Working With Email

What is email?
An email is an electronic message that is sent from one computer to another. You can send or receive messages that include attachments like pictures, documents or programs.

Email is similar to regular mail (regular mail is referred to as "snail mail" in the cyber community). A snail letter will stop at many different postal stations and will be rerouted until it finally reaches your mailbox. This can take anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks depending on the letter's final destination. Email passes from one computer to another as it travels along a network. Each computer reads the email address then routes it to another computer until it finally reaches your electronic mailbox where it sits until you download it. This usually takes a matter of only a few minutes, regardless of the message's final destination.

An email address has two parts: user_name@domain_name

The first part is the person's user name. This may be an abbreviated version of their name (i.e., jsmt12 or jsmith) or their name in full (i.e., John_Smith).

The second part is the domain name, which tells the email server which computer the recipient's email account is on. Domain names (i.e., aol.com, scholastic.com) are usually made up of two or three parts. They must include the computer name and the domain type (i.e., .com, .edu). Outside the United States, they must also include the country. The format is:

computer_name.domain_type.country

The computer_name can be any name that the computer's administrator has registered. It may be the company you work for (i.e., Scholastic) or the name of your email service provider (i.e., aol, msn, yahoo).

The domain_type will be either ".com," ".net," ".edu," ".gov," ".mil" or ".org."

The country is a two letter code for each country (i.e., "au" for Australia). Some United States addresses require a ".us" country code and may require a city or state abbreviation such as "www.mta.nyc.ny.us". However, since the top domain_types (".com," ".edu," ".gov," ".mil" or ".org") usually point to a US site, the ".us" country code is often unnecessary.

Quick Tips
Both the user name and domain name need to be typed exactly as they appear in the person's email address for the message to get through.

The user name and domain name should not contain any spaces. They are usually separated by a period "."

How do I know if the user name is wrong?
You will get an email message back from a sender called "Mail Delivery Subsystem" with the subject "Returned mail: User unknown." The body of the message will be a more detailed error message and your original message will be attached.

Simply correct the user name and resend the message.

How do I know if the domain (a.k.a. host_name) is wrong?
You will get an email message back from a sender called "Mail Delivery Subsystem" with the subject "Returned mail: Host unknown." The body of the message will be a more detailed error message and your original message will be attached.

Simply correct the host name and resend the message.

What if I send email to a computer that is temporarily unavailable?
If there is a network fault between your mail server and the receiver's computer, your message will be:

  • stored on your email server; and
  • the email server will send you a message saying it was not able to deliver your email but that it will try to deliver it later

Your email server will continue trying to deliver the message for a period of hours or days, depending on your mail server's policy.

How do I know that my message has been successfully delivered?
Some mail systems allow you to ask for a confirmation that messages were received and/or read. You may not have this option. However, if you do not receive any error messages regarding your sent mail, it is likely that it has been received.

How can I send a picture or file with email?
The protocols used to convert files to text and then back to their original form is quite complex. These protocols are referred to as "encoding" and "decoding." Email programs complete this process effortlessly for you. The procedure for attaching files can vary depending on the type of email client you are using. Usually the process works something like this:

  • Click on the icon for attachments from the toolbar (usually a paper clip icon).
  • Select the file you want to send by finding it on your hard drive, highlighting it, then clicking OK.
  • Now you will see the file name located in your email window under the heading "attached" or as an icon within the body of your email message.
  • Most programs will also allow you to attach multiple files to one email.

OK, so now how do I find my friends' email addresses?
The easiest way is to ask them, but if this is not possible you can try to guess their email address if you know their domain. If your friend's name is Chuck Livingston and he is with skynet in Belgium, you might try [email protected]. You can also use these directories of email and internet addresses to find email addresses for friends and businesses:

Yahoo White Pages
Four 11 Directory Services
Bigfoot
Who Where
Lookup
Internet Address Finder
Info Space
NetPages
Search America