FOR FROSH - Webmail Tips

Here are a few tips for using the Williams Webmail system, put on Willipedia thanks to an anonymous '10:

1. Expand beyond your inbox. You can add additional folders beyond the Inbox, Drafts, Sent, and Trash folders. My additional folders include one for the Daily Messages, one for blog comment notifications, one for Outling Club messages, and more for other groups. You make the new folders by clicking on New > Folder while in the "My Folders" pane. You can put messages into these folders using...

2. Message Filters. For example, I have my filters set to send anything with "Daily Messages" in the title to the folder I made for them. You can also automatically forward messages from certain people to another e-mail address as well. You do this by....

3. Changing your options. Options are found on the top right of webmail, next to "Help" and "Sign Out." Under "personal," you can change the name that appears in the "From" field, so that I know that Meredith Kineid is sending me an e-mail, and not mok3@williams.edu. Message filters are under mail. Some other options to change:

4. More messages per page. Under Settings > Display; mine is set for 50. You also want to enable the message pane but disable HTML.

5. Save original messages under your reply. Otherwise, I'm not sure what question of mine you're responding to, especially if its been a few days. Under Composing > Format > Reply.

6. If you want, forward all messages to another account. Under forwarding. Plenty of people put everything on GMail. Your email will often still be accessible even if the Williams webmail interface is inaccessible, as webmail goes down more frequently than the entire email system. If you choose to forward, be sure to configure GMail to send email under the guise of your Williams account ("Send mail as" in "Accounts and Import" within GMail's settings.)

7. Use the search. Webmail search is fast and easy to use - it's my quickest way of finding old messages. (I save everything, so I need search to look through all 7999 messages in my inbox or >2000 messages in the folders.)

8. Send messages with bolding/italics, etc, with HTML. In the compose window, click "HTML Text" in the top right. The button in the right of the toolbar is for making links.

And lastly, if you don't have time to reply to e-mails, don't open them. Otherwise, you forget to reply because of the volume of messages you get, and whoever sent you the message is left in the dark. The other thing to take away from this is that if people forget to reply to your e-mail, don't be offended.