Windows Live Mail 2011 Guide

A guide for users of the Jaws screen reader, written by David Bailes. More guides are available on the Jaws Guides page of the VIP Software Guides website.

Contents

• Introduction
• Main Window
• Folder tree
• Message list
• Reading messages
• Sending messages
• Contacts
• Unwanted messages
• Searching for messages
• Folders
• Message rules
• Email accounts
• Importing and exporting messages and contacts
• Multiple email accounts
• Ribbons
• Customizing Windows Live Mail
• Keystrokes

Introduction

This is a guide to the email program Windows Live Mail 2011, running under Windows 7, and using Jaws 12 or later.

Windows Live Mail is part of the Windows Live Essentials set of programs which are written by Microsoft. They are often already installed on new computers which use Windows 7, but they can also be downloaded from the Windows Live Essentials website.

To open Windows Live Mail, open the Start menu, and then type in either all or part of the text windows live mail, and press Enter. If no email accounts have been set up in Windows Live Mail, then when it opens, it immediately opens the wizard for adding an email account which is described in the Adding an email account section later in the guide.

Problems with Windows Live Mail

There are a couple of main problems with Windows Live Mail. The first is that you can't use the first character or characters to quickly select a folder in the folder tree. And the second is that some people find that the program crashes occasionally.

In addition, there are also several problems with the Jaws support for this program, and these are noted throughout the guide.

Using the ribbons

Windows Live Mail 2011 uses ribbons, rather than the traditional menu bars and toolbars. If you're not familiar with using ribbons, then it's recommended that you read the Ribbons section of this guide, where ribbons, and the keystrokes to use them are described in detail.

As explained in that section on ribbons, you can use them either with the standard windows keystrokes for ribbons, or using the Jaws virtual ribbon.

In the guide, when referring to a control on a tab, both the name of the tab, and name of the group of controls will be given. If you're using the standard windows keystrokes for the ribbon, then just ignore the group name, because unfortunately Jaws does not read this for you. If you've using the Jaws virtual ribbon, you can use this information, since the name of the group corresponds to the name of the group sub menu on the tab menu.

Where keystrokes are given for controls on the ribbon, then unless stated otherwise, they can be used whether of not you're using the Jaws virtual ribbon.

Message headers

An email message has to contain a number of pieces of information, like the email address of the sender, and the email address of the recipient, as well as the message itself. In this guide, these pieces of information will be referred to as message headers, and the message itself as the message body.

Main Window

The main window of Windows Live Mail has 5 different main views: mail, calendar, contacts, feeds, and newsgroups. In all these views there's a group of buttons for switching between these views, and the program always opens in the mail view. Most of this guide is concerned with the main window when viewing mail, and the only exception is in the Contacts section where the main window when viewing contacts is described.

Assuming that the Reading and Calendar panes are hidden, and the status bar is shown as described in the Hiding the Reading and Calendar panes section and the Show the status bar section of the Customizing section, the main window when viewing mail contains the following components:

• The title bar, which contains the name of the folder selected in the Folder tree, followed by - Windows Live Mail. To read the title bar, press Insert + T.
• A ribbon, which contains four tabs: Home, Folders, View, and Accounts. The access keys of the tab names are H, O, V and S respectively.
• Folder tree, which contains your email folders such as Inbox and Sent Items. One folder is always selected, and its contents are displayed in the Message list.
• Group of 5 buttons for switching between the main views: Mail (Ctrl + 1), Calendar (Ctrl + 2), Contacts (Ctrl + 3), Feeds (Ctrl + 4), Newsgroups (Ctrl + 5).
• Search edit box. This can be used for finding messages, as described in the Searching for messages section.
• Message list, which is a list of the contents of the folder which is selected in the Folder tree.
• Status bar. The status bar contains both the total number of messages and the number of unread messages in the folder selected in the Folder tree. In addition it also contains the text either Working Online or Working Offline. Unfortunately when you press the Jaws keystroke Insert + Page Down to read the status bar, Jaws reads the bottom line of either the Message list or the Folder tree, rather than the status bar.

Moving around the main window

• To move to the ribbon press Alt, and you can use Alt or Esc to leave it.
• You can move between the Folder tree and the Message list by pressing Tab.
• Pressing F6 cycles you round: the Folder tree, the main view buttons, the search box, and the Message list. Pressing Shift + F6 cycles you round the same controls, but backwards.

Switching the main view

There are a couple of ways of switching the main view of the main window:

• Press F6 until you get to the mail button, which is the first button in the group of buttons for switching the main view. Then press Down Arrow to get to the button you want, and press it.
• Alternatively, just press the short cut for one of the buttons. For example, Ctrl + 1 for mail, and Ctrl + 3 for contacts.

Folder tree

The Folder tree is a tree view, and which Jaws reads as “folder tree list pane tree view”. It contains the following top level items:

• Quick views. This contains items which may be of use if you have more than one email account. For example, unread emails contains the unread emails in all your accounts.
• One or more email accounts. Each account contains the folders used by that account, and described in detail below. By default, the name of the account in the Folder tree is formed from your email address for that account.
• Outbox. A temporary waiting area for outgoing emails, which is used by all your email accounts
• Storage folders. Folders contained in the Storage folders item are suitable for messages which are not related to any particular email account.

A Mail account folder contains the following folders. If a folder contains unread messages, then the number of unread messages is shown in parenthesis after the name of the folder.

• Inbox. For incoming messages.
• Drafts. This contains messages that you saved from a new message window to send later.
• Sent Items. After you send a message, a copy is placed in this folder.
• Junk e-mail. This contains the messages which were classified as Junk by the Junk e-mail filter, which is described in the Unwanted messages section.
• Deleted Items. When you delete a message from a folder (except this folder), a copy is saved here, just in case you change your mind.
• Any other folders that you create, as described in the Folders section.

You can customise what is shown in the Folder tree, and this is described in the Customizing the Folder tree section of the Customizing section of this guide.

Selecting a folder

If you're in either the Folder tree, or the Message list, you can select the Inbox by pressing Ctrl + I. In the Folder tree, unfortunately, you can't use the first character or characters of an item to quickly select it. However, you can use all the other standard keystrokes:

• As for any list, you can use these keystrokes: Up Arrow, Down Arrow, Home, and End.
• Left Arrow has two uses: if you're focussed on an open folder, it closes it; else it moves you up the list to the parent folder.
• Right Arrow also has two uses: if you're focussed on a closed item, it opens it; else if you you're focussed on an open folder, it moves you down to the first child folder.

Note that you can also select a folder using the Go to Folder dialog, which you can open by pressing the Go to button which is in the Actions group of the Folders tab (Ctrl + Y). The tree view in this dialog has exactly same structure as the Folder tree, but immediately after opening the dialog, it's always completely expanded.

Message list

The Message list list view contains the messages in the folder which is selected in the Folder tree. You can always easily check which folder is selected by reading the title bar.

For most email programs Jaws says if a message is unread, and if it has any attachments. However, this isn't the case for this version of Windows Live Mail. If you're using Jaws 12, then neither of these conditions is indicated, and if you're using Jaws 13 or later, then it says if a message is unread, but it doesn't say if it has any attachments. You can work around this bug by manually labeling the graphics that indicate these things, and this is described in the Labeling graphics section of the Customizing Windows Live Mail section.

The list view is set to have a details view and for the purposes of which columns are present and so how Jaws reads each item, and how the messages are sorted, there are two groups of folders:

• The folders which contain messages which you've received: Inbox, Deleted Items, Junk E-mail, and any folders which you've created. For the messages in these folders, then by default Jaws reads: who the message is from, the subject, and when it was received. By default, the messages are sorted by when they were received, with the most recent at top of the list.
• The folders which contain messages which have been sent or will be sent: Outbox, Sent Items, and Drafts. For the messages in these folders, then by default Jaws reads: who the message is addressed to, the subject, when it was sent (or saved in the case of the Drafts folder), and the mail account which was used to send it. By default the messages are sorted by when they were sent, with the most recent at the bottom of the list. Note that when you move to a Message list which is sorted by when it was received or sent, the focus is the most recent message, whether this is at the top or bottom of the list.

Note that using the default settings of Windows Live Mail, Jaws only reads the subject of each item. However, Jaws reads the items correctly if the Reading pane is hidden, as described in the Hiding the Reading and Calendar panes section, which also provides alternative solutions.

The following sections describe selecting messages, tasks, sorting messages, and Conversations.

Selecting messages

• You can use the standard keystrokes Down Arrow, Up Arrow, Home, and End.
• However, you can't use the first character or or characters in the normal manner. Instead you can use the Search edit box, which is immediately above the list view, and which provides a more powerful alternative. You can move to this edit box by pressing Ctrl + E, but if you're in the list and you start typing characters, then the focus automatically becomes the Search edit box. For details, see the Searching for messages section.
• To select the next unread message, press Ctrl + U. If there are no more unread messages in the current folder, then a Windows Live Mail dialog opens which tells you this, and asks you whether you want to move to the next folder with unread messages. If you don't want to, just Tab to the No button and press it.
• To select more than one message, you can use the standard keystrokes for doing this, which use the Shift and Ctrl keys.

Tasks

There are various tasks which you can perform either in the Message list, or in the window of an opened message. In the message list, you can select one or more messages, and then either choose a command from the context menu, or press a shortcut keystroke. The following are examples, and most of these will be described in more detail latter in the guide:

• To delete one or more selected messages, press Delete. Some people have found that occasionally pressing Delete doesn't work, but that in these cases pressing Shift + Delete does work.
• To move one or more selected messages to a folder, choose Move to folder from their context menu (Application key, then V).
• To reply to a selected message, choose Reply to sender on its context menu (Ctrl + R).
• To forward a selected message, choose forward on its context menu (Ctrl + F).

Sorting of messages

As mentioned above, by default the messages in folders containing messages you've received are sorted by the date in descending order so that the most recent message is at the top, and the messages in folders containing messages which you're sent or are about to send are sorted by the time sent in ascending order, so that the most recent message is at the bottom.

To change whether the messages in a folder are sorted in ascending or descending order:

1. On the View tab, press the Sort order menu button, which is in the Arrangement group.
2. The menu which opens contains the two options ascending and descending, and the current option is checked. Choose the option which you want.

To change the property by which the messages in a folder are sorted:

1. On the View tab, immediately after the Sort order menu button, there's a Sort by menu button. Press this button.
2. The menu which opens contains a number of properties, and you can choose one of them. Note that unfortunately Jaws reads them as all being checked.

Note that if you change the sorting of a folder which contains messages which you've received, then this changes the sorting of all the other folders which contain messages which you've received. There's a similar effect for the folders which contain messages which you've sent or are due to be sent.

