5.03 How e-mail works

Understanding the basic building blocks that make up an e-mail system can help you get the most out of it in practice. Lets take the process in stages and follow an e-mail

Sending
An e-mail is just a computer file which you create in your mail program. When you click your send button your computer sends a copy of your e-mail to the domain name in the recipients e-mail address. This is a transaction very similar to your visiting a web page except that, instead of a web page coming to your computer, your e-mail goes to the recipients mail box.

Mailboxes
A mailbox is just a block of filespace on an internet connected computer where a copy of each e-mail received is kept.

Collecting
When you collect mail your computer connects to the distant computer where your mailbox is set up. This, again, is very like your browser collecting a web page First it collects a list of the e-mails you have waiting. Then it downloads them to your computer one by one.

Deleting
Collecting each e-mail still leaves copies remaining in your mailbox. Your computer has to send a specific instruction after downloading each item before they are deleted. This ensures that, if something goes wrong, there is a second chance to download it. You can turn the delete signal off. This is very useful if you want to collect e-mail from more than one computer. One at home and another at the surgery for instance. Collect e-mails at home but don't delete them from your mailbox. Collect them again the next day in the surgery so that you have a complete record on one computer.

Multiple recipients
Any e-mail you send can be copied to as many people as you like. Most mail programs let you set up groupings of your contacts so that you can mail them all at once. Be careful. Most options allow each recipient to see the e-mail addresses of everyone else you sent the mail to. This is alright if you are all working on a common project but far from satisfactory if you want to e-mail a block of your clients.

Forwarders
When you have a domain name for your practice you have exclusive rights to the huge number of possible e-mail addresses it is possible to create from it. It would be tiresome to have to set up mailboxes for every address you wanted to use. This is where forwarders come in. They act like a mailbox and receive mail but don't store it. They immediately send it on, forward it, to another mailbox.

Catch all
By setting up a catch-all forwarder you can use any e-mail address created from your domain name. Any mail that isn't claimed by an existing mailbox or forwarder is sent on to one persons mailbox. You can use an e-mail address to, for instance, track an advertising campaign, and know that responses won't just disappear.

Attachments
If e-mail could only transmit brief text messages it wouldn't have become universal. Attachments are simply computer files, any kind of file, and you can send them along with your basic message. You can send wordprocessor documents or digital photos, sound files or movies. If you can store it on a computer you can send it as an attachment.

Pretty
You can make your e-mails pretty with bright colours, fancy fonts, backgrounds, graphics and images. You can even add sounds. This is all very well when you know that the person you are sending it to appreciates such things and has their computer set up to display all the effects. A lot of people don't and when your message arrives it isn't displayed. The pretty effects rely on the recipients computer running other programs apart from the basic e-mail display window. This is the kind of behaviour that viruses love. Most of the loopholes that virus writers found have now been closed off and html mail, the proper name for the pretty version, probably poses little threat. There is still a residual reaction that means there are lots of people who only accept text e-mail.

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