the Eudora window title, the Inbox's message index is displayed in the right part of the Eudora window. The Inbox's button is also "depressed" (white) in the taskbar at the bottom of the screen.

To open Eudora double-click on the Eudora icon in the Eudora Application folder, three "people" behind an envelope with a pencil in front of it.

In Eudora 6.2, after you have checked email with Eudora, the icon will include the number of new incoming messages you have in your In mailbox in red numbers.

To close Eudora, select Eudora -> Quit Eudora or use Command-Q.

In Mac OS X Command-H hides all of the Eudora windows.

Eudora will open the way you closed it, so if you want your Inbox and Mailboxes windows open when you open it, leave them open when you close it.

When you get into Eudora, turn the Preview window off by clicking the small arrow in the preview window's upper left corner.

Figure 2: Eudora for Macs And here's Eudora 6.2 for Macs, with as Ada Byron uses it. To make it look a bit more like Eudora for Windows, and to make it more useful, Ada has used Window -> Mailboxes to open the Mailboxes window. Unlike Eudora for Windows, all the Eudora for Mac windows are separate, and open and close and move separately. (Although in Mac OS X Command-H hides Eudora.) Notice that the Preview window has been turned off, by clicking on the small arrow that was in the preview windows upper left corner and is now in the lower left corner of the Eudora screen. In, Out, Junk, and Trash (at the top) are Eudora local mailboxes. You won't use In if you use IMAP. Even if you don't have any local mailboxes, you will use Out and perhaps Trash. Ada uses Eudora with IMAP, so she has additional mailboxes that live on her email server; they're named "Heath", "Junk", "sent-mail" and so on, under <<Dominant>>. Only the Inbox, Heath, and the rest of the mailboxes below <<Dominant>> are IMAP mailboxes, and only they will be available when using WebMail, pine, or when using Eudora with IMAP on different machines. The messages marked with the blue dots in the first column are unread. The one with the piece of paper in the third column has an attachment. As in Eudora for Windows, you can double-click on a mailbox's name in the Mailboxes windows to open that mailbox's index.

Eudora for Windows has more icons on the toolbar by default, but you can customize the toolbar in either case.

Macs:

Hold down the Command key (Apple icon), then move your cursor over the Eudora toolbar to point between two buttons. Click and then select any command from the Eudora menus and an icon for it will be added to the toolbar. Eudora Support doc on how to do it: Eudora 6.2.1: SpamWatch

Windows:

Right-click in the open area in the toolbar and select Customize from the right-click menu. Drag-and-drap the icon for any command you want to be in the toolbar.

The Eudora options are the same in Windows and Macs, but how you get to them is different:

Windows:

Tools -> Options

Macs:

Special -> Settings

1. To send a message in Eudora, click on Message from the menu bar and then choose New Message or click the New Message icon, an envelope with a green circle to its upper left.
   
   
2. Fill in the "To:" field with the email address of the person to whom you're sending email.
   
   
3. Tab down to "Subject:" and enter a brief description of your message.
   
   
4. Tab to "Cc:" and enter the email addresses of the individuals who should receive a copy of the e-mail, if any.
   
   
5. Tab to "Bcc:" and enter the e-mail addresses of people who should receive a copy of your message, but who should not be so identified on the message, that is, blind recipients receive a copy of the mail, but do not see who else received a copy, and the main recipients do not see that the blind recipient received a copy.
   
   
6. Tab to enter the text of your message. Do not worry about the ends of lines, but simply keep typing. Eudora will wrap your text to the next line for you automatically.
   
   
7. If you need to change your text, use your mouse to change the position of your cursor in the text and change it as you would any text.
   
   
8. If you want to add any attachments to your e-mail (any other files or documents):
   1. Click on Message, drag your cursor down to "Attach Document...", and click on that.
   2. You will see a box listing files and folders available at your current location.
   3. Locate the file you want to attach by scrolling up and down and clicking on folders.
   4. Once you've found the file you want, click on its name then, click on the Open button.
   5. Eudora will attach the file and send it with your email message. If the person to whom you're sending the attachment also uses Eudora or another MIME-aware email system, the decoding is automatic.
      
      
9. If you'd like to spell check your note before sending it, use Edit -> Check Spelling (Windows) or Edit -> Spelling (Mac). (There are options settings that turn on automatic realtime spell checking. I recommend you use them.)
   