Conversations

In Windows Live Mail, provided the messages are sorted by date, there is the option of grouping emails with the same subject into a conversation. So for example, if you send a message to a number of people asking their opinion about something, then all their replies will be grouped into a conversation, which makes them easier to find. The earliest message in a conversation can be either collapsed or expanded. If it's expanded, then the other messages in the conversation are shown below this message, in the order in which they were received. By default the first message in a conversation is collapsed, and you can expand or collapse this message by pressing Right Arrow or Left Arrow respectively.

To set whether grouping by conversation is on or off: on the View tab, in the Arrangements group, press the Conversation menu button, and then choose an option.

Unfortunately, Jaws does not read whether the first message in a conversation is collapsed or expanded. So if you want to use this feature, you'll have to manually label the graphics which indicate this information. This is described in the Labeling graphics section of the Customizing section of this guide.

Reading messages

Windows Live Mail downloads messages from your email account provider or providers:

• When you open the program.
• By default every 10 minutes when the program is open. This time interval can be adjusted on the General page of the Options dialog (Ctrl + Shift + O).
• At any time by pressing F5.

To read a message, select it in the Message list, and press Enter. A message window opens, which is described in the next section.

Reading message window

The window contains the following components:

• Title bar, which contains the subject of the message.
• A ribbon, which contains a single tab: the message tab.
• A Contact's name button which in fact isn't a button, followed by an Add Contact button, if the sender isn't a contact.
• A number of read-only edit boxes for: Date, Subject, To, together with Cc and Bcc when appropriate.
• A group of buttons, one for each attachment, if present.
• A read-only edit box for the message body.

When the window opens, Jaws automatically reads the message body.

You can use all the standard Jaws reading keystrokes for reading the message body. For example, if you want to read the message again, just press Ctrl + Home to move to the start of the message, and then Insert + Down Arrow to read all the message.

If you want to read any of the message headers, there are two ways of doing this:

• Press Alt + 1, or Alt + 2, ... or Alt + 6, to read the headers: From, Date, To, Cc, Bcc, and Subject. These keystrokes do not change the focus – so if you're in the message body edit box when you use these keystrokes, you remain there.
• You can use Tab or Shift + Tab to move around the controls in the window.

To close the message window, press Esc. You can close it using Alt + F4, but using Esc is easier, and ensures that you don't accidentally close the Windows Mail main window.

To read another message in the same folder, you don't have to go back to the main window:

• To read the next message in the Message list, press either Alt + Right Arrow or Ctrl + Period.
• To read the previous message, press either Alt + Left Arrow or Ctrl + Comma.
• To read the next unread message, press Ctrl + U.

Unfortunately, when you read another message using these keystrokes, Jaws automatically only reads the message body, rather than first reading the sender and subject of the message. To read these, press Alt + 1 and Alt + 6 respectively.

Tasks in the Reading message window

• To reply to a message, press Ctrl + R, as described in more detail in the Replying to a message section.
• To forward a message, press Ctrl + F, as described in more detail in the Forwarding a message section.
• To open or save an attachment, see the following sections, Opening attachments, and Saving attachment.
• To delete the message: on the Message tab, in the Delete group, press the Delete button (Ctrl + D).
• To print the message, open the Application menu, and choose Print (Ctrl + P).

Opening attachments

In the message window:

1. From the top of the message body, you can move to the first attachment button by pressing Shift + Tab. If there are is more than one attachment, you can select a different one using Right Arrow and Left Arrow. Press Enter.
2. Either the attachment is opened using the appropriate program, or a Mail Attachment window opens, asking you whether you want to open this file, and this window is described in the next step.
3. If a Mail Attachment window opens, this tells you the name and the type of the file that you are about to open, and the default button is Cancel. The purpose of the window is to alert you to the type of file you're about to open – some types can be risky to open. However if the type of file is reasonably safe to open, like a Microsoft Word document, then to open the file and stop the Mail Attachment window opening in future for this type of file: Tab to the “Always ask before opening this type of file” check box, and press Spacebar to uncheck it; then Tab to the Open button, and press it.

Saving attachments

There are two ways of saving attachments. The first method can only save a single attachment, whereas the second can save one or more attachments.

To save a single attachment:

1. From the message body, you can move to the first attachment button by pressing Shift + Tab. Note that if there are links in the message, you may have to press this keystroke a number of times, or else press Ctrl + Home first. If there's more than one attachment, you can move to another one by using Right Arrow and Left Arrow.
2. Unfortunately, due to a Windows Live Mail bug, you can't open the attachment's context menu by pressing Application key. However, you can open it using the Jaws cursor: press Insert + Numpad minus to route the Jaws cursor to the PC cursor, and then press Numpad Star for a right mouse click. Choose Save As on the menu.
3. A Save Attachment As dialog opens, which has the same structure as a standard Windows Save As dialog. If necessary, change the location where you want to save the file, and then press the default Save button.

To save one or more attachments:

1. To open the Save Attachments dialog, open the Application menu (Alt + F), open the Save sub menu, and choose Save attachments.
2. The first control in the Save Attachments dialog is an Attachments list view. Initially all the attachments are selected, but if you want to save only some of the attachments, then just change the selection. Tab to the next control.
3. The Save To edit box contains the path of the folder where the attachments will be saved. If you're happy with that, then press Enter to press the default Save button.
4. If you need to change where the files are saved then Tab to the Browse button, which is the next control, and press it.
5. A Browse for Folder dialog opens. Tab to the “Select a folder to save attachments into” tree view, and select a folder. Press Enter to press the default OK button.
6. You're returned to the Save Attachments dialog, and the focus is still the Browse button. Tab to the Save button, and press it.

Sending messages

There are a number of ways of composing a message which you want to send, and they all use a message window for doing this. This window will be referred to as the New message window, and will be described in the next section. In Windows Live Mail, a category is the name used for a group of contacts which can be used to easily send a message to a group of people.

New message window

The window includes the following components:

• A Title bar which contains the words “New Message” if there's no text in the Subject edit box, and the subject when it has been entered.
• A ribbon, which contains three tabs: Message, Insert, and Options.
• Send button (Alt + S, or Ctrl + Enter).
• Show Cc and Bcc button (Alt + B). By default, the Cc and Bcc edit boxes are not shown, but if you press this button, they appear below the To edit box, and this button becomes a Hide Cc and Bcc button.
• Select contacts button, which opens the Send an Email dialog.
• To edit box. You can use one or more of the following items to specify the recipients: email address, name of a Contact, or name of a Category. If you use more than one item, they should be separated by a semi-colon, and both Contacts and Categories are described in the Contacts section later in the guide.
• The Cc and Bcc edit boxes, if they're shown.
• A Subject edit box.
• An edit box for the message body. Note that this edit box has no name, and when you move to it, Jaws just says “edit”.

You can move forward through the controls by using Tab, and backwards using Shift + Tab. However, if you're in the message body edit box and you press Tab, then the Tab is entered into the message. To move from the message body edit box, you can only use Shift + Tab.

Writing a message from scratch

1. Press Ctrl + N.
2. A New Message window opens, and the focus is the To edit box. Type in one or more email address, contact, or category, and then press Tab to move to the next control.
3. In the Subject edit box, type in a subject of the message, and then Tab to the next control.
4. When Jaws moves to the message body edit box, it just says edit. Type in your message.
5. To send the message, press the Send button by pressing Alt + S, or Ctrl + Enter. Alternatively, to save the message to the Drafts folder, open the Application menu and choose Save (Ctrl + S).

If you're entering a single entry into the To, Cc or Bcc edit boxes, then:

• If you type in an email address which doesn't belong to one of your contacts and then press Tab, then you're moved to the next edit box.
• If you type in the name of a contact or a category, and then press Tab, then a semicolon and a space are added after the name, and the focus remains in the same edit box. Press Tab to move to the next edit box. Note that if the name isn't one of your contacts or categories, then you're moved to the next edit box, and this indicates that you got the name wrong, and need to go back and correct it.
• If you type in the address of one of your contacts, and then press Tab, then the address is replaced by the name of the contact, a semicolon and a space are added after the name, and the focus remains in the same edit box.

Additional information:

• Instead of typing in the full name of contacts and categories, Windows Live Mail can auto-complete the names of contacts and categories. For details, see the Auto-completion of contacts and categories section.
• An alternative way of entering contacts and categories in the To, Cc and Bcc edit boxes, is to use the Send an Email dialog.
• To Hide or Show the Cc and Bcc edit boxes, either press Shift + Tab until you get to the Show/Hide Cc and Bcc button and press it, or press Alt + B.
• If a contact has more than one email address, then either use the Send an Email dialog or send an email using the contact list, when viewing your contacts.

Replying to a message

1. To reply to the sender of a message which has been opened in its own window: on the Message tab, in the Respond group, press the Reply button (Ctrl + R). To reply to the sender of a message selected in the Message list in the main window: open its context menu, and choose reply to sender (Ctrl + R).
2. A new message window opens, and two of the edit boxes have already been filled in for you: the To edit box contains the name of the sender of the original message; and the subject edit box contains the text Re: followed by the subject of the original message. When the window opens, Jaws says the subject of the message, followed by the word edit to indicate that the initial focus is the message body edit box. So all you have to do is type in a reply. Note that by default, the original message is automatically included below the text which you type in.
3. To send the message, press the Send button by pressing Alt + S, or Ctrl + Enter.

Forwarding a message

You can either forward a message by including the text of that message, or you can forward one or more messages as attachments

Forwarding by including the text

1. To forward a message which has been opened in its own message window, press Ctrl + F. Note that on the Message tab, in the Respond group, there is a Forward split button. But to press the part of the split button labeled with the forward command requires the use of the Jaws cursor, but fortunately you can just use the shortcut Ctrl + F. Alternatively, in the main window, you can select a message, open its context menu and choose forward.
2. A new message window opens, and two of the edit boxes have already been filled in for you: the subject edit box contains the text Fw: followed by the subject of the original message; and the message body edit box contains the original message. When the window opens, Jaws says the subject of the message, followed by To: edit to indicate that the initial focus is the To edit box. Type the names or addresses of who you want to forward the message to, and optionally Tab to the message body edit box and type a comment before the original message.
3. To send the message, press the Send button by pressing Alt + S, or Ctrl + Enter.

Forwarding messages as attachments

In a message window, to forward the message as an attachment: on the Message tab, in the Respond group, there's a Forward split button. Press this using Spacebar or Enter to open its menu, and choose Forward as attachment. Alternatively, in the main window, select one or more messages, open their context menu, and choose Forward as attachment.

