E-mail and news

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Introduction

Opera's news and e-mail client is designed for speed, elegance, and user friendliness. It has many unique features:

• Real-time text search even with thousands of messages
• "Quick reply" field for fast and chat-like e-mail messaging
• Auto-generated views for contacts, mailing lists and attachments
• Previous searches update dynamically when you get new messages
• Integrated IMAP, news and RSS newsfeeds

Creating folders and sorting messages manually becomes superfluous. To see a group of messages instantly, for example all messages from a certain person or all messages with image attachments, simply click the corresponding view.

All messages are kept in a database and can therefore appear several places. If a friend has posted a message on a mailing list, the message will appear both under your mailing-list view and the view for your friend.

The Received view contains all your incoming messages. You do not have to move any messages from this view. Instead, you can make a message appear in as many additional views as you like.

If you delete a view, the messages it referred to are not deleted because a view only contains pointers to messages. You can only delete messages in the list of messages (message view).

Importing messages

Follow this procedure to import messages, contact information, and settings:

1. Select New account on the Mail menu
2. Select "Import e-mail"
3. Select which e-mail client to import from
4. Click to select folder to import from, unless already correct
5. Select which old account to import from
6. Select whether to import settings, contact, messages, or a combination
7. Click to start importing
8. When the import process is done, click

Messages are imported like this:

• Your old folder tree is put under "Views" in the Mail panel
• Messages in your old Outbox, Sent, Drafts, and Trash folders are put in the corresponding views
• All old incoming messages (Inbox and folder tree) will appear in the Received view

New account

Follow this procedure to set up a new account without importing old messages:

1. Select New account on the Mail menu
2. Select type of e-mail account (POP if you are unsure)
3. Enter your name, e-mail address, and optionally an organization you belong to
4. Enter your user (log-in) name and password (given to you by your service provider)
5. Enter mail-server information from your service provider
6. Click to create the account

After your account has been set up, messages that are not already on your computer will be downloaded from the mail server.

Tip: See Opera's on-line article for information about using the e-mail client with your Premium OperaMail account.

Writing messages

1. Start
   1. Click Compose or press Ctrl + E to compose a new message
   2. Double-click a message in the Drafts view to continue editing a draft
   3. Double-click a message in the Sent view to resend an old message, with changes if you like
2. Enter recipients' e-mail addresses in the To, Cc, and Bcc fields (auto-completion will be offered for Contacts)
3. Enter a subject for your message
4. Write your message
5. If you wish to add files to the message, click Attach
6. Spell check your message by right-clicking and selecting Spell check
7. Finish
   1. Save the message as a draft by pressing Save if you wish to continue later
   2. Send the message by pressing Send in the Compose view

Tip: The plain-text font in the compose window can be changed in Fonts Preferences.

Tip: Text strings from the Notes panel can be inserted using drag and drop, or by right-clicking the e-mail.

Reading messages

New messages are downloaded to your computer on a regular basis, so you do not have to check your messages manually.

To go through your new messages, click the Mail button on the main bar.

Message view explained

The message view is divided into four parts:

1. Toolbar with buttons for common actions
2. Field that lists (unread) messages
3. Field that displays the contents of the currently selected message
4. Field used to "quick reply" to a message

You can click on the columns to sort listed messages:

• The left-most column displays a symbol for each message:

  Symbol	Meaning
  Star	New messages are marked as unread
  Checkmark	You have marked the message as read
  Arrow pointing up	The message has been sent (outgoing messages)
  Arrow pointing left	You have replied to the message
  Arrow pointing right	You have forwarded the message
  Twisted triangle	You have redirected the message

• The Subject column displays a triangle if the message belongs to a thread (click to expand), and an envelope to indicate that the message is an e-mail
• The paper-clip column displays an icon for messages that contain file attachments

Messages in red have not been seen yet (selected by cursor). Messages in bold have not been marked as read yet.

Reading messages

Below is a suggested procedure for going through your incoming (unread) messages:

1. Recognize it!
   1. If a message is spam (advertising, propaganda, etc.) press Delete to put it in your Trash view
   2. If a message is from a friend, and the icon in the From column is ghosted, press A to add your friend to your Contacts
2. Handle it!
   1. To reply instantly to a message, enter your reply in the field to the left of the "Quick reply" button and click the button
   2. If you wish to edit a message before replying, press R
   3. To forward a message to a third party, press F
   4. If you wish to handle a message later, click Label to set a label (e.g. Important or Meeting); the message will appear under the Labels view
3. Move on!
   1. When you have handled a message, press G to mark it as read and move to the next unread message

When you have gone through your unread messages, repeat the procedure on you your mailing lists.

Once in a while, take the trouble to check your Spam view. If a message from a friend has been mistakenly marked as spam, click the "Not spam" button to make it appear as an ordinary message in your Unread view.

