Use the Palm Mail Application Menus

Palm Mail is a full-function e-mail client. All of the functionality of the application can be accessed from the application menus. The items that appear in the menus will vary slightly depending on the screen you are currently on and what you are doing when you view the menus.

Use the Mail Message Menu

The Message menu offers a list of actions that you can perform on one or many e-mail messages. You can access the Message menu by launching Mail and then selecting the Menu button. Your Message menu should look like that shown in Figure 6-6. The following are available actions you can take with e-mail:

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Send and Receive When you select the Send and Receive menu (this button is visible on some screens), your Treo will send pending e-mail and check the server for new messages. You can configure your Treo to automatically check for e-mail at regular intervals on the Options | Preferences | Delivery menu.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]New Select this option to create a new e-mail message.

CC is the acronym for "carbon copy." Use CC when you would like a recipient, in addition to the person your sending the e-mail to, to also receive a copy of the message. They are not expected to reply. An example of when someone may want to CC someone could be a sales associate who CCs her boss on all e-mails sent to clients so her boss is aware of what she is doing. The recipients will see all of the people that received the e-mail.

BCC is the acronym for "blind carbon copy." BCC is similar to CC, but the difference is that none of the people who received the e-mail will see who was BCC'd on the e-mail. This is essentially a stealthy way of ensuring that someone else, other than the main person you sent the e-mail to, also receives the message.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Reply Select this option when you want to reply to the sender(s) of a selected e-mail message. To reply to all of the e-mail recipients, including the recipients in the Cc and Bcc fields, use Reply All. You can determine whether or not your e-mail replies will include text from previous messages on the Options | Preferences | Message screen.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Reply All Select this option if you want to create a reply message that will be sent to all of the e-mail addresses in both the To and Cc fields.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Forward Select this option if you want to send an e-mail in your Inbox to another person.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]File The File command allows you to store e-mails in a folder separate from the inbox.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Delete The function of this action is obvious, but it is worth noting that deleted messages are moved to the Deleted folder until you select the Purge action.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Purge The Purge action permanently deletes any messages in the Deleted folder.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Mark Unread The Mark Unread action makes messages that you have already read appear to be unread. Pretty simple. This feature is an effective way to indicate that a message needs to be revisited later-after all, it seems a natural inclination to want to read a message that looks unopened.

Find a Specific E-Mail Message with the Mail View Menu

Your View menu should look like the screen in Figure 6-7, where the menu items allow you to jump to different positions in your e-mail list and sort your e-mail. This is helpful if you have a lot of e-mail and you find that scrolling through the list to find a particular message is too time-consuming.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Top of List Lets you jump to the top of the list.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Bottom of List Lets you jump to the bottom of the list.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Sort by Date Sorts your e-mail by the date received.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Sort by Name Sorts your e-mail by the contact name.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Sort by Subject Sorts your e-mail by the e-mail subject.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]E-mail Account If you have multiple accounts, shows them by name on the bottom of this screen. (In Figure 6-7, you see the account treo600.) You can switch among accounts by selecting from the list the one you want to work with.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]New Account Allows you to add new accounts. Palm Mail allows you to manage up to five different POP3 e-mail accounts. To add new accounts, click this option and fill in the information. The required information was covered earlier in this chapter in the section "Set Up a POP3 Account."

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Edit Accounts Lets you edit your POP3 account settings. If you are experiencing difficulty sending or receiving e-mail, this is where you will check and modify e-mail account settings.

Use the Mail Options Menu

Your Options menu should look like the screen in Figure 6-8 and allows you to define your Delivery, Delete, and Message preferences, among other things:

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Font This appears in the menu only if you are creating or editing e-mail and allows you to change the size of the font you would like to use.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]View Brief Headers This option appears in the menu only if you are viewing a list of messages. Selecting it will allow you to see more of the header information, so more messages fit on the screen. You can toggle between View Brief Headers and View Full Headers.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]View Full Headers This option appears in the menu only if you are viewing a list of messages. Selecting it will reveal more information in the e-mail headers. You can toggle between View Brief Headers and View Full Headers.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Preferences The Preferences tab consists of three subtabs that let you define how you would like Mail to behave, including settings affecting e-mail delivery, e-mail deletion, and your e-mail signature.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]The Delivery tab The Delivery tab, shown in Figure 6-9, allows you to set various delivery parameters, such as the following:

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Get Mail This topic is covered in more detail later in this chapter in the section "Configure When You Want Your Treo to Check for New E-Mail."

