Make the most of your email account

There are two broad categories of email. With webmail, such as Hotmail and Google Mail, once you’ve signed up all you need is a web browser to send and read mail from any computer connected to the internet. The second category is client-based services for which a program like Outlook Express is required to handle the sending and receiving of messages.While webmail services are convenient, a client-based email account offers more power and flexibility, and this Workshop tells you how to tap some of the extra features they provide. It assumes you already have a client-based email account and know how to send and receive simple messages using Outlook Express or one of its newer variants: Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail.More email ideas It’s possible to include a signature in your messages. This is not a graphical representation of your real signature but a bit of text of your choosing that is appended to every email. To create a signature, click on the Tools menu, followed by Options. Select the Signatures tab and click the New button. Type a signature in the Edit Signature section, tick the ‘Add signatures to all outgoing messages’ option, then click OK.Another neat trick is to send friends or contacts copies of web pages that you think they might be interested in. To do this, click the Tools menu, pick Options and select the Security tab. Select Internet Zone as the security zone and click OK. Using Internet Explorer (and not any other web browser), display the page you want to send and click on the File menu. Click Send, then Page By E-mail. This opens your email program and displays the web page: all you need do is add the address of the recipient.