How to use E-Mail

Using e-mail (electronic mail) you can send mail to other students or the instructor.

The mail icon in WebCT allows users to send e-mail to other WebCT users. WebCT also allows for mail to be forwarded to any Internet mail address if the administrator allows it.

 

This icon will be displayed if you have new mail.

 

 

Viewing Folders and Reading Messages

When you have new mail, click on the mail icon (or the Mail course menu item). You will see a page showing your mail folders.

Select the folder you wish to view by clicking on the folder link. The Mail Messages screen appears.

The first section in the mail messages window is a row of buttons that deals with the messages.
Compose message opens a pop-up window that allows you to create and send an email.

Update Listing will contact the mail server and retrieve any messages received since you were inside in the mail tool.

Search will bring up a pop-up window for you to enter search criteria to find certain email(s).

Mark all as read will remove special display features that normally indicate new, unread email ( as shown below).

The second section in the mail messages window deals with how and what messages are displayed.

Display All / Unread - Toggles between viewing all emails and just the emails which are unread.

Select folder - select whether you'd like to see your Inbox (received messages), Outbox (messages that you've sent), Draft (unsent messages that you have saved for a future time) or All (messages from both the inbox and outbox).

Threaded / Unthreaded toggles the display of email messages between sorted by date and sorted (and grouped) by topic. As you can see from the figure below, the current display is set to "threaded", so that all emails that are about "Questions about Reading" are grouped together.

The third section in the in the mail messages window are actions that you can perform; you must select at least one email before selecting one of these actions.

Compile - Displays all selected emails in one window so you can view their content all at once.

Mark as read - Remove special display features that normally indicate new, unread email.

Mark as unread - Adds special display features that indicate new, unread email.

Delete - Permanently removes the selected email messages.

Move To: - Moves selected email messages to another folder: Inbox, Outbox, or Drafts.

Read Messages

Once you are in the Mail Messages screen, click the subject of the message that you would like to read.

A new window will pop-up with the message you selected to read.
Note: When you click on the subject of the message you want to read, and nothing happens it means either you have a pop-up blocker installed on your computer or your browser has one of its own. To resolve this issue, go to Pop-Up Blocker help webpage.

If the mail includes a file attachment, you can download the attachment by ether clicking on he paper clip icon in the message listing or by clicking on the paper clip icon that appears at the bottom of the message.. For security reasons, it is recommended that you download the attachment to your own computer before you view it. To download the file attachment, click the paper clip icon. The Attachments screen appears. Select the file, and then click Download. Your browser's file download window appears. Select the save to disk option, and choose the saving location. When the download is complete, click Close.

When you have finished reading the mail, you can either

• Reply
• Forward the mail
• Download the mail
• Close the message. The Mail Messages screen appear

Sending/Composing a Message

From the Mail Messages screen, click on Compose Mail Message.

The Compose Mail Message screen appears in a new window.

In the Send to: box, type in the login id name of the person you want to send your message to. If you don't know their login id, click on the browse button and you will see a list of of the names and login ids of all members of your online classroom. Click on the name you want. To select more than one recipient, hold the CTRL key while selecting the names. Click Select.

In the Subject: box type in what your message is about. Then click in the message box. This is where you type in the text of your message, just as you would type a letter in your word processor. When you are done, click on the Send button.