   
10. Once you've completed your message -- and again, you can edit it as many times as necessary -- click on the Send button and your message will be sent to the mailer for processing. Note: the "Send" button will be replaced with a "Queue" button if you're working off-line; the message will be sent when you connect.

• If you decide that you want to cancel a message, select File -> Close (or just close the email composing window). If you have made changes, this will bring up a dialogue box asking if you wish to save changes. Answer Discard and your message will be canceled.

• To check mail on Eudora, click on File, and then on Check Mail or click the Check Mail icon -- an envelope with an green arrow pointing down into a wooden inbox. Doing so will retrieve your mail from your remote account at UIC and the index of your In mailbox (if you're using POP) or Inbox (if you're using IMAP) will be displayed. Double-clicking on the messages (identified by author and subject) will open your mail.

• To reply to a message you've received, click on Message in the menu bar, then select Reply. A new window will open with the email address, subject and other information already filled in for you. Edit the fields as you like, then tab down to the message area to add/edit text.

The Address Book is another nice feature about Eudora. It's simple to use and very simple to add entries to.

There are two ways to add entries to your Eudora address book:

When you receive a message from someone who you want to include in your address book:

1. Open the note.
2. Click Special -> Make Address Book Entry ...
3. Change the suggested nickname if you wish (it's usually too long), enter or fix the first and last names if necessary.
4. Click OK

Could it be easier?

To add a new address book entry manually:

1. Use Special -> Make Address Book Entry without any email message being open.
2. Fill in the Nickname, Full Name, First Name, Last Name, and put the address in the box provided. For example: adabyron@uic.edu
   Or, if it's a list of addresses, separate them with commas: adabyron@uic.edu, judygs@uic.edu
3. And to close:
   • Click OK (Windows)
   • Click Create Nickname (Mac)

Then to use the nickname, just type it in the To:, Cc:, or BCC: header fields. In fact, you only have to begin to type it. As soon as you type something that Eudora recognizes, either because it is a nickname from your address book or because it matches someone you've sent or received email from before, Eudora will fill in the rest of the name and give you a give you a list of other matching names/addresses to select from.

Eudora also allows you to query information about other users at UIC, or any location for which you know the name of their server. You can use someone's name to find their email address, or phone number, or office, etc. For more information, see Directory Services Setup for Eudora.

• To put a copy of every outgoing message in the Out mailbox, turn on Keep copies on in the Composing options.
• To put a copy of every reply you send to messages that you've moved to one of your mailboxes (as opposed to the mailboxes that Eudora supplies for you), turn on Automatically Fcc to original mailbox in the Replying options.

You can also tell Eudora where to put copies of an outgoing message while you're composing it: click the Keep Copy icon on the toolbar, which looks like two sheets of paper. It's selected if it looks like it's pushed in.

If you don't choose one of these options, Eudora will put outgoing messages into the Trash mailbox when it sends them.

Note: You can also set up a filter to save individual outgoing messages into particular mailboxes based on information contained in the message. See below.

For example, Adabyron has a note from UIC Massmail in her Inbox, she could use this to make a filter to move the messages she receives from them at their massmail_owner@uic.edu email address to an existing mailbox named "UIC mail". Ada's using IMAP; she wants her UIC email mailbox to be on the server. The process is the same either way. This sequence will work for a new mailbox too, because the selection process will also allow you to create a new mailbox.

1. Open the MassMail message. Then select Special -> Make Filter to open the Make Filter dialog box, shown in figure 4. Eudora prefills the dialog box using information from the open message.
2. We want this filter to be applied to all Incoming mail, and Manual would be nice too. (Manual filters are applied when you select Special -> Filter Messages.) No changes here; both are selected by default.
3. We're looking for messages from UIC Massmail, so we use the From condition. Case doesn't matter in Eudora filters, so massmail_owner@uic.edu will match MASSMAIL_owner@UIC.edu or any mixture. It is a generally good idea to remove the name from the condition, just in case the sender ever uses a different name.
4. The only thing left is to tell Eudora which mailbox to move the ACCC Web staff messages into; it's an existing mailbox, so click Transfer to Existing Mailbox. (Actually, this will work for a new mailbox too, because it will allow you to create a new mailbox during the selection process.)
5. Eudora for Windows will display the mailbox tree in menu form. Select <Dominant> -> UIC email (as shown in figure 4), and click Make Filter. If you're using a Mac, you'll have to select the mailbox from the Transfer menu, but the process is exactly the same.

