Using Electronic Mail (Eudora Light)

Electronic mail, more commonly referred to as e-mail, is one of the oldest and most popular uses of the Internet. Gonzaga's electronic mail system allows you to communicate with other students, faculty, and staff on campus and anyone that is connected to the Internet, either directly or through an online service such as America Online. Electronic mail has historically been the most popular network service at Gonzaga.

Students are provided a number of e-mail clients to choose from. The two supported clients are Eudora Light and Pine. Pine is a text-based mail program on Barney accessed using telnet and is described in Using Electronic Mail on Barney (Pine). Eudora Light is a free graphical client available for both the Macintosh and Windows.

This document will provide some basic information regarding e-mail and will also provide information on configuring and using Eudora Light.

Your E-Mail Address

Everyone at Gonzaga has the option of getting an account on Barney. For those that are using these accounts for e-mail, their e-mail address is userid@gonzaga.edu where "userid" is your account name. For example, if my name was Jane Doe and my userid (account) was jdoe, my e-mail address would be jdoe@gonzaga.edu. Students using other servers would put the server name and domain after the "@." As an example, if Jane were on Chaos server in Computer Science, her address would be jdoe@chaos.cps.gonzaga.edu. Most students will use Barney as their e-mail server so their address will end with "@gonzaga.edu."

Locating an E-mail Address for Someone at Gonzaga

It is often desirable to locate another person's e-mail address to send them mail. Gonzaga has a search engine on the Web and on Barney to look for someone's e-mail address based on either their first or last name. The web-based search is at http://barney.gonzaga.edu/email. If you telnet into Barney, you can type "mailid keyword", replacing keyword with a portion of the person's name (e.g., "mailid jane" would list all of the Janes at Gonzaga).

A Note about POP Clients

Eudora Light is a POP (Post Office Protocol) client. This means that it downloads new mail from the mail server (i.e., Barney) to the your local hard drive. This makes reading the messages faster and you are also able to read e-mail offline if you are connecting through a modem.

POP clients can typically be configured to download mail periodically while the program is running and notify you when new mail has arrived. This is a handy feature if you are working on a paper and leaving Eudora Light running in the background. If you are going to use this feature, don't have it check for mail more than every ten minutes. Even if there is no mail, the client is loading the server down slightly and when this is multiplied by hundreds of e-mail clients, the demand on the server can be quite high. By keeping the checking to ten minutes or more, the load is distributed over a greater period.

If you want to check mail in between the ten minute intervals, you can always force Eudora Light to check mail by selecting "Check Mail" under the File menu.

Eudora Light, Pine or Both?

With ZagNet, students now have the capability of running a graphical client for electronic mail (i.e., Eudora Light) on their computer in their room. Graphical clients make it much easier to edit messages prior to sending them because you can use cut and paste much more easily than the telnet-based mail package Pine. However, Eudora Light isn't available in the computer labs since it downloads mail from Barney to the local computer which would make your mail readable by others if you don't delete it and inaccessible after you've read it. Since Pine keeps the mail on Barney, your mail is accessible from anywhere on campus making it easier to read mail from computer labs and other computers besides your own.

If you want to be able to read e-mail in the computer labs but still want the benefits of a graphical client, you can use Eudora Light in your room and Pine from the labs. If you've configured Eudora Light to download your mail periodically, make sure you quit Eudora Light before leaving your room so it won't download your mail while you're away. Then, whenever you want to check your mail in a lab, you can use Pine and read it on Barney. When you get back to your room and run Eudora Light again, it will still download any messages you've read in Pine and haven't deleted.

Configuring Eudora Light

Eudora Light needs some information about you such as your name, e-mail account, e-mail address, and where you get your mail from. The next page will show you where to set this information.

To set up Eudora Light for the first time, do the following:

1. Launch Eudora Light.

2. Select "Options" from the Tools menu.

Note: Mac users need to select "Settings..." from the Special menu.

3. Click on the "Personal Information" icon on the left side of the "Options" for Windows or "Settings" for Mac window.

4. Enter your personal information.

For the POP account, you need to enter both your account and the server that it is on separated by an @ sign. If you're on Barney, you'll need to enter barney.gonzaga.edu as the server.

5. Click on the "Hosts" icon in the "Settings" window.

6. Set the SMTP server to "barney.gonzaga.edu".

7. If you want Eudora Light to check mail automatically, do the following:

a. Click on the "Checking Mail" icon in the "Settings" window.

b. Set the check mail time to ten minutes or greater.

Note: Macintosh users also need to mark a checkbox to activate autochecking of mail.

8. Click "OK" to close the "Settings" window and save your configuration.

Checking and Reading Mail in Eudora Light

You can either have Eudora Light check mail for you automatically or you can force it to check for mail by selecting "Check Mail" from the File menu. Eudora Light must be running on your computer in order for it to automatically download mail.

If you have new mail on Barney, Eudora Light will download all of the mail to your local computer. If the messages are long or contain file attachment, this may take a few moments. When you receive new mail, the "In" window will open, displaying a list of the new mail.

In order to open and read a message, double-click on the message or select the message and press the return key. This will open the message in a new window.

 

When a message is open, you have several options: you can delete, respond to, or forward the message. All of these options and more are in the Message menu.

You can also file the message to another mailbox if you want to keep the message. Filing to other mailboxes is available under the Transfer menu.

Composing New Mail

Eudora Light makes it easy to compose new e-mail messages. It includes an address book feature, the ability to easily attach files to messages, and also the ability to drag and drop text from a word processor directly into an e-mail message.

To create a new message, do the following:

1. Launch Eudora Light.

2. Select "New Message..." from the Message menu.

An empty message window will appear with your reply address preentered.

3. Enter the recipient's address in the "To:" field. Multiple addresses should be separated by commas.

4. Enter the subject of the message in the "Subject:" field.

5. Click in the body of the message and either type the message or copy and paste the message from another program.

6. If you wish to attach a file to the message, do the following:

a. Select "Attach Document..." from the Message menu.

b. Locate the file you want to attach, highlight it and click "Attach."

7. Click on the "Send" button in the message window to send the message.

For More Information

Eudora Light includes an extensive help system for those that want to learn about its more powerful features including address books, file attachments, signatures, and keyboard shortcuts.

 

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