Auto-completion of contacts and categories

If you start typing the name of a contact or category into the To, Cc or Bcc edit boxes, then Windows Live Mail can automatically auto-complete it. When you type in some text, then if this matches the names of any contacts or categories, then a drop down list box containing these contacts or categories appears below the edit box, and the first contact or category in the list is selected. A sighted user can either carry on typing until they see that the selected contact or category is the one they want and then choose it by pressing Tab, or use the mouse or keyboard to choose a contact or category from further down the list.

Unfortunately, Jaws does not read the selected contact or category in the drop down list, or indeed any of the other contacts or categories. So a Jaws user doesn't get any immediate feedback as to whether there are any matches, and if so, what they are. However, it is normally possible to work round this limitation, and in addition, the Send and email dialog described in the next section provides an alternative way of entering the names of contacts and categories which is completely accessible.

You can normally guess how much of the name you have to type in so that you'll only get a single match against the names of your contacts and categories. Then, if you press Tab, and the focus remains in the same edit box, then this tells you that there was a match. So, giving slightly more details, after you've typed in part of the name, and pressed Tab:

• If the text that you typed in matches the name of a least one contact or category, then the text that you've typed is replaced by the name of the first (and hopefully only) contact or category in the drop down list, and the focus remains in the edit box, after the name. Unfortunately Jaws does not automatically read this name, and you have to press Insert + Up Arrow to give it some encouragement. If this is the name that you wanted, then just Tab to the next edit box. If it's the wrong name, you delete it by pressing Backspace three times (to delete a space, a semi-colon, and the name, which behaves like a single character).
• If the text that you type in doesn't match any contacts, then the focus moves to the next edit box. To try again, press Shift + Tab to move back to the original edit box, delete the text, and type in something different.

To match a contact you can type one or more characters starting at the beginning of either the first or last name. For example, if you wanted the contact David Copperfield, then, you could type in:

• david, if this was your only contact with the name david.
• copper, if this was the only contact whose first or last name was, or began with copper.
• david c, if this was the only contact whose first name was david, and second name began with c.

Send an Email dialog

The Send an email dialog provides an alternative method of entering the names of contacts and categories into the To, Cc and Bcc edit boxes. You can open this dialog by pressing the Select contacts button, which is the control immediately before the To edit box. So if you're in the To edit box, then simply press Shift + Tab, and press the button.

The dialog includes the following controls:

• Quick search edit box, which is the initial focus.
• Two buttons.
• List of contacts and categories.
• A To button (Alt + T) and a To edit box, and then similarly a button and edit box for each of Cc and Bcc.
• OK (Alt + O), and Cancel buttons.

Note that you can move directly from the Quick search edit box to the List of contacts and categories by pressing Down Arrow.

To use this dialog:

1. Select a contact or category in the List, as described in the next section.
2. Press the To or Cc or Bcc button to add the selected item to the corresponding edit box. You can either Tab to the button and press it, or make use of their access keys by pressing Alt + T, or Alt + C or Alt + B respectively.
3. If necessary, repeat the first two steps as often as necessary.
4. Press the OK button (Alt + O). The dialog closes and you're returned to the new mail message dialog where all the contacts and categories from the To, Cc and Bcc edit boxes in the Send and Email dialog have been added to the corresponding edit boxes in that dialog.

Selecting contacts or categories in the list

In the list you can select a contact or category using most of the usual keystrokes: Up Arrow, Down Arrow, Home, and End.

However, you can't use the first character or or characters in the normal manner. Instead you can use the Quick search edit box, which provides a more powerful alternative. If you're in the list and you start typing characters, then the focus automatically becomes the Quick search edit box.

When you type text into the Quick search box, then the list no longer shows all the contacts and categories, it only shows those that match the text which you've typed in. You can then press Down Arrow to move to the list, where you can select the contact or category which you want.

To find a contact, type in one or more characters, starting at the beginning of either the first or last name. For example if you wanted to find the contact David Copperfield, then you could type in d, or c, or dav, or copper, or david c, or david coppperfield. Similarly, to find a category, type in one or more characters, start a the beginning of any of the words which make up the name of the category.

Additional notes:

• If a contact has more than one email address, eg personal and business, then the contact appears multiple times.
• If you're in the Quick search edit box, then you can clear any text by pressing Esc, or by pressing Tab to move to the clear button, and pressing it.
• You can also find a contact using it's address.
• You can select more than one contact or category in the list.

Adding attachments

1. On the Insert tab, in the Include group, press the Attach file button. Alternatively, by default, an Attach file button appears as the fourth button in the Quick Access Toolbar (Alt, 4, if you're not using the Jaws virtual ribbon, or Insert + 3, then Alt + 4 if you are).
2. An Open dialog opens which has the same structure as the standard Windows 7 Open dialog. Select one or more files in the Folder view list view, and then press Enter to press the default Open button.
3. You are returned to the new message window. The focus within the window is unchanged, but there is now an Attachments list between the Subject and message body edit boxes, and in this list you can move between items by using the arrow keys. Note that Jaws mistakenly reads this as the message list. Old age perhaps.

If necessary, you can repeat this procedure to add more attachments to the message.

Checking spelling

To check the spelling of the message body press F7. There is also the option to run the spell checker automatically each time you send a message. This option is set using the “Always check spelling before sending” check box which is on the Spelling page of the Mail Options dialog which is opened from the Application menu in the main window (Ctrl + Shift + O).

The spelling dialog contains the following controls:

• Not in Dictionary read-only edit box.
• Change To edit box, which initially contains the Spell checker's best suggestion.
• Suggestions list box, which contains suggested alternatives to the misspelled word.
• Six buttons: Ignore, Ignore All, Change, Change All, Add, and Cancel. The Add button adds the “misspelled” word to the spell checker's dictionary so it will no longer be classed as misspelled.

When the dialog opens, or when the spell checker moves to the next error, Jaws reads the word not in the dictionary and spells it out, and then reads the best suggestion in the Change To edit box and spells this out. The focus is the Change To edit box, and for reasons best known to Microsoft, none of the buttons is set as the default button. Common actions include:

• To replace the misspelled word by the best suggestion, press Alt + C to press the default Change button.
• Tab to the Suggestions list box, select an alternative, and press Alt + C to press the default Change button.
• Tab to the ignore button and press it (Alt + I).
• Tab to the Add button and press it (Alt + A), to add the “misspelled” word to the spell checker's dictionary.

When the spelling check is complete, a Spelling message box opens to tell you this, and you can press Spacebar or Enter to press the OK button.

Note that the Jaws command Insert + C to read the context of a spelling mistake does not work with this program.

Contacts

Windows Live Mail uses objects called Contacts for keeping information about a person or organisation. This information can include names, email addresses, telephone numbers, postal address, etc.

Once you've created a Contact for someone, and stored their email address, then you don't have to remember their email address when you send a message to them, you can just use their name.

There are also Categories, which are just a group of Contacts, and are the equivalent of Address lists or Mailing lists in other email programs. If you regularly send a message to a group of people, then it saves time to create a Category. Then you can send a message to all of them just by using the name of the Category.

The following sections describe the main window when viewing contacts, creating and using Contacts, and creating and using Categories.

Main window when viewing contacts

As already mentioned, you can view your contacts in the main window by pressing Ctrl + 3, and switch back to view you mail by pressing Ctrl + 1.

Assuming that the Preview pane is hidden, as described in the Hiding the Preview pane section of the Customizing section, the main window when viewing contacts contains:

• Title bar, which contains the text “Contacts - Windows Live Mail”.
• Ribbon, which contains a single tab, the Home tab.
• Folder tree, which is only relevant for categories.
• Group of buttons for switching between the main views: Mail (Ctrl + 1), Calendar (Ctrl + 2), Contacts (Ctrl + 3), Feeds (Ctrl + 4), Newsgroups (Ctrl + 5).
• Quick search edit box
• Contact list, which Jaws just calls a list view
• Status bar.

Moving around the window

• To move to the ribbon, press Alt, and you can use Alt or Esc to leave it.
• You can move between the Folder tree and the contact list by pressing Tab.
• Pressing F6 cycles you around the Folder tree, the group of buttons, and the Contact list.

Contact list

You can select a contact using most of the usual keystrokes: Up Arrow, Down Arrow, Home, and End. Though, unfortunately, Jaws reads the selected contact as not selected, even though it is, and you just have to ignore this.

However, you can't use the first character or or characters in the normal manner. Instead you can use the Search edit box, which is immediately above the list view, and which provides a more powerful alternative. You can move to this edit box by pressing Ctrl + E, but if you're in the list and you start typing characters, then the focus automatically becomes the Search edit box.

When you type text into the Quick search box, then the list view no longer shows all the contacts, it only shows those that match the text which you've typed in. You can then press Down Arrow to move to the list, where you can select the contact which you want.

To find a contact, type in one or more characters, starting at the beginning of either the first or last name. For example if you wanted to find the contact Oliver Twist, then you could type in oli, or oliver, or twis, or twist, or oliver t, or oliver twist.

If you've in either the Quick search box, or the contact list then pressing Esc clears the search box.

Creating a new Contact

Three ways of creating a new Contact are described in the following sections.

Automatically adding people to your Contacts

There's an option that after you've replied to someone three times, they're automatically added to your Contacts. This option can be set on the Send page of the Mail Options dialog, where there's a check box “Automatically put people I reply to in my Address book after the third reply”, which is checked by default. You can open this dialog from the options sub menu on the Application menu, or you can use the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + O.

Adding the sender of a message to your Contacts

If someone has sent you a message, then you can add the sender of that message to your Contacts, and you can do this either in the main window, or in a message window.

In the main window:

1. Select the message in the Message list.
2. Open its context menu, and choose Add Sender to Contacts
3. An Add a Contact dialog opens on its Quick Add page. The first and last names and the personal email address are already filed in, so normally you can just press Enter to press the default Add contact button.

In a message window, there's an Add contact button in amongst the message headers. Press Shift + Tab till you get to this button and press it. This opens the Add a Contact dialog.

Manually adding a person to your Contacts

If you know someone's e-mail address, then you can add them to your Contacts manually. You can do this when viewing either your mail or your contacts.

To open the Add a Contact dialog when viewing either you mail or contacts: open the Application menu, open the menu of the New split button by pressing Right Arrow, and Choose Contact (Ctrl + Shift + C). Alternatively, if you're viewing your contacts, you can also open the Add a Contact dialog by pressing the Contact button (Ctrl + N) which is in the New group of the Home tab.

The Add a Contact dialog opens on its Quick Add page. The first three edit boxes on this page are for the first and last names and the personal email address of the contact. Often, this may be the only information you want to enter, so after entering this you can just press Enter to press the default Add contact button. Note that if you want to enter more information, then the structure of the dialog is very similar to the Edit contact dialog which is described in detail in the Editing contacts section below.

Sending messages using your contacts

You can send messages using your contacts either in a New Message window, or in the main window when viewing your contacts.

