Windows Mail 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

This is a guide to the email program Windows Mail, running under Windows Vista.

Windows Mail is similar in many ways to Outlook Express, which runs under Windows XP. Two of the main changes are:

To open Windows Mail, open the Start menu, then either type in windows mail and press Enter, or press Down Arrow twice, and then press Enter. If no email accounts have been set up in Windows 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.

An email message has to contain 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 headers, and the message itself as the message body.

Main Window

Assuming that the Preview pane is hidden, as described in the Hiding the preview pane section, the Main window contains the following components:

Moving around the main window

Folder list

The Folder list tree view contains two top level folders: Local Folders, and Microsoft Communities. The latter folder is for newsgroups and won't be described in this guide. If you select it, a Windows Mail dialog opens to ask you about subscribing to Newsgroups. If you're not interested, just press Esc.

The Local Folders folder contains the following folders, and if any of these is selected, its messages are shown in the Message list:

If the Local Folders folder is selected, then the next control becomes an unnamed list view, rather than the usual Message list. This unnamed list view lists all the folders contained in the Local Folders folder, and has three columns: Folder, Unread (the number of unread messages in the folder), and Total (the total number of messages in the folder). If you forget the column headings you can use the standard Jaws keystrokes to read them: Insert + Ctrl + 1, Insert + Ctrl + 2, etc. In this list view, if a folder contains any messages, you can move to the Message list for that folder by selecting it and pressing Enter. Note that if you do this for a folder that contains no messages, Windows Mail looses the focus, and you have to use Alt + Tab to get it back.

Selecting a folder

You can always select the Inbox, and move to the Message list by pressing Ctrl + I.

There are two ways of selecting any folder: by navigating the Folder list, or using the Go to Folder dialog, and these are described in the next two sections.

Selecting a folder using the Folder list

Unfortunately, this tree view has the following behaviour which is not particularly helpful for those using only a keyboard. If you select a folder, then if the folder contains any messages, then after a pause of about one second, the focus is automatically moved to the Message list. As a result of this using Up Arrow and Down Arrow to select a folder can be quite frustrating, as you often have to Tab back to the Folder list. It's better to use the first letter or letters of the folder. As long as the letter of letters are unique, then you'll move straight to the folder, and then automatically to the Message list.

As a reminder, these are the standard keystrokes for selecting an item in a tree view:

Selecting a folder using the Go to Folder dialog

To select a folder and move to its messages using the Go to Folder dialog:

  1. Choose Go to Folder on the View menu (Ctrl + Y).
  2. The Go to Folder dialog opens, and the first control is a Folder list tree view. The first time you open the dialog after starting Windows Mail, the Local Folders folder is selected, and closed, and so you have to press Right Arrow to open it.
  3. Select a folder, and press Enter to press the default OK button.
  4. You're returned to the main window, and the focus is the Message list which contains the messages of the selected folder.

Message list

The Message list list view contains the messages in the folder which is selected in the Folder list. You can always easily check which folder is selected by reading the title bar. In addition, you can find out the number of unread messages by reading the status bar (Insert + Page Down).

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:

How to select messages, and to change how they are sorted are described in the next two sections. You can also search for messages, as described in the Searching for messages section later in the guide.

Selecting messages

Sorting of messages

You can change how the messages in a folder are sorted by using the Sort By sub-menu on the View menu. This sub-menu contains two groups of items. The first is the columns by which the messages can be sorted by, and the second group consists of the items Sort Ascending and Sort Descending. One item in each group is checked. To change the sorting, choose an unchecked item in one or both of the groups.

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.

Reading messages

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

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:

When the window opens, Jaws automatically reads the sender and subject of the message, and then 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.