That's all there is to it. There is, of course, lots more you can do with Eudora filters. See "Managing Your Messages" in the Eudora User Manual.

Figure 4: Make Filter dialog Ada is making a Eudora filter for incoming messages she receives from UIC Massmail, massmail_owner@uic.edu. She's gotten to the point of selecting a mailbox to move the messages into. This is Eudora for Windows, but it works similarly in Macs, except you select the mailbox you want it transferred to from the Transfer menu, not from dropdown lists in the dialog box.

If you're using Eudora for Macs, you'll have to open the Mailboxes Window first: Window -> Mailboxes

If you're using IMAP, double-click on <Dominant> in the Mailboxes tab on the left side of the Eudora window, to expand the list of mailboxes you already have on the email server machine. If you used pine or WebMail in the past, you're likely to have some mailboxes on your "email service machine." Eudora with IMAP has no problem whatsoever using Pine or WebMail mailboxes.

Then, if you're using IMAP, open your Inbox: or, , open your In mailbox: in the Mailboxes tab, double-click on the icon to the left of the mailbox's name. (Don't click on the name itself; you might end up renaming the mailbox. If that happens, to get out of edit mode, press Enter or click somewhere else in the Mailboxes tab window, in an open area.)

In Windows, you have one more step: After you open the In/Inbox, click on the maximize button of the In/Inbox index window. The object here is to make the Inbox index window fill the entire right hand side of the Eudora window, not to make the Eudora window itself fill your whole screen. (Yes, it's quite all right to have a window within Eudora maximized without having the entire Eudora window maximized, see figure 1.)

You might see "preview pane", displaying the highlighted message. I suggest you turn this off; see the individual pages on Windows and Macs.

Now your Eudora should look similar to Ada's. Eudora reopens just as it's closed, so just be sure you leave the In/Inbox window open and maximized whenever you close Eudora, and you'll never have to face that intimidating blank window again.

Deleting Email with Eudora is always a two-step process. The first step in deleting email is the same regardless of how you use Eudora or which Eudora you use.

First: Select the message that's to be deleted:

To delete an Eudora message that's open, do one of the following:

• Click the Delete button, the first button on the main Eudora toolbar:
  • On Macs, it's an envelope with a red circle with a white X at its top left corner.
  • On Windows, it's a green circle with a black arrow pointing into a trash can.
• Select Transfer -> Trash.
• Select Message -> Delete.

To delete one or more messages in an open mailbox window, select their message summaries, and do any of the three things above, or:

• Press the Delete key on your keyboard.

Plus, on Windows, there are right-click menu options for deleting messages.

When you're using POP, the first step removes the deleted email message the mailbox it's in and moves it into your (local) Trash mailbox.

To undo a deletion, select Edit -> Undo immediately after you do it or open the Trash mailbox (Mailbox -> Trash), select the messages, and either transfer them to another mailbox using the Transfer menu, or drag them to another mailbox in the open Mailboxes window (Window -> Mailboxes).

The second step when you use POP is also the same, regardless of which Eudora you use.

Second: To actually delete the message, remove it from the Trash mailbox:

And again there are lots of ways to do this.

You can set an Eudora option so that Eudora will automatically delete the messages when you leave Eudora:

Windows:

Tools -> Options -> Miscellaneous -> Empty Trash on Quit

Macs:

Special -> Settings -> Miscellaneous -> Empty Trash on Quit

 

 

Or you can empty the Trash mailbox(s) by hand, whenever you want to:

Special -> Empty Trash

Or you can delete it by hand from the Trash mailbox.

After you've deleted mail from your Trash mailbox, it's gone and can't be recovered.

If you use IMAP, then deleting email is still a two-step process -- select a message or group of messages for deletion as above, then actually delete them, but how the process works depends on whether you use Windows or a Mac, what version of Eudora you're using, and what option you've selected.

Remember that you have a limited amount of space on the server -- your quota -- to keep messages in IMAP mailboxes. You should save that space for messages that you really need to have ready access to. Move older messages that you want to keep into Eudora local mailboxes for archiving and delete them from their server mailboxes. Note that they must be deleted from the server and from your local copy of the server mailbox to be deleted from the server. To keep a copy of a message that's in an IMAP mailbox without it being on the server, you have to move it to a local mailbox -- one that's above the <Dominant> in the Mailboxes window.