Message-view features

Here are some things you can do in the message view:

• Sort the message list by clicking the column headers (From, Subject, etc.)
• Entering multiple words in the "Quick find" field (real-time search of all messages in view)
• Click "Display all headers" to view the message headers (more information) of a selected message

Right-click a message for multiple choices:

Click the View button in the message view for multiple choices on how to display messages:

If you use Quick reply to answer a message, Opera will remove text that has been quoted more than twice.

Tip: You can specify quote levels to strip in "accounts.ini". The replacement text can be edited in "english.lng".

Warning: A HTML message can contain markup that fetches data from the Internet. This poses a security risk and is disabled by default.

Organizing messages

Message tree explained

The table below explains the message tree found under the Mail tab.

Note the following details about the message tree:

• Click the root elements (e.g. All messages and Views) to show underlying views
• Double-click a view to show the messages it contains
• Bold views contain unread messages
• Locate a view by entering text in the "Quick find" field in the Mail panel
• You can navigate the tree with the cursor keys

Right-click a view for multiple choices:

Note: Mailing lists are identified by looking for standard mailing list headers. See IETF RFC 2919 for specifications.

Building your own tree of views

If you wish to organize your messages beyond what is done automatically, you can create message views with filters, to even resemble traditional message folders.

To create a top-level view, right-click Views and select New view. You can build a tree of views by creating views within views.

You can make messages appear in your views:

1. Manually, by right-clicking a message in the message view, and selecting a view under "Show in"
2. Automatically, by creating message filters

Tip: You can make a message appear in as many views as you like.

View properties

To fine-tune properties for a view, select a view in the Mail panel and press Alt + Enter.

In the properties you can edit:

• The name of the view
• Filter rules for the view

Message filters

1. Select Filters on the Mail menu
2. Select view for which to make filter (under either Spam or views)
3. Click to create a new filter
4. Select which part of the message to scan
5. Select how to evaluate the text
6. Enter text to look for
7. Select actions to use on messages caught by filter (see below)
8. Repeat the procedure if you need multiple filter rules (Note that "And" is processed before "Or")
9. Activate the filter by clicking

The following filter actions are available:

• Show filtered messages only in the view that filter applies for
• Mark filtered messages as read
• Borrow filters from parent view (and add more if you want)
• Filter all messages or only incoming new messages

In addition, there is an option to make the e-mail client "learn" what sort of messages you want to appear in a view. Whenever you add or remove a message from a view, the e-mail client does an analysis of the message and looks for similarities with other e-mails you have added or removed. The more you use the view, the more intelligent this filter becomes. This is particularily useful for the Spam view, but can be used for any type of view.

Spam filter

The Spam view separates advertisement and unwanted messages from messages in other views. Spam can be handled in two ways:

1. Manually, by creating a message filter for the Spam view
2. Automatically, using the built-in spam filter

As an experiment, try to make a message filter for the Spam view that looks for the phrase "SPAM LETTER". Then send a message to yourself containing this text and see if the spam filter catches it.

The internal spam filter examines messages for suspicious content, missing sender address, etc. If too many questionable matters are found, the message is considered spam. You can set the internal filter to be strong, medium, or turn it off completely if you want to handle spam manually.

Finding messages

As the number of messages on your computer grows, it becomes necessary to quickly find just that one particular message you are looking for:

1. Select Search on the Mail menu
2. In the dialog that opens, enter the text to look for
3. Select which parts of a message you want to search ("Entire message" for full search)
4. Select time period to stay within
5. Select whether to look for the entire phrase or random occurences of individual words
6. Select which view to look in
7. Select whether to also look in sub-views
8. Start your search by clicking

Tip: To do a quick search, enter text in the "Start search" field in the Mail panel and press Enter.

Multiple accounts

If you have multiple e-mail accounts, for example home@example.net, hobby@example.org, and work@example.com, you can add them all by selecting New account on the Mail menu.

When you click the Check button, new messages from all your accounts will be downloaded to your computer. To check messages for a single account only, click the triangle on the Check button and select which account to check.

Managing accounts

You can set options for each of your accounts.

1. Select Manage accounts on the Mail menu
2. Double-click the account you want to configure
3. Click the tabs in the dialog to change the different options

General

• The account name is only used in the user interface, not in messages
• Account categories lets you select between groups of accounts, for example only display your three work accounts or your two home accounts
• Your name and e-mail address appear in outgoing messages, for example Nice Person <someone@example.org>
• Outgoing messages can indicate an organization you belong to (optional)
• Outgoing messages can indicate an alternate address people should send replies to (optional)
• You can have all messages sent from the account Cc'ed or Bcc'ed to a particular e-mail address (optional)

Servers

Enter the e-mail or news account information you have received from your service provider. Contact your service provider if you are missing information.