Jaws automatically reads the sender and subject headers at the start of reading a message. If you want to read these again, or any of the other headers, there are two ways of doing this:

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:

Tasks in the Reading message window

Opening an attachment

In the message window:

  1. Move to the Attachments list view either by pressing Insert + A, or by Tabbing to it. If there are an number of attachments in the list view, select the attachment you want to open. Note that unfortunately, the list view is set to have an icon view, so you may have to use the left and right arrow keys and/or the up and down arrow keys to make your selection. 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. Move to the Attachments list view either by pressing Insert + A, or by Tabbing to it. If there are an number of attachments in the list, select the attachment you want to save. Note that unfortunately, the list view is set to have an icon view, so you may have to use the left and right arrow keys and/or the up and down arrow keys to make your selection. Choose Save As from the attachment's context menu.
  2. A Save Attachment As dialog opens, which has the same structure as a standard Vista Save As dialog. To read the path of the current folder, press Alt + D to select the Address bar. In the Folder view list view, you can move up to the folder which contains the current folder by pressing Alt + Up Arrow, and you can move down to a folder by selecting it and then pressing Enter.

To save one or more attachments:

  1. To open the Save Attachments dialog, either choose Save Attachments from the File menu, or move to the Attachments list view and choose Save All from the context menu.
  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. Note that the dialog also contains a Make New Folder button, if needed.
  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.

New message window

The window includes the following components:

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.

Note that if you're using Windows Mail with more than one email account, then before the To edit box, there's a From combo box, which is initially set to your default account, but which you can change to send messages from your other accounts.

Ways of composing messages

Write 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 contact group, and then press Tab to move to the next control.
  3. In the Cc edit box, type in one or more email address, contact, or contact group if required, and then Tab to the next control.
  4. In the Subject edit box, type in a subject of the message, and then Tab to the next control.
  5. When Jaws moves to the message body edit box, it just says edit. Type in your message.
  6. To send the message, choose Send Message from the File menu (Alt + S). Alternatively, to save the message to the Drafts folder, choose Save from the File menu (Ctrl + S).

Replying to a message

  1. You can reply to either to a message selected in the Message list in the main window, or to a message which has been opened in it's own message window. In either case choose Reply to Sender on the Message menu (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 and email address 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, choose Send Message from the the File menu (Alt + S).

Forwarding a message

  1. You can forward either a message selected in the Message list in the main window, or a message which has been opened in it's own message window. In either case choose Forward from the Message menu (Ctrl + F).
  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, choose Send Message from the the File menu (Alt + S).

Composing a message from your Contacts folder

You can also compose a message from your Contacts folder, as described in the Windows contacts section.

Auto-completion of names and addresses

Auto-complete can complete both email addresses, and names of contacts and contact groups if you've already sent them at least one message. Auto-complete is on by default, and can be switched on and off using the “Automatically complete e-mail addresses when composing” check box on the Send page of the Options dialog.

As you start typing in characters, auto-complete tries to complete the email address or name, and Jaws reads what has been completed. If initially, the completed address or name is not the one you want, just carry on typing characters until it is. As soon as it completes correctly, you can press either Tab which confirms the auto-complete and moves you to the next control, or Enter which also confirms the auto-complete, but leaves you in the edit box so that you can add another name or address. In both cases, a semi-colon is added after the text, so there's no need to add another semi-colon if you typing in another name or address.

For individual recipients the text that is completed takes the form of either a name or an email address, followed by an email address in angle brackets. Jaws reads the opening and closing angle brackets as less and greater. This completed text behaves as a single character for the purposes of editing.

Auto-complete uses the last 29 addresses to do its completion. Unfortunately this will include any incorrect addresses that you've used, and the only way of removing on of these is either to wait till it's been replaced by a good address or edit the registry.

Completion of names and addresses using Check Names

An alternate to auto-complete is to use Check Names. This uses the names and email addresses of your Contacts and the names of Contact Groups, rather than the most recent names and addresses which have been used.

To use Check Names, type in one or more names or the first characters of names that make up the full name or address of a Contact, or the name of a Contact group, and then choose Check Names on the Tools menu (Ctrl + K). What happens next depends on the number of matches:

Adding attachments

  1. Choose File Attachment from the Insert menu.
  2. An Open dialog opens which has the same structure as the standard Vista Open dialog. To read the path of the current folder, press Alt + D to select the Address bar. In the Folder view list view, you can move up to the folder which contains the current folder by pressing Alt + Up Arrow, and you can move down to a folder by selecting it and then pressing Enter. 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 view between the Subject and message body edit boxes.