In a New message window, you can enter the names of contacts into the To, Cc, and Bcc edit boxes. If you wish you make use of the auto-completion of contacts, or the Send an Email dialog.

In the main window, when viewing your contacts:

1. In the contact list, select one or more contacts.
2. Open the context menu, open the Send E-mail sub-menu, and if the contact has only one email address, just press Enter to choose that email address. If they have more than one email address, choose the one you want.
3. A New Message window opens. The one or more contacts are already entered in the To edit box, and the focus is at the end of this edit box.

Editing Contacts

To edit a contact, select it in the contact list, and choose Edit Contact from its context menu. A dialog opens which has the title Edit Contact:, followed by the name of the contact.

The dialog is a multi-page dialog, and the pages cover different areas of information about the contact.

The dialog contains:

• The names of the tabs, which are arranged vertically: Summary, Contact, Personal, Work, IM, Notes, and IDs. You can move forward or backwards through these tab names by pressing Tab or Shift + Tab.
• The controls for the current tab.
• Save and Cancel buttons.

The dialog opens on the Summary page, which contains information such as the contacts name, and their personal email address. You'll often want to move to the Contact page, which contains the contact's names, email addresses and phone numbers.

Unfortunately, you can't move to another page by pressing the standard keystroke, Ctrl + Tab. You have to press Tab or Shift + Tab until you get to the name of the tab that you want, and then press Enter. Alternatively, all of the tab names have access keys, so for example, to move to Contact page, you can press Alt + T.

Categories

A category is a group of contacts, and any categories which you create appear in the Folder tree. The top level item is Contacts, and this contains the category All Contacts, together with any categories which you create. After each category name there's the number of contacts in that category, which Jaws incorrectly reads as the number of unread messages. When a category is selected in the Folder tree, then the contacts in that category are shown in the Contact list. If either the top level item Contacts, or the All Contacts category is selected, then all your contacts are shown in the Contact list.

Creating a new category

1. On the Home tab, in the New group, press the Category button (Ctrl + Shift + G).
2. The Create a new category dialog opens, and the first control is an edit box for the name of the category. Type in a name, and then press Enter to press the default Save button.

Note that you can add contacts to a category and remove them in the dialog for creating a new category. There's a list of contacts for doing this, but unfortunately Jaws doesn't read whether or not a contact is selected. So it's probably easier to do this using the methods described in the next two sections.

Adding contacts to a category

1. In the folder tree, select either the Contacts item or a category other than the one to which you want to add contacts.
2. Select one or more contacts in the contact list, then on the context menu, open the Copy Contact To sub menu, and choose a category.
3. Note that for some strange reason the Folder tree automatically becomes the focus, so if you want to add more contacts, you have to Tab back to the Contact list.

Removing contacts from a category

1. In the folder tree, select the category.
2. In the contact list, select one or more contacts, open the context menu, and choose Remove Contact from Category.
3. Again, for some strange reason, the Folder tree automatically becomes the focus, so if you want to remove more contacts, you have to Tab back to the Contact list.

Sending messages using categories

In a new message window, you can type in the names categories, just as you would the names of contacts. When the message is sent, the name of a category is replaced by all the addresses of the contacts in that category.

Note that in the context menu of a category in the Folder tree there's a Send Email command, but it's always unavailable — a Windows Live Mail bug.

Unwanted messages

Windows Live Mail provides a number of ways for keeping your Inbox free of unwanted messages, and protecting you against fraud:

• Blocked Senders list. If you receive a message from an address of your Blocked senders list, it's automatically moved to your Junk e-mail folder.
• Junk e-mail filter. Spam messages are unsolicited mass mailings which advertise cheap drugs, financial deals etc. If the Junk e-mail filter thinks a message is spam, it's moved to your Junk e-mail folder.
• Safe Senders list. Occasionally, messages from people you know may be moved to the Junk e-mail folder by the Junk filter. However if their address is on the Safe Senders list, then even if the Junk e-mail filter thinks it's spam, then it will stay in your Inbox.
• Phishing filter. Phishing messages are unsolicited mass mailings which try and trick you into revealing bank passwords and the like. They contain a link to a website which looks genuine, but isn't. Windows Live Mail uses the same Phishing filter which is used by Internet Explorer. If the phishing filter detects a phishing message, it opens a dialog to warn you. Note that if you're also running an anti-virus program or an internet security program, this may quarantine the message before it even gets to the phishing filter.

The following sections give more details of these methods of protection and their options. Most of these options are set in the Safety Options dialog, which contains the pages: Options, Safe Senders, Blocked Senders, International, Phishing, Security, and Trust Center. To open this dialog, open the Application menu (Alt + F), open the Options sub menu, and choose Safety options.

Blocked Senders list

If you receive a message from an address in your Blocked senders list, it's automatically moved to your Junk e-mail folder.

If you've received a message from someone, and you want to add their address to the Blocked senders list, then either:

• In the main window, select the message in the Message list, open its context menu, open the Junk email sub-menu, and choose Add sender to blocked sender list.
• In a message window: on the Message tab, in the Delete group, press the Junk split button by pressing Spacebar or Enter, and on the opened menu, choose Add sender to blocked sender list.

You can view and edit the Blocked Senders list on the Blocked Senders page of the Junk E-mail Options dialog, which contains a list box containing blocked senders, and Add, Edit, and Remove buttons. To open this dialog, open the application menu (Alt + F), open the Options sub menu, and choose Safety options.

Junk e-mail filter

If the Junk e-mail filter detects one or more junk (spam) messages then as well as moving them to the Junk E-mail folder, it opens a Windows Mail dialog telling you that Windows Mail has downloaded a message that appears to be junk email. The dialog contains a “Please do not show me this dialog again” check box which by default is unchecked. Depending on how much junk email you get, you might want to check this check box. To close the dialog press Enter to press the default Close button.

The Options page of the Safety Options dialog contains three controls:

• A group of radio buttons for setting the level of protection provided by the filter. Setting such a filter is always a compromise: the higher the level of protection, the more likely legitimate e-mails will end up in the Junk e-mail folder, and so the greater the frequency which you'll have to check the e-mails in this folder.
• A check box to “Permanently delete junk e-mail instead of moving it to the Junk e-mail folder”. By default, this is unchecked.
• A check box to “Report junk email to Microsoft and its partners” which is unchecked, by default.

Safe Senders list

If you receive a message from someone who's on your safe senders list, then even if the Junk E-mail filter thinks it's junk, it won't be moved to your Junk E-mail folder.

If you've received a message from someone, and you want to add their address to the Safe Senders list, then either:

• In the main window, select the message in the Message list, open its context menu, open the Junk email sub-menu, and choose Add sender to safe sender list.
• In a message window: on the Message tab, in the Delete group, press the Junk split button by pressing Spacebar or Enter, and on the opened menu, choose Add sender to safe sender list.

The Safe Senders page of the Safety Options dialog contains the following controls:

• A list box containing the addresses of Safe Senders, and Add, Edit, and Remove buttons.
• An “also trust e-mail from my Windows Contacts” check box, which is checked by default.
• An automatically add people I e-mail to the Safe Senders List” check box, which is unchecked by default.

Phishing filter

Unfortunately, the author of this guide hasn't had any phishing emails to test out the Phishing filter in Windows Live Mail. Assuming that Windows Live Mail behaves similarly to Windows Mail on Vista, then if the Phishing filter detects a phishing email, then a Windows Live Mail dialog will open to warn you about this.

The Phishing page of the Security options dialog contains two check boxes:

• “Protect my Inbox from messages with potential Phishing links”, which is checked by default.
• “Move phishing E-mail to the Junk Mail folder”, which is only displayed if the previous check box is checked, and which is unchecked by default.

Searching for messages

Windows Mail provides two ways of searching for messages. The first uses the Search edit box in the main window, and can be used for searching either the messages in the current folder, or all your messages. In both cases the search uses the text in all the message headers and the message body. The second is a more advanced search, and allows you to search one or more folders using a wide range of criteria.

Search in the main window

The following instructions are for searching the messages in the current folder, and how to search all your messages is described below.

1. Press Ctrl + E to move to the Search edit box. Alternatively, if you're in the Message list, then when you start to type in the search terms in the next step, then you're automatically moved to the Search edit box.
2. Type one or more words or the beginnings of words. For each message in the Message list, each of the search terms is matched against the text in all the message headers, and the message body. You can search for an exact phrase by enclosing it in quotation marks.
3. Press Down Arrow to move to the Message list which contains the results of the search.
4. You can clear the contents of the Search box by pressing Esc, but for reasons unknown this also automatically moves you to the Folder tree.

The above method for searching the current folder can be easily modified to search in all your folders:

1. After you typed some text into the Search box, then a Search in menu button is displayed next to it. This menu button is included in the controls which you can move to using the F6 key, so after you've typed in your search terms, press F6 to move to the Search in menu button.
2. Press the menu button, and choose All mail.
3. Your automatically moved back to the Search edit box, from where you can press Down Arrow to move to the results in the Message list.
4. Pressing Esc both clears the Search box, and removes the Search in menu button, restoring the Message list to display the messages in the current folder.

More advanced search

1. On the Home tab, in the Actions group, press the Find menu button, and choose Message (Ctrl + Shift + F).
2. A Find Message dialog opens, and the controls in this dialog are described in detail below. If necessary, change the folder to be searched, and set the criteria for the search using one or more of the controls. Press Enter to press the default Find Now button.
3. You are moved to a Message list list view which appears at the bottom of the dialog box, and contains the messages found by the search. You can open a selected message by pressing Enter, and there are several other actions available on its context menu.
4. To perform another search, just Tab to the controls for setting the search criteria and start again. You can clear all the criteria by pressing the New Search button, and close the Find Message dialog by pressing Esc.

This is a detailed description of the controls in the Find Message dialog:

• Three controls for selecting the folder or folders which are searched:
  1. A read only edit box which contains the name of the folder to be searched. By default, this is current selected folder.
  2. An “Include subfolders” check box, which is checked by default.
  3. A Browse button, which opens a Windows Live Mail dialog. In the Folder list tree view, select the folder or the account you want to search, and then press Enter to press the default OK button.
• Four edit boxes: From, To, Subject, and Message. Enter any text to be searched.
• Two Date-time picker controls for Received after, and Received before. Note that due to a Windows Live Mail bug, the Received before control gives incorrect search results, and therefore shouldn't be used. When you move to one of these controls, the initial focus is a check box which indicates whether this criteria is active in the search, and by default it's unchecked. It can be toggled in the usual way using Spacebar, but unfortunately, Jaws does not read the state of this check box. However, you can tell whether it's checked by pressing Left Arrow or Right Arrow: if unchecked, then nothing happens; if checked, then you cycle round the fields of the date and the check box. To change one of the date fields, either type in a number, or use Up Arrow or Down Arrow.
• Two check boxes: Message has attachment(s), and Message is flagged.