Tip: To protect your e-mail and news passwords, enter a security password in Opera's Security preferences.

Incoming

• Leaving messages on a server makes it possible to retrieve the messages again from another computer
• If you read messages from multiple computers, they can be marked automatically if you have already downloaded (read) them from another computer
• You can choose whether to download message bodies while checking messages or when reading each individual message
• You can choose how often to check for new messages automatically
• You can decide which accounts to check when you press the Check button manually
• You can have a sound played when you get new messages

Outgoing

• International users may need to specify a character set for their language
• Enable wrapping to make text fit standard width (76 characters)
• Enable queueing to have messages sent in batches when you click the Send button (useful if you have a dial-up connection)
• When sending or replying to a message, you can have all recipients automatically added to your contact list
• Specify a signature that will appear at the bottom of all messages you send

IMAP

About IMAP

IMAP organizes your e-mail messages on the mail server. Regardless of where you are when you look at your e-mail, you will see the same messages organized the same way, even if you use different computers. This is much more work than with POP accounts.

Caution: Setting up an e-mail account to use both POP and IMAP simultaneously is likely to cause problems. Therefore, use either POP or IMAP for each account.

Setting up an IMAP account

To set up an IMAP account, follow the procedure for POP and select IMAP instead of POP when asked.

Note: Make sure the e-mail service you want to use supports IMAP.

Using IMAP

When your IMAP folder has been set up, and all messages are downloaded to your computer, your IMAP folder tree appears in the Mail panel under "Mail for...".

The INBOX folder is the default folder for incoming messages and cannot be deleted.

Double-click your INBOX to read your e-mail. Reading and writing messages over IMAP is similar to working with POP.

Maintaining IMAP folders

Select IMAP folders on the Mail menu to customize your IMAP folder tree.

Click the checkboxes to select which IMAP folders you want to access from your computer.

Click to create a new IMAP folder.

Click to delete an IMAP folder on the mail server. Note that all messages in that folder will be lost.

Moving messages between folders

To move a message from one IMAP folder to another, drag the message from the message view and drop it to the new folder.

Options

Account options are the same as for POP, with these additions:

• You can set the path to your IMAP root folder (if indicated by service provider)
• You can choose a folder on the IMAP server in which to store messages sent from your IMAP account

Note: To take full advantage of IMAP capabilities, you should be connected to the Internet.

Newsfeeds

Introduction

Newsfeeds let you receive messages from newspapers and other information sources on the Web.

The idea is that rather than going into a newspaper Web site, checking for updates all the time, you can subscribe to the news feed, and receive news summaries like you recive e-mail.

A nice effect of this is that you don't have to see the same news twice, because you mark the news messages as read like an e-mail.

The newsfeeds are based on the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) method.

Subscribing to newsfeeds

1. Select Newsfeeds on the Mail menu
2. Use the checkboxes to subscribe and cancel newsfeeds in the list.

Adding newsfeeds

1. Check with your desired news site if they have an RSS newsfeed service
2. Select Newsfeeds on the Mail menu
3. Click and enter the RSS address

Example: An RSS address may look like this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/syndication/feeds/news/ukfs_news/front_page/rss091.xml

Reading newsfeeds

When you have subscribed to some newsfeeds, a "Newsfeeds" item will appear in the Mail panel.

When RSS news messages appear in this view, click the view to read the messages like you would do with ordinary e-mails.

Note: It may take a little while before the server sends you some messages.

News

While an e-mail is usually sent to a single person or a few people, posting a news article can be compared to putting notices on a public bulletin board.

Setting up a news account

1. Select New account on the Mail menu
2. Select "News" when the account wizard starts
3. Enter your name, e-mail address, and organization (optional)
4. Enter the news-server information given to you by your service provider
5. Click to create your new account

Tip: To participate in newsgroups about the Opera Web browser, enter news.opera.com as news server.

Subscribing to newsgroups

1. Select Newsgroups on the Mail menu
2. Subscribe to groups by clicking the respective checkboxes in the list
3. Click to subscribe

Tip: Enter text in the "Quick find" field to find particular newsgroups without scrolling through the whole list.

Reading news

To read a newsgroup, double-click the group you want to read in your "News at" view.

Reading and writing news articles is practically the same as working with e-mail messages. Note, however, the following:

• Click "Reply" to post a follow-up article, as an answer to the article you are currently reading
• Click "Reply all" to both post a follow-up and reply to the author by e-mail
• Enter a comma-separated list of groups if you want to post your article in multiple groups (called "cross-posting")
• Enter e-mail addresses in the Cc field to send people copies of the article by e-mail
• Deleting a news article only deletes your local copy -- a news article is never deleted from the server

Learn more

Learn to read e-mail with the keyboard

Learn more about the Mail menu

Read the on-line tutorial

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