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

Checking spelling

To check the spelling of the message body, choose Spelling from the Tools menu (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 Options dialog which is opened from the Tools menu in the main window.

Note that the first time you try and run the spell checker, you might get a Spelling dialog opening and telling you that this language is no longer available for spell checking. This is a bug. To fix it, in the main window, open the Options dialog on the Tools menu. Move to the Spelling page, and find the Language combo box, which will probably be set to the correct language. Select a different language, and then select the correct language again. Finally, press the OK button.

The spelling dialog contains the following controls:

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. If you press Insert + C then Jaws reads the line of the message which contains the error. The focus is the Change To edit box, and as long as there are suggested alternatives, then the default button is Change. Common actions include:

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.

Windows Contacts

Windows 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 Contact Groups, which are just collections of Contacts, and are the equivalent of Address lists or Mailing lists in other email programs. If you regularly send a message to a fixed group of people, then it saves time to create a Contact Group. Then you can send a message to all of them just by using the name of the the Contact Group.

These Contacts and Contact Groups are stored in your Contacts folder, which is one of the sub-folders of your personal folder, just like Documents, Downloads, Music, etc. This means that you can access you Contacts independently of Windows Mail.

The following sections describe the Contacts folder, creating and using Contacts, creating and using Contact Groups, and finally searching for Contacts.

Contacts folder

You view and edit the Contacts and Contact Groups in your Contacts folder using Windows Explorer, just like other folders. There are a number of ways of opening this folder, including:

There are a number of important customizations for the Contacts folder: hiding the preview pane so that Windows Explorer does not freeze; changing the view of the Folder view from Tiles, and making sure that file extensions aren't hidden. These are described in the Customizing the contacts folder section which is part of the Customizing Windows Mail section.

The Contacts folder can contain the following objects:

You can use the first letter or letters of a Contact or Contract group to quickly find them. In addition, you can search for Contacts and Contacts groups using Window Explorer's search box, as described in the Searching for Contacts section below.

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 whenever you reply to a message, the sender of the message is automatically added to your Contacts. This option can be set on the Send page of the Options dialog, where there's a check box “Automatically put people I reply to in my Contacts list”, which is checked by default.

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:

  1. Select the message in the Message list.
  2. Open its context menu, and choose “Add Sender to Contacts”

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 either in the Windows Mail main window, or the Contacts folder.

  1. On the File menu, open the New sub-menu, and choose Contact.
  2. A Properties dialog opens. This is a multi-page dialog, and it opens on the Name and E-mail page, which is described in detail in the Editing contacts section below. However, the only information you'll often want to enter is the contact's first and last names and their email address, and this is described in the following steps.
  3. The first edit box in the dialog box is for the person's first name. Type this in, and then press Tab twice to move to the Last edit box.
  4. Type in the person's last name, and then press Tab four times to move to the E-mail addresses edit box.
  5. Type in the person's e-mail address, and then press Enter which presses the Add button which is next to the edit box, and is temporarily the default button. The e-mail address is added to a list of e-mail addresses for this person, and the focus remains in the E-mail addresses edit box. Normally, you'll only add one e-mail address for a person, but you can add more.
  6. Finally, press Enter to press the default OK button of the dialog box.

Sending messages using your contacts

Two ways of using your Contacts the send messages are described in the next sections.

Entering names rather than email addresses

In the To, Cc, and Bcc edit boxes in a New message window you can use the names of Contacts as well as email addresses to specify the recipients of a message.

Using your Contacts folder

  1. In your Contacts folder, select one or more contacts.
  2. Open their context menu, then open the Action sub-menu (access key A), and then press Enter to choose the first menu item which is Send E-mail.
  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.

If you've stored more than one email address for a Contact, then the above method uses the preferred email address (see the next section for more details). To send a message to a Contact using an address which isn't their preferred email address, then in the above method, on the Action sub-menu open the Send E-mail To sub-menu, and choose an email address.