Folders

If you keep a large number of messages, it's often useful to organise them in to folders. The following sections describe how to create a folder, and move messages to a folder. In addition, you can create messages rules which automatically move incoming messages to a particular folder based on some criteria, such as the sender of the message. See the Message Rules section for the details.

Creating a folder

To create a new folder:

1. In the Folder tree, select the folder in which you want to create the new folder. Often you'll want to select an account, so that the new folder is at the same level as the standard folders, such as the Inbox.
2. Open the folders context menu, and choose New folder.
3. In the Create Folder dialog, type a name for the new folder.
4. If you Tab to the next control, you'll find it's a tree view for specifying where you want the folder created. The folder you selected in the Folder tree should already be selected.
5. Press Enter to press the default OK button.

Moving messages to a folder

You move messages to a folder using the Move dialog, and you can do this either in the main window or in a message window. Unfortunately, there is a Window Live Mail bug associated with this dialog. There are two versions of this dialog, and which one you get depends on exactly how you open it. In one version, the tree view in which you select the folder is accessible to screen readers, and in the other, it isn't. So the following instructions clearly describe how to get the accessible version.

If you're in the main window, then to move one or more selected messages to a folder:

1. Choose Move to folder on the context menu of the selected message or messages (Application Key, V). Note that there is a shortcut Ctrl + Shift + V for opening the dialog, but this opens the inaccessible version.
2. A Move dialog opens. In the folder list tree view, select the desired destination folder, and then press Enter to press the default OK button.

If you're in a message window, then how to open the accessible version of the dialog depends on whether or not you're using the Jaws virtual ribbon:

• If you're using the Jaws virtual ribbon, then on the Message tab, in the Actions group, press the Move to button.
• If you're not using the Jaws virtual ribbon, then if you press the Move to button mentioned above in the normal manner, then this opens the inaccessible version of the dialog. However, you can open the accessible version using the Jaws cursor: move to the button, press Insert + Numpad Minus to route the Jaws cursor to the PC cursor, press Numpad Slash to left click the button, and the accessible version of the dialog opens. You then have to press Numpad Plus to return to the PC cursor. Of course an alternative is just to close the message, and move the message in the main window.

Message rules

A message rule automatically applies one or more actions to incoming messages which match one or more conditions. For example, you could create a rule that moved all incoming messages from a certain person to a Folder that you'd created for that person's messages.

The Message Rules dialog is used both for managing message rules, and for creating rules by launching the New Mail Rule dialog. The Message Rules dialog has two pages, one for rules for mail messages, and the other for rules for News messages, but only the former of interest in this guide.

You can open the Message rules dialog from the Mail main window: on the folders tab, press the Message rules button which is in an unnamed group. If there are no existing rules, a New Mail Rule dialog opens, rather than the Message Rules dialog.

The following sections describe the New Mail Rule dialog, and the Message rules dialog.

New Mail Rule dialog

The New Mail Rule dialog contains four controls for specifying the rule: list views for the conditions and actions, a Rule Description edit box which enables you to further specify the conditions and actions, and a Rule name edit box where you can type in a meaningful name for the rule. The first three of these controls are described in the following sections.

Select the Conditions for your rule list view

This contains check boxes for the possible conditions, and unfortunately Jaws doesn't read the name of this list view. Check one or more of the conditions. Many of the conditions need further specification, and this is done in the Rule Description edit box, as described in a later section. For example, if you check the condition “Where the subject line contains specific words”, then when you get to the Rule Description edit box, you can set what the specific words are.

If you check more than one condition, then by default the message must match all the conditions. However, in the Rule Description edit box you can change this to the message must match any of the conditions.

Select the Actions for your rule list view

This contains check boxes for possible actions, and again Jaws does not read the name of the list view. Check one or more of the actions. As was the case with the conditions, many of the actions need further specification, and this is done in the Rule Description edit box, which is the next control, and is described in the next section.

Rule description edit box.

This edit box contains the following lines of text:

• The first line is always “Apply this rule after the message arrives”.
• One line for each condition which you checked.
• One line for each action which you checked.

If a condition or action requires a value that has to be specified, this is indicated visually by the phrase that defines that value being underlined. Examples of such phrases are:

• The phase “contains specific words” in the condition “Where the subject line contains specific words”.
• The phrase “contains people” in the condition “Where the From line contains people”.
• The phrase “specified” in the action “Move it to the specified folder”.

Pressing Down Arrow selects the next phrase that can be edited. Jaws reads the line containing this selected phrase, though unfortunately it doesn't indicate the phrase which is selected. You can then edit the phrase by pressing Enter, which opens an appropriate dialog for editing.

Two of of the dialogs for editing phrases are described in the next sections: the Type specific words dialog and the Select people dialog.

Note that if there is more than one condition, then at the start of the line of the second condition and all subsequent conditions, there is the word “and” which can be edited just like the phrases used to further specify some of the conditions and actions. If you edit one of the “and”s then an And/Or dialog opens, which allows you to change all ands to ors.

Type Specific Words dialog

If you edit the phrase “contains specific words”, then the Type Specific Words dialog opens, which contains the following controls:

• An edit box, into which you can type a word or phrase, and an associated Add button. Whenever there's any text in this edit box, the default button is temporarily the Add button. Pressing the Add button adds the word or phrase to the Words list box described below, clears the edit box, and the default button reverts to the OK button.
• A Words list box. The first item is the text “Where the subject line contains” or something similar. Subsequent items are the words or phrases which you've added.
• Remove and Options buttons, which are associated with the Words list box. You can remove an item by selecting it and then either pressing Delete or the Remove button. The Options button gives you yet more options, as you might have guessed.

For example, if you're in the Rule description dialog, and the phrase selected is “contains specific words”, and the specific phrase you're interested in is Mark Twain, then if you press Enter to edit the selected phrase:

1. The Type Specific Words dialog open. Type in the phrase Mark Twain, and press Enter to press the Add button.
2. Press Enter to press the OK button.
3. You are returned to the Rule Description edit box. The phrase which you edited, “contains specific words”, has been replaced by the phrase “contains Mark Twain”.

Select people dialog

If you edit the phrase “contains people” in one of the conditions, then a Select people dialog opens. This has a structure similar to the Type Specific words dialog described above, and contains the following controls:

• An edit box, into which you can type either the name or email address of a person, and an associated Add button. Whenever there's any text in this edit box, the default button is temporarily the Add button. Pressing this button, adds the name or email address to the People list box described below, and clears the edit box, thus changing the default button back to the OK button.
• A People list box. The first item is the text “Where the From line contains” or something similar, and the subsequent items are the names and/or addresses which you've added.
• A Contacts button which opens a Send an Email dialog, which allows you to use your Contacts to specify email addresses. This is a slightly simplified version of the Send an Email dialog which can be used for entering contacts in a new message. In this dialog, select a contact, press the To button (Spacebar), and then press the OK button.
• Remove and Options buttons, which are associated with the People list box. You can remove an item by selecting it and then either pressing Delete or the Remove button. The Options button gives you yet more options.

Note that if you edit the phrase “people” in an action, that also opens a Select people dialog, but this has a different structure, and is not described here.

Message rules dialog

The Mail rules page of the Message rules dialog contains a list of the existing rules, some buttons for creating and managing rules, and an edit box containing a description of the rule selected in the list of rules.

Giving some more detail, the dialog contains the following controls:

• A list view which contains a check box for each existing rule. If the check box is checked, then the rule is active, otherwise the rule is turned off. The rules are applied to an incoming message in the order of the rules in this list view.
• A number of buttons:
  • New button, which opens a New Mail Rule dialog for creating a new rule, and which was described above.
  • Modify button, which is used for modifying the rule selected in the list view. It opens an Edit Mail Rule dialog, which has exactly the same structure as the New Mail Rule dialog.
  • Copy button, which creates a copy of the rule selected in the list view, and places it immediately below the original rule in the list.
  • Remove button, which deletes the selected rule, though it's easier just to press Delete.
  • Apply now button, which is used for applying one or more of the rules to the existing messages in one or more of the folders. It opens an Apply mail rules now dialog.
  • Move Up and Move Down button, which are used for moving the selected rule up and down the list respectively.
• Rule description edit box, which contains a description of the rule selected in the list view. This has the same functionality as the Rule description edit box which was used for creating a rule, and so you can edit the phrases/values of the rule using this edit box. See the section above on the Rule description edit box for more details.

Email accounts

This section describes how to manually add email accounts to Windows Live Mail and manage them.

Adding an email account

Providers of email accounts often supply programs, either by download or CD, which add the account to Windows Live Mail for you, so you may have no need of the information in this section.

To start the wizard to add an account: on the Accounts tab, in the New Account Group, press the Email button.

1. The first page of the wizard, which has the title Window Live Mail, opens. You need to fill in the three edit boxes for Email address, Password, and Display name for your sent messages. Also on this page there's a “Manually configure server settings” check box, which is unchecked by default. Tab to the Next button, and press it.
2. If you choose to configure server settings manually or if Microsoft doesn't have the necessary info about you email account provider, then the next page of the wizard allows you to set up the server settings. Note that Jaws initially says nothing, but if you press Tab, then the first control becomes the focus, and Jaws reads this. Fill in the page, and then Tab to the Next button and press it.
3. If the account was successfully set up then the next page of the wizard tells you that your email account was added. Unfortunately, Jaws doesn't read this text. If you press Tab once you move to an Add another email account link, and if you Tab again, to a Finish button which you can press.

Managing email accounts

• To open the properties dialog for an account, select it in the Folder tree and choose properties from its context menu. Alternatively if either the account or one of the folders which it contains is selected in the Folder tree, then on the Accounts tab, in an unlabelled group, press the Properties button.
• To remove an account, select it in the Folder tree and choose Remove account from its context menu (Delete).

Importing and exporting messages and contacts

If you want to transfer messages or contacts from one computer to another you can do this by exporting them to a folder or file on one computer, and then importing the folder of file on the other computer. You just have to ensure that you export using a format that the email program on the other computer knows how to import. You may also want to export and import messages and/or contacts to backup and if necessary restore them, if you're not using any other way of backing up your messages and contacts.

Windows Live Mail provides wizards for importing and exporting messages and contacts, and these are described in the next four sections.

Importing messages

Window Live Mail can import messages from a folder which has been created by exporting the messages using one of these programs: Outlook Express 6 (Windows XP), Windows Mail (Vista), or Windows Live Mail.

