In this section:
Email is an important way to stay connected for a great many people. Microsoft offers its Windows Live Hotmail accounts for free. In this section, you learn how to set up an email account and then how to use Hotmail tools to read, reply to, and forward messages. You explore organizing messages in folders and working with message attachments.
In addition, this section introduces you to the Messaging app. Using this app, you can receive and send instant messages to another’s telephone number or email account. Instant messaging or IM is a more immediate communication tool than email because you typically connect with people in real time, rather than experiencing the delay that happens when people don’t pick up and respond to email right away.
You can set up accounts for most email providers and access one or more of those accounts by using the Mail app. For major providers such as Hotmail and Google, the process is typically simple to do.
Press Windows logo key+I.
Click Accounts.
Click Add An Account.
Click Hotmail, Outlook, Google, or Other Account.
Enter an email address.
Enter the password.
If adding a Google account, click the Include your Google Contacts and Calendars checkbox if you want to access these features from Mail.
Click Connect.
To help you learn the ins and outs of using email, you can explore Hotmail. (You might already have a Windows Live account that you can use for this.) As with all email services, your incoming mail appears in an Inbox folder.
After you open your Inbox, you will want to read messages and, in some cases, reply to them. You can reply to just the sender or to others to whom the message was addressed.
If you left all the messages you receive in your Inbox, it would get very cluttered. It’s better to move messages into folders, just as you organize your computer documents in folders by topic or project. Note that to delete or create new folders, you should go to your email account by using your browser and use the tools in the email program to do so.
Often when you receive a message, you will want to send it on to another person by using a process called forwarding. Forwarding simply involves choosing the Forward option, entering one or more email addresses, and sending the message on. You can add an additional message to the original message when you forward.
You can attach documents in various formats to an email, as well as pictures and even audio and video files. When you receive an email with an attachment, you might have choices about opening the attachment online, downloading it, or saving it with its original or a new name to a preferred location on your hard drive or an external drive.
With a message containing an attachment open, click the attachment to download it and then right-click the attachment.
Click Open.
Click and drag to scroll through the document.
Click Save to save the attachment.
To create your own messages, open a blank email form and enter information such as the email address or addresses that you want to send the message to, anybody you want to copy on the message, the subject, and the message itself.
Click the Mail tile.
Click the inbox of the email account you want to use.
Click New.
Enter an address or addresses.
Enter any addresses you want to copy on the message.
Enter a message.
Click Send.
Before you send a message you’ve created, you might want to add an attachment to it. This is a good way to share the contents of documents or images with others. The file you want to attach must be available on your hard disk or on an external drive such as a USB flash drive.
With Mail open, click the New button.
Enter an address.
Right-click, and then click Attachments.
Click Go Up if you need to view contents of another folder or library.
Click a file.
Click Attach.
Enter a message.
Click Send.
Tip
Email accounts typically have a limit for the size of attachments that can be sent through the account. If you have to share very large files, consider using the Windows 8 feature that allows you to compress several files into one file of a smaller size before attaching (see Chapter 10) or sharing your files—for example, when using an online service such as SkyDrive, discussed in Chapter 11.
The Messaging app available on the Windows 8 Start screen allows you to tap into the power of instant messaging, where you can hold a real-time text conversation with another person via their email address or phone number.
You can invite friends to exchange messages with you. When you add somebody as a friend in the Messaging app, you are inviting that person to send you messages.
Click the Messaging app on the Start screen.
Right-click.
Click Invite.
Click Add A Friend. If Messaging requests privacy information, enter it.
Enter a name or email address.
Click Next.
Click Invite.
When you have carried on an instant messaging conversation with one or more people, you might want to delete the thread that contains all those messages to remove clutter from your screen.