Editing Contacts

To edit a Contact in your Contacts folder, select it and press Enter. A Properties dialog for the Contact opens, and you can then change and add information in this dialog.

The Contact properties dialog is a multi-page dialog, and the pages cover different areas of information about the contact. For the purposes of email, the only page that matters is the Name and E-mail page, and the dialog opens on this page when you create or edit a contact. The title of the dialog box is the Full Name of the contact, followed by the word Properties.

Although you'll often have only a single email address for a contact, you can store more then one address. One of the addresses is set as the preferred address. This is the address which is used by default when you send a message to the Contact, but you can use the other addresses as described in the previous section. Because of the ability to store multiple email addresses, the Name and E-mail page contains a number of controls to enter and edit these addresses, rather than just a single edit box for a single email address.

The Name and E-mail page of the dialog contains the following controls:

Creating a new contact group

The command to create a new Contact Group is available on the toolbar, but not on any of the menus. So to create a new Contact group:

  1. Tab to the Organize button, which is the first control on the Toolbar.
  2. Press Right Arrow until you get to the New Contact Group button, and then press it.
  3. A Contact Group Properties dialog opens. This is a two page dialog, and it opens on the Contact Group page, which is described in detail in the Editing Contact Groups section below. However, the following steps describe how to name the group and add existing contacts.
  4. Type a name for the group into the Group Name edit box.
  5. To add existing Contacts to the group, Tab to the Add to Contact Group button, and press it.
  6. An Add Members to Contract Group dialog opens, which has a similar layout to the standard Vista Open dialog. By default the view of the Folder view is Tiles, so the first time you use this dialog it's worth setting the view to List. To do this, press Shift + Tab twice to move to the Folder view, but do not select any files. Open the context menu, then open the View sub-menu, and choose List.
  7. In the Folder view, select one or more Contacts or Contact Groups, and then press Enter to press the default Add button.
  8. You're returned to the Contact Group Properties dialog, where the focus is the Add to Contact Group button. Because the focus is a button, you can't just press Enter to press the default OK button. Instead, either Tab all the way to the OK button and press it, or just Tab to a control which isn't a button or a link, and then press Enter.

Sending messages using your contact groups

In a similar manner to using contacts, you can send messages using your contact groups either in a New message window, or from your Contacts folder.

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

Alternatively, in your Contacts folder:

  1. Select a Contact group. (In fact you can select more than one contact group, and contacts as well.)
  2. Open the context menu, then open the Action sub-menu (access key A), and then press Enter to choose the first menu item which is Send E-mail.
  3. A New Message window opens. All the contacts in the contacts group are already entered in the To edit box, and the focus is at the end of the Edit box.

Editing Contact Groups

To edit a Contact Group in your Contacts folder, select it and press Enter. A Properties dialog for the Contact Group opens, and you can then change and add information in this dialog.

The Contact group properties dialog is used both for creating and editing contact groups. The dialog has two pages: Contact Group and Contact Group details. The latter contains controls for optional data that you might want to give about the group. The controls on the Contact Group page are:

Searching for Contacts

If you have a large number of Contacts and/or Contact Groups, then you can quickly find one using the Search box which is always available in Windows Explorer.

  1. Press Ctrl + E to move to the Search box.
  2. Type in one or more search terms. Note that if there is any existing text, this is not selected, and the current character is the blank character immediately after the text. If you press Esc then this clears all text and moves you to the Folder view.
  3. Press Down Arrow to move to the Folder View, whose contents have now been filtered.

Notes on matching

Unwanted messages

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

The following sections give more details of these methods of protection and their options. Most of these options are set in the Junk E-mail options dialog, which can be opened from the Tools menu in the main window, and which contains the pages: Options, Safe Senders, Blocked Senders, International, and Phishing.

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:

You can view and edit the Blocked Senders list on the Blocked Senders page of the Junk E-mail Options dialog, which you can open on the Tools Menu. This page contains a list box containing blocked senders, and Add, Edit, and Remove buttons.

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 either junk or a phishing 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 either Tab to the Close button, or just press Esc.