1. Open the Application menu (Alt + F), and choose Import messages.
2. The Windows Live Mail Import wizard opens. The first control is a list box for selecting the format that the messages were exported in. Select the appropriate format, and then Tab to the Next button and press it.
3. The second page of the wizard will probably tell you that the location of the messages could not be determined. The first control is a read only edit box for the path of the folder. Press Tab to move to a Browse button and press it.
4. A Browse for folder dialog opens. The initial focus is the OK button, so you first have to Tab to the tree view which is similar to the tree view of locations in Windows Explorer. Select a folder, and then press Enter to press the default OK button.
5. You're returned to the second page of the wizard, where the focus is again the Browse button, and the edit box now contains the path of the folder. Tab to the Next button, and press it.
6. The third page of the wizard enables you to choose which message folders are imported. The first control is a pair of radio buttons: All folders, which is the default, and Selected folders. If you choose the first option, just Tab to the Next button, and press it. If you choose the second option, then press Tab to a list view where you can select one or more message folders, and then Tab to the Next button and press it.
7. A progress dialog temporarily opens, and then you're taken to the final page of the wizard, where the Finish button is the focus, and which you should press.
8. In the Folder tree, the Storage folder should now contain an Imported folder, which in turn contains the message folders which were imported. If required, you can then move the messages in the imported folders to where you want them. For details, see the Folders section.

Exporting messages

Using the Windows Live Mail Export wizard, you can export some or all of your messages folders to an empty folder, which you can either create before you open the wizard, or as one of the steps in the wizard. You can export the messages in two different formats: just use the Windows Live Mail format, unless there is a reason to use the Microsoft Exchange format.

1. Open the Application menu (Alt + F), open the Export email sub menu, and choose Email messages.
2. The first page of a Windows Live Mail Export wizard opens. In the list box for selecting the export format, select Microsoft Windows Live Mail, and then Tab to the Next button and press it.
3. On the second page of the wizard, the first control is a read only edit box for the path of the folder, which gets automatically filled in when you select the folder later on. Tab to the Browse button, and press it.
4. A Browse for folder dialog opens, in which you have to select an empty folder. For some strange reason, the OK button is the initial focus, so you first have to Tab to the tree view which is similar to the tree view in Windows Explorer. If you've previously created an empty folder, then you can just select it; otherwise, select the location which you want to contain the new folder, open its context menu, open the new sub menu and choose folder, type in a name for the folder and press Enter. Then press Enter
5. You returned to the second page of the wizard, with the Browse button still being the focus. Tab to the Next button, and press it.
6. On the third page of the wizard, the first control is a pair of radio buttons for choosing which message folders are exported: All folders, which is the default, and Selected folder. If you choose the first option, just Tab to the Next button, and press it. If you choose the second option, the press Tab to a list view where you can select one or more message folders, and then Tab to the Next button and press it.
7. The final page of the wizard tells you that your messages were exported successfully. The initial focus is the Finish button, which you can press.

Importing contacts

This is how to import contacts in either the Comma Separated Values format or the Windows Address Book format. You need to be viewing your contacts to do this (Ctrl + 3).

To import the contacts in a file in the Comma Separated Values format:

1. On the Home tab, in the Tools group, press the Import menu button, and choose Comma separated values (.CSV) on the menu.
2. The first page a CSV Import wizard opens, and the first control is a Choose a file to import edit box. You can type in the full path of the file to import, but it's much easier to Tab to the next control, which is a Browse button and press it.
3. A standard Windows Open dialog opens. Select the file you want to open, and then press the default Open button.
4. You're returned to the CSV Import wizard, with the path of the file entered in the Choose a file to import edit box, and with the initial focus being the Next button, which you can press.
5. On the second page of the wizard, the first control is a list view which contains how the text fields in the file are mapped to the fields of the contact. Normally the default will be fine, and you can just Tab to the Finish button, and press it.

To import the contacts in a file in the Windows Address Book format:

1. On the Home tab, in the Tools group, press the Import menu button, and choose Windows address book (.WAB) on the menu.
2. A standard Windows Open dialog opens. Select the file you want to open, and then press the default Open button.

Exporting contacts

To export you contacts to a file in the Comma Separated Values format (when viewing you contacts):

1. On the Home tab, in the Tools group, press the Export menu button, and choose Comma separated values on the menu.
2. The first page of a CSV Export opens, and the first control is a Save exported file as edit box. You can type in the full path of the file for the contacts, but it's much easier to Tab to the next control which is a Browse button and press it.
3. A standard Windows Save As dialog opens and the File name edit box is the initial focus. Type in a name for the file, if necessary change the location, and then press the Save button.
4. You're returned to the CSV Export dialog. The Save export file as edit box has been filled in, and the Next button is the focus, which you can just press.
5. On the second page of the CSV Export wizard, the initial focus is a list view which contains check boxes for the details of the contact which you want to export. Normally you can leave the default settings, and just Tab to the Finish button and press it.

Multiple email accounts

For most of the guide, it's been assumed that in Windows Live Mail, there's just a single email account. If you have more than one account, then one of these is the default account, and setting which account is the default is described in a section below. The following two sections give additional information about the folder tree and about sending messages, which is relevant if you have more than one account.

Folder tree

• If you press Ctrl + I this takes you to the Inbox of your default account.
• The Quick views top level folder contains an unread email folder, which contains the unread messages in all your accounts.
• If a top level account folder is selected in the Folder tree, then the messages in the Inbox of that account are shown in the message list – exactly as if you'd selected the Inbox folder of that account. So, if the top level account folders are all closed, this allows you to quickly move between the Inboxes of your accounts.
• Some customizations of the Folder tree may be useful. See the Customizing the Folder tree section of the Customizing section of this guide.
• There's a compact view available for the Folder tree, and this can be turned on and off using the Compact view button, which is in the Layout group of the View tab. With the compact view on, then by default, the Folder tree contains the folders contained in Quick views, and the inboxes of all the accounts. You can customize what folders are shown in the Compact view using the Add to compact view dialog. If the Compact view is on, then this dialog can be opened by pressing F6 until you get to the mail button, pressing Up Arrow until you get to the Add to compact view button and pressing it. Note that if you use the compact view, it's probably worth adding the Compact view button to the Quick Access Toolbar.

Sending messages

If you've got more than one mail account, then in a new message window, there's a From combo box which contains a list of your accounts. This combo box occurs immediately before the show/hide Cc Bcc button, and so you can get to it from the To edit box by pressing Shift + Tab three times. Most of the time, the combo box is automatically set to the most appropriate account, and so you don't have to change it. For example:

• In the main window when viewing mail, if a folder of an account is selected in the Folder tree, then in a new message window, the From box is initially set to that account.
• If you reply to or forward a message, then the default setting of the From combo box is the account to which the message was sent.
• In the main window when viewing contacts, if you create a new message the From combo box is initially set to your default account.

Setting the default account

If you have more than one email account, then there a couple of ways of setting which one is the default account:

• In the Folder tree, select an account, and choose Set as default account from its context menu. If the account is already the default, then this option is checked, and unavailable.
• Using the Accounts dialog. On the Application menu, open the Options sub menu, and choose Email accounts. In the Accounts dialog, select an account, and press the Set as default button.

Ribbons

A ribbon is an alternative to having a menu bar and one or more toolbars. It includes a collection of controls which have been grouped into one or more tabs, which is similar to the grouping of controls in dialog boxes which have more than one page/tab.

The ribbon is made up of the following parts:

• Quick Access Toolbar, which contains buttons for frequently used commands, and a menu button for customizing it. For a description of customizing this toolbar, see the Customizing the Quick Access Toolbar section below.
• A row of controls, which Jaws calls the upper ribbon. It consists of: the Application menu button, the names of the tabs, and the help button, which Jaws reads as an unnamed button.
• Controls of the active tab, which Jaws calls the lower ribbon. The controls are divided into groups, and these groups are displayed as a row with vertical lines separating them. Nearly all the groups are given names, and the name of each group is displayed below the controls of the group.

The Quick Access Toolbar is a short toolbar, and takes up a small part of the left hand end of the title bar. The upper and lower ribbons run across the entire width of the window, with the lower ribbon, which contains the controls of the active tab, taking up the most amount of screen space.

If you're using Jaws 12 or later, then you have the choice as to whether to use the standard windows keystrokes for using the ribbon, or the Jaws virtual ribbon. The standard keystrokes are described in the next section, and the Using the Jaws virtual ribbon section below describes the alternative.

Note that a ribbon can be minimized, and in this state the controls of the active tab (the lower ribbon) are not shown be default. When the ribbon is minimized, then the windows keystrokes for using the ribbon are slightly different, and the Jaws virtual ribbon doesn't work properly. By default the ribbons in Windows Live Mail are not minimized, and this is assumed to be the case in the rest of this guide. Whether or not a ribbon is minimized can be set using the Minimize the ribbon option which appears on the context menu of all the controls of a ribbon. In addition, the shortcut Ctrl + F1 toggles whether or not a ribbon is minimized.

Using standard windows keystrokes

You can use the following keystrokes to move around the ribbon:

• To move to the ribbon, press Alt, which moves you to the name of the active tab.
• You can leave the ribbon by pressing Alt or Esc.
• If you've in the upper ribbon, then Right Arrow and Left Arrow cycle you forwards and backwards round all the controls in the upper ribbon: Application menu button, tab names, and help button. When you move to a tab name using these keystrokes, that tab becomes the active tab.
• Tab and Shift + Tab cycle you forwards and backwards round: Quick Access Toolbar buttons, Application menu button, name of the active tab, help button, the controls on the active tab.
• Ctrl + Right Arrow and Ctrl + Left Arrow cycle you round: first Quick Access Toolbar button, customize Quick Access Toolbar button, name of the active tab, and the first control in each group on the active tab. So these keystrokes are a sort of express version of the Tab and Shift + Tab keystrokes – they cover the same ground, but with fewer stops. Unfortunately, if you're using Jaws 12 or 13, when you press either of these keystrokes Jaws reads both the name of the initial and the final control.
• To move from the first tab name to the Quick Access Toolbar, press Up Arrow.
• If you're in the Quick Access Toolbar, then Right Arrow and Left Arrow cycle you forwards and backwards round all Quick Access Toolbar buttons.

Note that unlike in dialog boxes, you can't switch between the tabs by pressing Ctrl + Tab.

The next three sections give examples of using these keystrokes for: navigating the tabs, opening the Application menu, and navigating the Quick Access Toolbar. There is then a section on using the access keys of the controls in the ribbon.