When you use Eudora for Macs with IMAP, you have a ton of options on how to delete messages.

By default, the first step just removes the message from view, but it still continues to take up space in your IMAP mailbox until it is expunged. (Expunging is what Eudora for Macs called deleting deleted messages.) So, for example, you'd still see it there if you looked at the mailbox with WebMail.

You probably want a more substantial type of deletion than that. And also removing a message from view and not putting it somewhere else where you could see it to get it back if you need to isn't particulary useful. So here's a way to set Eudora for Macs with IMAP up so that deletion that seems just a bit more reasonable.

As I said, there are a ton of different ways you can delete messages if you use Eudora for Macs with IMAP. I'm only describing the one that I think will be the easiest in the long run. The rest are described on page 165 and following in the Eudora for Mac 6.2 Manual.

The method I like the most is using a Trash mailbox on the server. You can either automatically delete the email in your Trash mailbox when you exit Eudora or or delete them by hand, and your deleted messages are all in one place and you can see them.

When you first opened Eudora for Macs, it asked you whether you wanted to Eudora to run automatic Expunge commands on your IMAP mailboxes.

It suggested that you click Yes if you don't know what it means, and gives a ? help link that isn't very helpful.

So let's assume you clicked Yes.

Turning on the Trash Mailbox.

Open Eudora, and select: Special -> Settings -> Personality Extras

The Auto-Expunge options are under Remove Deleted Messages. If you didn't turn auto-expunge on before, click When the percentage of deleted exceeds 20%, and change the 20% if you want it higher or lower.

• Always
• Never -- you have to expunge by hand
• When percentage of deleted exceeds xx %

The next is a check option: Use a trash mailbox on the IMAP server. Check it to turn it on. Then use Mailbox -> <Dominant> and slide to select a Trash mailbox on the server. (Note that the Auto-Expunge option is actually superceeded by the Use a trash mailbox, but Eudora allows you to set both, so why not? Didn't I say there were lots of options? Or maybe the percentage applies to the Trash mailbox too. Who knows? If you find out, let me know.)

Second: To actually delete the message, remove it from the Trash mailbox:

With this setting, deleting email with Eudora with IMAP is just like deleting Email with Eudora with POP. In particular, the Trash mailbox on the server when you use the standard Eudora commands to empth the Trash mailbox.

Set Eudora to automatically delete the messages when you leave Eudora:

Special -> Settings -> Miscellaneous -> Empty Trash on Quit

Or empty the Trash mailbox(s) by hand, whenever you want to:

Special -> Empty Trash

Or delete it by hand from the Trash mailbox.

After you've deleted mail from your Trash mailbox, it's gone and can't be recovered.

There are only two different ways to delete mail from IMAP mailboxes on the server when using Eudora for Windows (and they are different from the Mac ways also):

Using a Trash mailbox on the server:

If you have the "When I delete a message, move it to ~yournetid/Mail/Trash" option selected in the Incoming Mail options window:

Tools -> Options -> Incoming Mail -> click the button next to Move it to and the default directory to move it to is ~yournetid/Mail/Trash (which is an IMAP mailbox -- on the server -- named Trash)

Then the first step moves the deleted message out of the current directory and into the IMAP directory Trash (or whichever one you selected). Then to actually delete the message, you have to open the IMAP Trash directory, select all the messages that you really want to delete, and Delete them again.

We do not recommend using this option because it's too easy to forget to complete the message deletion this way. Neither the Eudora Miscellaneous option Empty Trash when exiting nor the Special -> Empty Trash command will delete messages from a Trash mailbox on the server. You have to do it manually -- open the <Dominant>Trash mailbox, select all the messages Edit->Select All, then click Delete again.

Marking the messages as deleted and then purging them:

If you have the "When I delete a message, Mark it as deleted" option selected in the Incoming Mail options window:

Tools -> Options -> Incoming Mail -> click the button next to Mark it as deleted

Then the first step marks the message for deletion. Its entry will stay in the mailbox index but it will be marked with a red X in the server status column. (See figure 4 below.) To actually remove all the deleted messages in a particular mailbox, open the mailbox and use Message->Remove Deleted Messages, as shown in figure 4. Repeat this step for each mailbox you deleted messages from.  