The Options page of the Junk E-mail Options dialog contains two controls:

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:

The Safe Senders page of the Junk E-mail Options dialog contains the following controls:

Phishing filter

If the Phishing filter detects a phishing email then:

The Phishing page of the Junk E-mail options dialog contains two check boxes:

Searching for messages

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

Simple search

You can search for messages in the Message list using the Search edit box. Because the results of the search are also shown in the Message list, you can also think of this operation as filtering the contents of the Message list.

  1. Press Ctrl + E to move 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 headers, and the message body.
  3. Press Down Arrow to move to the Message list which contains the results of the search. Note that if there are no results, then Jaws reads the contents of the edit box, and the edit box retains the focus.

Additional notes:

More advanced search

  1. Open the Edit menu, then the Find sub-menu, 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 shortcut 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:

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. Open the File menu, then the New sub-menu, and choose Folder.
  2. In the Create Folder dialog, type a name for the new folder, and then Tab to the next control.
  3. In the Folder list tree view, select the folder in which to create the new folder. Often, the selected folder will be the Local Folders folder, so that the new folder is at the same level as the standard folders such as the Inbox. Then press Enter to press the default OK button.

Moving messages to a folder

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 shortcut menu of the selected message or messages (Ctrl + Shift + V).
  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 to move the message:

  1. Choose Move to folder from the File menu.
  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.

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.

You can create a rule either from scratch, or base it on an existing message. Both of these methods use the New Mail Rule dialog.

The Message Rules dialog is used both for managing message rules, and for creating rules from scratch 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.

To open the Message Rules dialog on the Mail Rules page: in the Windows Mail window open the Tools menu, then open the Message Rules sub-menu and choose Mail. 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, the Message rules dialog, and creating a rule from a message.

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 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:

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:

If you read the description line by line then if the line contains a phrase that can be edited, then Jaws reads the line, and then repeats the phrase which can be edited. The phrase is automatically selected, and you can edit it by pressing Enter, which opens an appropriate dialog which allows you to edit it.

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

In addition, 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 ands 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:

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:

As mentioned above, if you press the Contacts button, a Rule Addresses dialog opens. In this dialog:

  1. Tab to the Address list list view, and select one or more contacts.
  2. Press Enter to press the temporary default button which adds the addresses to a Rule addresses list view.
  3. Press Enter again to press the default OK button.

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:

Creating a rule from a message

A quick way of creating a new rule in which the condition is that it comes from a certain person is to use the Create Rule from Message command, which is on the Message menu.

This command opens a New Mail Rule dialog, which is described above in the New Mail Rule dialog section above. The condition “Where the From line contains people” is already checked, and in the Rule Description edit box, the phrase “contains people” has been edited so that it contains the address of the sender of the message.

Email accounts

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

Internet Accounts dialog

In the Internet Accounts dialog you can add and manage email accounts. To open this dialog, choose Accounts on the Tools menu in the main window.

The dialog contains an accounts list view, followed by the buttons: Add, Remove, Properties, Set as Default, Import, Export, and Set Order. The Add button starts a wizard to add a new account, and this is described in detail in the next section.

The accounts list view is divided into three groups by the headings: Mail, News, and Directory service. The first item in the list view is the Mail heading, followed by your email accounts. Unfortunately there are a few problems both with the keyboard navigation and with how Jaws reads this list view:

Many people use Windows Mail with a single email account, but you can use Windows Mail with as many accounts as you want. One account is set as your default account, and this is used by default when you send a message.

Adding an email account

Adding an email account consists of either one or two stages. The first is to use a wizard which guides you through entering information which is needed to set up all email accounts. For some accounts, this may be all that's required, but for others additional settings are required, and you then have to open the account's properties to make those settings, guided by information supplied by the account provider.

To start the wizard to add an account, press the Add button. Before describing the individual pages of the wizard, here's some general information:

The wizard to add an account consists of the following pages:

If additional settings are required by the account provider, with the new account still selected in the list view, press the Properties button to open the Properties dialog for the account, and make any necessary settings.