Navigating the tabs

• To move to a control on the active tab: press Alt to move to the name of the active tab; press Tab once to move to the unlabeled help button, and then continue to press Tab to move through the controls on the active tab. When Jaws reads the name of a control, it also gives its position in the group. Unfortunately Jaws doesn't say the name of the group when you move from one group to another. If you Tab past the last control on the tab, then you move to the buttons in the Quick Access Toolbar.
• To move to a control on a tab which isn't the active tab: press Alt to move to the name of the active tab; then press Right Arrow or Left Arrow until you get to the tab name you want; then press Tab until you get to the control which you want.
• If you're in the controls of a tab, and you want to move back to the tab name, so that you can move to a different tab, press Alt twice: the first to leave the ribbon, and the second to move back to the name of the active tab.
• From the name of a tab, you can move the first control of each of the groups by pressing Ctrl + Right Arrow. Again, unfortunately Jaws doesn't tell you the name of the group you've just moved to. In addition, there is the bug in Jaws 12 and 13, that when you use this keystroke Jaws reads the name of the current control before reading the name of the control to which you've moved.

It's possible to move around the controls in a tab using the arrow keys, but this isn't recommended: the problem is that the layout of the controls in a group of controls on a tab can vary: sometimes the controls are in a single row, sometimes, some of the controls are grouped into more than one row, and sometimes some of the controls are grouped into a column or say 2 or 3 controls. So if use Right Arrow or Left Arrow to move through the controls, where there's more than one row, you'll only move through the controls in one of the rows, and similarly in the case of a column, you only move to one of the controls in the column. This isn't a problem for sighted users, as they can see that in these cases they have to use the Up Arrow and/or Down Arrow keys as well to be able to move to all the controls. There is also an additional problem that you can get stuck in in edit boxes and accidentally change the settings of combo boxes.

Opening the Application menu

To open the Application menu: press Alt to move to the name of the active tab; then press Shift + Tab once or press Left Arrow one or more times to move to the Application menu button, and press it.

Navigating the Quick Access Toolbar

These are a number ways of moving the to the buttons on the Quick access toolbar:

• Press Alt to move to the name of the active tab, press Ctrl + Left Arrow twice to move to the first button in the Quick Access Toolbar, and then use Right Arrow to move through the rest of the buttons.
• Press Alt to move to the name of the active tab, press Shift + Tab twice to move to the customize the quick access toolbar button, then carry on pressing Shift + Tab to move backwards through the buttons. If you go past the first button, you end up in the controls of the active tab.
• Press Alt to move to the name of the active tab; if necessary press Left Arrow until you get to the first tab name, and then press Up Arrow to move to the Quick Access Toolbar.

Using the access keys

When you press Alt to move to the name of the active tab on the ribbon, then this keystroke makes the access keys of all the items in the Quick Access Toolbar, and the upper ribbon available. Note that at this point, the access keys of the controls on the active tab are not available, even though they are visible. So, after pressing the Alt key:

• To press the Application Menu button, and so open the menu, press its access key which is F.
• If you press the access key of a tab name, then if that tab isn't the active tab, you're moved to the tab name and it becomes the active tab. In addition, the access keys of the controls of the active tab become available, and the access keys of the items in the Quick Access Toolbar and the upper ribbon become unavailable. Due to number of controls that can be on a tab, the access key of a control on a tab can consist of either one or two characters.
• To press any of the buttons on the Quick Access toolbar, which have access keys 1, 2, 3 etc, press the appropriate number.

Note that unfortunately, Jaws does not read out the access keys of either the Application menu button or the tab names. In addition Jaws only occasionally reads the access keys of the controls on the tabs. When it does so, it reads the complete series of keystrokes to activate the control, that is Alt followed by the access key of the tab name, followed by the access key(s) of the control.

Additional notes:

• You can also use the access keys of the controls in the upper ribbon by pressing Alt and the access key together, as well as pressing Alt and then the access key. So, for example, to open the Application menu, you can either press Alt and then F, or alternatively you can press Alt + F. However, this isn't the case for the access keys of the buttons on the Quick Access Toolbar. This is because in Windows Live Mail, Jaws uses the keystrokes Alt + number, for reading the headers of a message.
• The access keys can only be used immediately after moving to the ribbon, and as soon as you use any standard navigation keys, such as Tab to move around the ribbon, they're no longer available.
• For sighted users, when the access key of a control is active, it's displayed as a keytip. This is similar to a tooltip, and just contains the access keys.

Using the Jaws virtual ribbon

The Jaws virtual ribbon provides an alternative set of keystrokes for using the ribbon. The setting for whether to use the Jaws virtual ribbon, or the standard windows keystrokes is described in the Setting the Jaws virtual ribbon section. By default, the Jaws virtual ribbon is off.

The main features of the Jaws virtual ribbon are:

• The controls on the tabs are accessed using a traditional menu bar and set of menus. The names of the tabs behave as if they were the names of the menus on a menu bar. The menu of each tab contains a number of sub menus — one for each of the groups of controls on the tab. The menu items in each sub menu are the controls in the group.
• You can still use some of the standard windows keystrokes, but some are unavailable, and the behaviour of the Alt keystroke to move to the ribbon is slightly modified.
• You can't use the access keys of the controls on the lower ribbon, but you can use first character navigation for the tab names, and for the tab menus.

Using the Jaws virtual ribbon, these are the keystrokes for moving around the ribbon:

• To move to the ribbon, press Alt. By default this moves you to the active tab name. However, if the focus was one of the controls on the active tab when you last left the ribbon, then the focus is returned to this previous location.
• You can leave the ribbon by pressing Alt or Esc. Note that if you're in a menu, Esc closes the menu.
• If you've in the upper ribbon, then Right Arrow and Left Arrow cycle you forwards and backwards round all the controls in the upper ribbon: Application menu button tab names, and help button. When you move to a tab name using these keystrokes, that tab becomes the active tab.
• From a tab name, you can open a menu by pressing Down Arrow or Enter. You can then use all the standard keystrokes for navigating menus.
• To move from the first tab name to the Quick Access Toolbar, press Up Arrow.
• If you're in the Quick Access Toolbar, then Right Arrow and Left Arrow cycle you forwards and backwards round all quick access toolbar buttons.

Note that the two pairs of windows keystrokes, Tab and Shift + Tab, and Ctrl + Left Arrow and Ctrl + Right Arrow, have no effect when using the Jaws virtual ribbon.

The next three sections give examples of using these keystrokes for: navigating the tabs, opening the Application menu, and navigating the Quick Access Toolbar. There are then sections on using the access keys of the controls in the ribbon, and on first character navigation.

Navigating the tabs

After pressing Alt to move to the ribbon, the focus is either the active tab name or one of the controls of the active tab. From there you can move to any of the controls of any of the tabs by using the standard keystrokes for moving around menu bars and their associated menus.

For edit boxes and combo boxes, some of the keystrokes or interacting with them are also used for navigating the menus. For example, Down Arrow is used both for moving to the next menu item, and selecting the next option of a combo box. A similar problem occurs when interacting with these controls on web pages, and Jaws uses the same solution. To interact with edit boxes or combo boxes on the tab menus, you first have to press Enter to go into forms mode. Then Jaws knows that your keystrokes are intended to the control, and not to move around the menus.

Opening the Application menu

To open the Application menu:

• Press Alt to move to the ribbon.
• If the focus is one of the controls on the active tab, then press Esc twice to move to the name to the tab.
• Press Left Arrow until you get to the Application menu button, and press it.

Navigating the Quick Access Toolbar

To move to the buttons on the Quick Access toolbar:

1. Press Alt to move to the ribbon.
2. If the focus is one of the controls on the active tab, then press Esc twice to move to the name to the tab.
3. If necessary, press Left Arrow until you get to the first tab name.
4. Press Up Arrow to move to one of the buttons in the Quick Access Toolbar.
5. You can then cycle round the buttons in the Quick Access Toolbar using either Right Arrow or Left Arrow.
6. If you want to return to the upper ribbon, press Down Arrow.

Using the access keys

When using the virtual ribbon, only the access keys of the controls of the upper ribbon and the Quick Access Toolbar are available, and to use them you have to press the Alt key together with the access key, you can't press the Alt key, and then the access key.

• To open the Application menu, press Alt + F.
• To open one of the tab menus, press Alt + the access key of the tab name.
• In Windows Live Mail, Jaws uses the keystrokes Alt + number etc to reading the headers of a message. So to use the access keys of the buttons in the Quick Access Toolbar, you have to first press the Jaws pass through key, Insert + 3, and then Alt + number.

First character navigation

You can use the first character of items to navigate both the names of the tabs, and the menus. When you press a character key:

• If there is only one item beginning with that character, then that item is activated: the menu of a tab name is opened, or a sub menu is opened, or a control is activated.
• If there is more than one item beginning with that character, then you move to the next item beginning with that character. When you get to the item you want, you can then press Enter activate it.

The Jaws virtual ribbon setting

How to set whether the Jaws virtual ribbon is on or off in Windows Live Mail depends slightly on whether you've using Jaws 12 or Jaws 13 and later.

If you're using Jaws 12, then with the Windows Live Mail window open:

1. Press Insert + V to open the Adjust Jaws dialog.
2. In the dialog, a tree view is the initial focus. Press the V key to move to the Virtual ribbon menu setting.
3. To change the setting, press Spacebar.
4. Press Enter to press the default Close button.

Alternatively, if you're using Jaws 13 or later, then with the Windows Live Mail window open:

1. Press Insert + V to open the QuickSetting - Windows Live Mail dialog.
2. In the this dialog, a search edit box is the initial focus. Type the letter V, and then press Down Arrow till you get to Virtual ribbon menu.
3. To change whether of not this is checked, press Spacebar.
4. Press Enter once, which clears the search box, and press again to press the default OK button.

Customizing the Quick Access Toolbar

The Quick access toolbar contains buttons for frequently used commands. The default commands seem to have been chosen for the benefit of those who use a mouse – often the commands have standard keyboard shortcuts, and so for users of screen readers, there's no advantage of having them on this toolbar. So if you use the toolbar regularly, you may find it useful to remove many, if not all of the default commands before adding the ones that you want.

• To add a command: move to any item on the Application menu or any button on any tab, open its context menu and choose Add to Quick Access Toolbar.
• To remove a command: move to the button on the Quick Access Toolbar, open its context menu and choose Remove from Quick Access Toolbar.

Note that you can also add and remove a small number of commands using the Customize Quick Access Toolbar menu, but this isn't particularly useful. The menu contains a small number of options for commands, including the default commands. The commands which are checked appear on the Quick Access Toolbar. However, again, the choice of commands seems to be geared towards mouse users.

Customizing Windows Live Mail

Hiding the reading and calendar panes

To simplify the navigation in the main window in the Mail view, you may want to hide both the Reading (preview) and the Calendar panes. You can do this using a couple of controls which are both in the Layout group of the View tab:

• The Reading pane menu button opens a set of options, where you can choose the Off option.
• The Calendar pane button is pressed by default, and can be unpressed by pressing it.