We recommend that you use the "Mark it as deleted" method to delete messages in IMAP mailboxes when using Eudora for Windows because you'll either take care of deleting them right away, or, if you forget, the red X's that you'll see the next time you go into that mailbox will remind you.

Figure 4: Removing deleted messages from an IMAP mailbox Ada's Inbox is open. She has selected Message on the menu bar and is about to select Remove Deleted Messages to finish the process of deleting the messages in the Inbox that she has marked for deletion, those with a red X in the server status column. In this case, there is just one, the message with the Subject: "Announcements for ..." Or Ada could have just clicked the Purge icon -- the second icon from the left, a picture of a brush sweeping up; here's how to get one on your toolbar in Windows (see Customizing Your Toolbar for Mac instructions): Right click anywhere on the Toolbar and select Customize from the right-click menu. Click on Message. Click on any icon and Eudora will describe what it does in the Description area at the bottom of the window. Click on the Purge icon (a broom sweeping up) and and drag-and-drop it to your Toolbar; right beside the Trash can icon works pretty well. You might also want to drag-and-drop the IMAP undelete icon (the Trash can with the arrow coming out of its lid, it'a greyed out, right beside the purge icon) onto the Toolbar.

If you use POP, this might be a strange thing to think about -- when you check your email, a copy of each message is downloaded to your In mailbox and you will have a local copy of those messages even after they are deleted from the server.

But in IMAP, it doesn't work that way. The "saved" copy of IMAP email is kept on the server. When you read an IMAP email message, you will download a local copy, but if you delete the server copy of that message, then the local copy will be deleted also. But what about the older email that you don't need to to keep online anymore, but you do want to keep a copy? How do you save a permanent copy of an IMAP message on your PC or Mac?

Here's how to make a local copy of an IMAP message and delete it from the server:

1. If necessary, create a local mailbox -- a mailbox that's on your personal computer -- to hold the message copy. A "local mailbox" is in your Eudora folder, at the top of the Mailbox pane, such as "new mailbox" in this illustration.
   
   
2. Drag-and-drop (or Transfer) the message from an IMAP mailbox -- on the server, in the <<Dominant>> folder, below the <<Dominant>> -- to a local mailbox -- above the <<Dominant>>. This moves the message to your local computer and deletes it from the server.

Eudora for Macs opens everything that you open in a separate window. They can get out of hand, but you can always find everything.

Eudora for Windows does the same thing, but it opens all of its windows inside of the Eudora window, which can get very crowded. You can end up with lots of sub-windows. which Eudora calls "panes", open in the Eudora window at the same time.

This can be an advantage. You can, for example, have a message open in one pane while you're working on a reply in another. It can also be a problem. If you have too many panes open at once, you'll never be able to find anything.

So my advice is:

1. Maximize the index or message that you're working with so it takes up the whole Eudora window. Use the middle button in the pane's upper right corner. Then you can see what you're working on.
   
   
2. Minimize messages or indexes that you want open but aren't currently using. Then they will have a button in the taskbar at the botton of the Eudora window that you can double-click on to open when you want to use them again. (See figure 4.)
   
   
3. When you're done with any open message or mailbox, close it by clicking on its close button, X in the pane's upper right corner. Don't click on the Eudora window's close button, though. (It's easy to get them confused when a Eudora pane is maximized. Then the pane's close button is right below the one belonging to the whole Eudora window. See figure 1.)

You can also close any open mailbox index or message pane by right-clicking on its button in Eudora's taskbar and selecting Close. The taskbar is toward the bottom, on the right-hand side; beside the Qualcomm. You will have a button on the taskbar for each mailbox or message window that's open. If the buttons are too small for you to read their labels, pause with your mouse pointer over a button and Eudora will tell you what it is. This works in general; leave the mouse pointer over any button and Eudora will tell you what it is or does.

• See For More Information for a collection of useful links for Eudora.
• Eudora manuals
  • A full set of Eudora 6.2.1 manuals, including quick start guides, for both Windows and Macs, on the Qualcomm Eudora Web site: Outstanding Documentation Web page :-)
  • See also the Online Tutorials link on that page.
  • Local UIC link Eudora 6.0.1 for Windows manual PDF