Backing up messages and contacts

If you use a backup or disk-imaging program, you may have already arranged for your messages and Contacts to be backup up regularly. The following sections describe how to backup and restore them manually. If it would be a major problem if you lost your messages and/or contacts, make sure you back them up regularly.

Backing up messages

One way of backing up your messages is to use the Windows Mail Export wizard. This needs an empty folder into which it puts the backed up folders and messages. So if you want to back up messages to a CD, you first have to back up to a temporary folder, and then copy this folder to a CD. In theory, you should be able to back up directly to an empty folder on a USB flash drive, but there appears to be a bug in Vista which means you can't.

The following steps describe how to back up your messages to a temporary new folder in your Documents folder, and then copy this folder to an external drive or CD.

  1. Open the File menu, then open the Export sub-menu, and choose Messages.
  2. A Windows Mail Export wizard opens. In the list box for selecting the export format, select Microsoft Windows Mail, then press Tab to move to the Next button and press it.
  3. There are two controls for selecting a folder for the exported messages: a read-only edit box which contains the path of the folder after you've selected it, and a Browse button. Tab to the Browse button, and press it.
  4. A dialog with the title “Select the location to which you want to export the e-mail messages” opens. This has a structure similar to the standard Vista open dialog. To check the current folder, press Alt + D.
  5. If you aren't in your Documents folder, a couple of ways of getting there are:
    • Tab to the Folder view list view. You can move up the the folder which contains the current folder by pressing Alt + Up Arrow, and you can move down to a folder by selecting it and then pressing Enter.
    • Tab to the list of favorite links. Unfortunately Jaws does not read the name of this list, but it's two controls after the search box. If you come across “show hidden items” in this list, press Tab to the next control which will probably be the collapse folders button, but which Jaws may read as Explorer pane. Press Spacebar to collapse the folders, and then Shift + Tab to move back to the favorite links which should all now be visible.
  6. To create a new folder in your documents folder, in the Folder view with no items selected, open the context menu, then open the New sub-menu, and choose Folder. Type a name for the folder, and press Enter. Note that if an item is selected in the Folder view, then you can deselect it by pressing Ctrl + Spacebar.
  7. With the new folder still selected, Tab to the Select Folder button, and press it.
  8. You're returned to the Windows Mail Export dialog, and the focus is still the Browse button. If you want to check the folder selected, you can move back to the edit box which is the previous control. Tab to the Next button and press it.
  9. To select the message folders to export there's a pair of radio buttons: All folders and Selected folders. If you choose the latter, then Tab to the next control and select the folders. Tab to the Next button and press it.
  10. A progress bar appears, and then you're taken to the final page of the wizard, which tells you that your messages were exported in the Windows Mail format. Press the Finish button.
  11. To copy the temporary folder to an external drive or CD, Open Windows Explorer to show the contents of your Documents folder. (For example, open the start menu, press Tab, then press D, then press Enter.) Select the temporary folder, open its context menu, then open the Sent To sub-menu, and choose either an external drive or a DVD/CD drive.
  12. Delete the temporary folder in your Documents folder.

Restoring messages

To restore messages which you've backed up using the Windows Mail Export wizard, as described in the previous section, you use the Windows Mail Import wizard, which is very similar.

  1. Open the File menu, open the Import sub-menu, and choose Messages.
  2. The Windows Mail Import wizard opens. In the list box for selecting the format you want to import select Microsoft Windows Mail 7, then Tab to the Next button and press it.
  3. There are two controls for selecting the folder which contains the messages which you want to import: a read-only edit box which contains the path of the folder after you've selected it, and a Browse button. Tab to the Browse button, and press it.
  4. A dialog box with the title “Select the location of the e-mail messages that you want to import” opens, and it has a similar structure to the standard Vista open dialog. In the Folder view navigate to and select the folder, and then Tab to the Select Folder button and press it.
  5. You're returned to the Windows Mail Import dialog, and the focus is still the Browse button. If you want to check the folder selected, you can move back to the edit box which is the previous control. Tab to the Next button and press it.
  6. To select the message folders to import there's a pair of radio buttons: All folders and Selected folders. If you choose the latter, then Tab to the next control and select the folders. Tab to the Next button and press it.
  7. A progress bar appears, and then you're taken to the final page of the wizard, which tells you that your messages were imported in the Windows Mail 7 format. Press the Finish button.
  8. In the Folder list, there is now an Imported Folder folder, which contains all the folders that you imported. From these folders you can move the messages which you lost to your normal set of folders. You can then delete the Imported folder.