If you really want the reading pane, then to ensure that Jaws reads the Message list correctly, then do one of the following:

• Set the Reading pane options to Bottom of the message list, rather than Right of the message list.
• On the View tab, in the Layout group, press the Message list menu button, and choose one line view.

Hiding the preview pane

To simplify the navigation in the main window in the Contacts view, you may want to hide the preview pane.

1. You can only hide this pane if the view of the contacts is set to List rather than Online status. On the Home tab, in the View group, press the View As menu button, and Choose List.
2. Again on the Home tab, in the View group, move to the Preview button. If Jaws reads the state of the button as being pressed, press the button.

Show the status bar

By default, the status bar is not shown. To show it: on the View tab, in the Layout group, select the Status bar button. If Jaws doesn't say the button is pressed, then press the button.

Customizing the Folder tree

When viewing mail in the main window, you can customize the contents of the Folder tree:

• To set whether the Quick views and Storage folders items are shown: on the View tab, in the Layout group, there's both a Quick views and a Storage folders button. When one of these buttons is in the pressed state, then the item is shown.
• You can change the order of the top level items in the tree view by selecting a top level item, such as an email account, and choosing move up or move down from its context menu. The only exception is Quick views, which seems to like being first.
• You can customize the items in the Quick views item by selecting the Quick views item and choosing Select quick views on its context menu. The Select Quick Views dialog contains a number of check boxes which allow to choose the items to be displayed.

Options dialog

You can open the Options dialog by opening the Application menu, opening the Options sub menu, and then choosing Mail. There's also a convenient shortcut, Ctrl + Shift + O. It's a multi-page dialog, and it contains many of the options for customizing Windows Live Mail. Some of the more important options are highlighted in the following sections, and many of these have been already mentioned in the guide.

General page

• “Send and receive messages at startup” check box, which is checked by default.
• “Check for new messages every” check box, which is checked by default. This is followed an edit spin-box which is set to 10 minutes by default.

Send page

• “Send messages immediately” check box, which is checked by default.
• “Automatically put people I reply to in my address book after the third reply” check box, which is checked by default.
• “Automatically complete e-mail addresses when composing” check box, which is checked by default.
• Mail Sending Format radio buttons: HTML and Plain Text. By default this is set to HTML, but if you use Plain Text your messages are less likely to be accidentally classified as spam.

Spelling page

“Always check spelling before sending” check box, which is unchecked by default.

Labeling graphics

In the Message list, information about a message such as whether it is unread, or if it has any attachments is indicated by small graphics. Unfortunately, Jaws 12 does not read any of this information, and the only information which Jaws 13 or later reads is if the message is unread.

To work around this problem, you can manually label the graphics as described below. This procedure is only recommended if you're a reasonably experienced Jaws user. If you're a Jaws 14 user and you label some graphics, and then Jaws 14 is updated to read the corresponding information, then it's possible that Jaws will then say this information twice. If this occurs then you can remove the label, as described in the Removing labels section.

Normally, Jaws does not read unlabelled graphics, so the first thing you have to do before you can label any graphics is to change a Jaws setting so that Jaws reads all graphics. Some of the details of doing this depend on whether you're using Jaws 12, or Jaws 13 or later.

If you're using Jaws 12:

1. Press Insert + V to open the Adjust Jaws dialog.
2. In the dialog, a tree view is the initial focus. Press the G key till you get to Graphics - Labeled.
3. To change the setting, press Spacebar until this reads Graphics - All.
4. Press Enter to press the default Close button.

Alternatively, if you're using Jaws 13 or later:

1. Press Insert + V to open the QuickSetting - Windows Live Mail dialog.
2. In the this dialog, a search edit box is the initial focus. Type the letter g, and then press down arrow till you get to Graphics - Labeled.
3. To change the setting, press Spacebar until this reads Graphics - All.
4. Press Enter once, which clears the search box, and press again to press the default OK button.

The following is an outline of how to label an unlabelled graphic. After this, there are a number of sections which contain more details for labeling specific graphics.

1. Select a message in the message list.
2. Press Insert + Numpad Minus to route the Jaws cursor to the PC cursor. The Jaws cursor is now positioned over the first name of the sender of the email.
3. If you now press Insert Left Arrow once this moves you to the first graphic to the left of the senders name. Pressing Insert + Left Arrow again moves you to the second graphic to the left if there is one, etc.
4. Once you've moved to the graphic you want to label, press Insert + G to open the Graphics Labeler dialog.
5. In this dialog, a Label edit box is the initial focus, and if the graphic is unlabeled it will contain text such as Graphic 160. Type in a label for the graphic, for example attachment.
6. If necessary, press Tab to move to the Braille Label edit box, and type a braille label.
7. Press Enter to press the default OK button.
8. You're automatically returned to using the PC cursor

When you're finished labeling graphics, change the Jaws setting back so that Jaws only reads labelled graphics

The following three sections give further guidance for labeling the unread, attachment, and collapsed/expanded graphics. The number of each unlabeled graphic depends on the windows theme that you're using. The following information includes the numbers for both the default windows theme and the classic theme, but if you're using a different theme then the numbers of unlabelled graphics will be different.

Note that as you move to the left through the graphics, the first graphic is always a graphic then indicates whether the message is unread, or read, or something similar.

Unread graphic

If you're using Jaws 13 or later, then Jaws reads if a message is unread, and there is no need to label the unlabeled graphic.

If you're using Jaws 12, then select a message in the message list. To make sure it's unread, open its context menu and choose mark as unread. If it's already marked as unread, then that command is unavailable. The unread graphic should be the first graphic to the left of the first name of the sender. The number of the unlabeled graphic for the default Windows theme is 656, and for the Windows Classic theme it's 429.

Attachment graphic

Send yourself an email with an attachment. You may need to press F5 a couple of minutes after you've sent it to download it from the email server. The attachment graphic should be the second graphic to the left of the first name of the sender. For both the default windows 7 theme and the Windows Classic theme, the unlabeled graphic number is 160.

Collapsed/Expanded graphics

Send yourself an email, and then reply to that email. If you have the conversation grouping on, then by default conversations are collapsed, and so there should be a single message in the message list corresponding to these two messages. If you press Right Arrow this expands the conversation, and the second message should then appear below the first message. If you then select and first message again, and press Left Arrow, this collapses the conversation.

With the conversation collapsed, then the collapsed graphic should be the second graphic to the left of the first name of the sender. The number of the unlabeled graphic for the default Windows 7 theme is 563, and for the Windows Classic theme it's 53.

With the conversation expanded, then for the first message, the expanded graphic should be the second graphic to the left of the first name of the sender. The number of the unlabeled graphic for the default Windows 7 theme is 105, and for the Windows Classic theme it's 333.

Removing labels

If you have labelled a graphic, you can remove it by going back to that graphic using the Jaws cursor, and in the graphics labeller dialog (Insert + G), deleting the text of the label.

The labels of the graphics which you've manually labelled are stored in a file deep in your personal folder. If you want to remove all these labels, then you can do so by deleting this file:

1. Open the Start menu, and then open and move to the all programs menu.
2. Select the Jaws 13.0 folder (or different number), and open it.
3. Select the Explore Jaws folder and open it.
4. Select Explorer My Settings, and open it.
5. Windows Explorer opens, and the current folder is ENG. Press Alt + Up Arrow to move up to a Settings Folder.
6. If you're language is English, there should be an enu folder. Open it.
7. There should be a file with the name Windows Live Mail.JGF. To remove all your manually applied labels for this program, delete this file.

Keystrokes

Main window

Command	Keystroke
Mail options dialog	Ctrl + Shift + O
Switch to Mail view	Ctrl + 1
Switch to Calendar view	Ctrl + 2
Switch to Contact view	Ctrl + 3
Switch to Feeds view	Ctrl + 4
Switch to Newsgroups view	Ctrl + 5

Main window when viewing Mail

Command	Keystroke
Move between Folder tree and Message list	Tab
Cycle round: Folder tree, main view buttons, Search box, and the Message list	F6
Move to Inbox of default account	Ctrl + I
Create new message	Ctrl + N
Create new contact	Ctrl + Shift + C
Select next unread message	Ctrl + U
Reply to selected message	Ctrl + R
Forward selected message	Ctrl + F
Move selected messages to folder	Application key, V
Advanced message search	Ctrl + Shift + F
Send/Receive email messages	F5
Go to Folder dialog	Ctrl + Y

Reading message window

Command	Keystroke
Read message header	Alt + number (1-6)
Reply to message	Ctrl + R
Forward message	Ctrl + F
Delete message	Ctrl + D
Next message	Alt + Right Arrow, or Ctrl + Period
Previous message	Alt + Left Arrow, or Ctrl + Comma
Next unread message	Ctrl + U

New message window

Command	Keystroke
Spell check	F7
Toggle whether Cc and Bcc edit boxes are shown	Alt + B
Send	Ctrl + Enter, or Alt + S
Save as draft	Ctrl + S

Main window when viewing contacts

Command	Keystroke
Move between the Folder tree and the Contact list	Tab
Cycle round: Folder tree, main view buttons, and the Contact list	F6
Create new contact	Ctrl + Shift + C, or Ctrl + N
Create new category	Ctrl + Shift + G

Ribbon when using standard windows keystrokes

Command	Keystroke
Move to the ribbon	Alt
Leave the ribbon	Alt or Esc
Cycle forwards or backwards round: Application menu button, tab names, and help button	Right Arrow or Left Arrow respectively
Cycle forwards or backwards round: Quick Access Toolbar buttons, Application menu button, active tab name, help button, the controls on the active tab	Tab or Shift + Tab respectively
Cycle forwards or backwards round: first Quick Access Toolbar button, customize Quick Access Toolbar button, active tab name, and the first control in each group on the active tab	Ctrl + Right Arrow or Ctrl + Left Arrow respectively
Cycle forwards or backwards round the Quick Access Toolbar buttons	Right Arrow or Left Arrow respectively
Move to Quick Access Toolbar from the first tab name	Up Arrow
Open the Application menu	Alt + F, or Alt, F
Quick Access Toolbar button	Alt, number

Ribbon when using the Jaws Virtual ribbon

Command	Keystroke
Move to the ribbon	Alt
Leave the ribbon	Alt or Esc
Cycle forwards or backwards round: Application menu button, tab names, and help button	Right Arrow or Left Arrow respectively
Open a tab menu	Down Arrow or Enter
Move to Quick Access Toolbar from the first tab name	Up Arrow
Cycle forwards or backwards round the Quick Access Toolbar buttons	Right Arrow or Left Arrow respectively
Open the Application menu	Alt + F
Quick Access Toolbar button	Insert + 3, then Alt + number (Pass through needed because Alt + number used by Jaws in this program)