[if !supportLists]· [endif]For Each Message Get This option allows you to define how much message information your Mail application, by default, pulls down to your Treo from the e-mail server. This is valuable because it allows you to minimize the amount of unnecessary data being sent over the wireless network, and how much memory is used up by e-mail messages. By minimizing this number, less data is initially downloaded. However, if you want to see the rest of a message, you can still choose to do so.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Only Get Mail This option allows you to configure your Treo to get only a portion of your e-mail when it downloads messages from the e-mail server. This is valuable because there will be times when you don't want to pull all of your e-mail from the server. For example, if you have to do a hard-reset on your Treo, which deletes all of your data, you probably won't want to pull all of your e-mail down to your Treo, only that from the last few days. This is also a consideration because you are paying for the amount of data you send over the wireless network.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Delete tab This tab, shown in Figure 6-10, allows you to configure how Mail should deal with deleted messages.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Confirm Message Deletion If you uncheck this option, you will not be prompted with an Are You Sure? message before the e-mail is deleted. Deleted messages are moved to the Deleted folder by default, so you can still recover mistakenly deleted messages until they are purged.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Return to List View after Deleting a Message This simply allows you to define which screen you end up on after you delete a message.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Message tab This tab, shown in Figure 6-11, allows you to define more detailed e-mail preferences.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Include Original Text when Replying When this option is selected, any message that you reply to will include the text in the original message. Unchecking this option results in less over-the-air data transmission.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Include Attachments when Forwarding When this option is selected, any e-mail that you forward will include any attachment files. Unchecking this option results in less over-the-air data transmission.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Always Show Bcc This option determines whether or not the Bcc field in your e-mail messages appears on the screen by default. You may want to uncheck this box if you don't normally use the Bcc option or if you want to avoid unnecessary clutter on the small screen.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Always Bcc This Address This option is very specific and most users won't benefit from its use, but it is valuable if you want a copy of all e-mail messages to go to a specific person or to another e-mail account.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Alerts The Alerts tab is a duplication of the Sound Preferences screen that allows you to define when an alert is generated and what sound each alert should make. This is covered more fully in Chapter 2 in the section "Sound."

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Connection Log The connection log is a record of your Treo e-mail connection activity. It is a great source of information when troubleshooting e-mail connection problems. The Log stores information such as the following:

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Account Name If you have more than one POP3 account, indicates which account created the log entry.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Connection Type Shows whether the connection was user-initiated (manual) or automatic.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Start Time The time the connection was initiated.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Status Whether the connection was successful or if it failed, and the possible reasons for its failure.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Duration How long the connection was held.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]Tips The Tips screen provides helpful user tips for using Mail. By launching Tips, you can browse through screens that provide information about specific functionalities.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]About Most applications, including Mail, have an About screen that displays information about the software, including the version number and who created the software.

Configure When You Want Your Treo to Check for New E-Mail

The default setting is to Get Mail Manually, which means that your Treo will not check for e-mail until you press the Send and Receive button. You can also configure your Treo to automatically check the server for new e-mail. If you would like your Treo to check automatically, you can define the time interval in Mail Preferences (Figure 6-9) by clicking the Menu button, selecting the Options menu, and choosing Preferences.

Define an E-Mail Signature

Your e-mail signature is information that is added to the end of the e-mail body when you compose and send an e-mail. By default, Mail adds "Sent from my Treo" to the bottom of your e-mails, but you have the option of creating a more informative or creative signature if you like. You may edit your e-mail signature in Mail by clicking the Menu button, selecting the Options menu, choosing Preferences, selecting the Message tab, and choosing the Signature button. Change your signature text to whatever you like and then click the Done button, as shown in Figure 6-12.

You also have the option of defining whether you want your signature to be added to New Messages Only, to All Messages, or to No Messages.

Third-Party POP3 E-Mail Application
Options for Your Treo 600

If Palm Mail is not exactly what you need, there are third-party e-mail applications that allow you to use your Treo with your POP3 e-mail account. The following list outlines the various POP3 e-mail client software options for your Treo. Specific product information is available from the product web sites and an updated list of products is available on the palmOne web site at www.palmone.com.

[if !supportLists]· [endif]SnapperMail (www.snappermail.com)-also supports IMAP accounts

[if !supportLists]How to Do Everything with Your Treo 600 explains how to manage—and get the most out of—the e-mail function of America's most popular smartphone.