Backing up and restoring contacts

Because both Contacts and Contact Groups are stored as individual files in your Contacts folder, you can back them up simply by copying your Contacts folder to an external drive or CD

To restore any lost Contacts or Contact Groups, just copy them back to your Contacts folder.

Customizing Windows Mail

Hiding the preview pane

If the preview pane is shown in the main window, then as you Tab round the controls, you also have to Tab through any links in the message in the preview pane. To hide the preview pane, and simplify the navigation of the main window:

  1. Choose Layout on the View menu.
  2. The Windows Layout Properties dialog opens. Tab to the Show preview pane check box, uncheck it, and then press Enter to press the default OK button.

Options dialog

The Options dialog can be opened from the Tools menu. It's a multi-page dialog, and it contains most of the options for customizing Windows 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 page

Spelling page

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

Customizing the Contacts folder

Hiding the Preview pane so that Windows Explorer doesn't freeze

When Windows Explorer is displaying the Contacts folder, if the Preview pane is shown, then there's a bug in Jaws which causes Windows Explorer to hang/freeze when you move through the contacts in the Folder view. There are two ways of hiding the preview pane. The first is to hide the preview pane and the details pane for all folders:

  1. Choose Folder Options on the Tools menu.
  2. The Folder Options dialog opens on the General page, and first control is a Tasks group of radio buttons. Select the Use Windows classic folders radio button, and then press Enter to press the default OK button.

The second way is to hide the preview pane just for folders which contain contacts:

  1. Tab to the Organize button, which is the first control on the toolbar, and press it.
  2. The Organize menu opens. Open the Layout sub-menu, and move to Preview Pane. If this is checked, then press Enter which changes it to unchecked and closes the Organise menu.

Setting the view of the Folder view to list or details

By default, the view of the Folder view is set to Tiles. So that you can navigate all your contacts using the up and down arrow keys, change the view to either List or Details by choosing one of these from the View menu. After you've done this, it's best to apply this view to all folders which contain contacts, so that if you either search your Contacts or create folders in the Contacts folder, then the Folder view will also have this view. To do this:

  1. Choose Folder Options on the Tools Menu.
  2. The Folder Options dialog opens. Move to the View page of this dialog. The first control on this page is the Apply to Folders button. Press it.
  3. A Folder views dialog opens, asking whether you want to do this. Press Enter to press the Yes button.
  4. You're returned to the Folder Options dialog. Tab to the OK button, and press it.

Showing extensions

Note that if Jaws doesn't read the file extensions like .contact, this means that the option to hide extensions in your folder options is switched on. To switch it off so that Jaws reads the file extension, and so you then know the type of file:

  1. Open the Folder Options dialog on the Tools menu.
  2. Move to the View page, and then to the tree view on that page
  3. In the tree view, find the “Hide extensions for known file types”. If it's ON, then press Spacebar to switch it OFF.
  4. Tab to the OK button, and press it.

Keystrokes

Main window

Command Keystrokes
Move to Inbox Ctrl + I
Go to Folder Ctrl + Y
Move between Folder list and Message list Tab, or Shift + Tab
Create new message Ctrl + N
Windows Contacts 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 Ctrl + Shift + V
Simple message search Ctrl + E
Advanced message search Ctrl + Shift + F

Reading message window

Command Keystrokes
Read header Alt + 1, Alt + 2, ... Alt + 6
Move to Attachments list view Insert + A
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 Keystrokes
Send Alt + S
Save as draft Ctrl + S
Spell check F7
Read line containing spelling error, when in the Spelling dialog Insert + C
Show/Hide Bcc edit box Alt + B