Gallery: Filter out spam

The main program screen will launch. The first thing to do is set up your email accounts. You will need to know your account’s Pop3 server, username and password. If you don’t know these, find them in your existing email program by opening the Tools menu and selecting Accounts in most cases. Once you’ve jotted down these details, switch back to Poptray and select the Accounts tab. Click Add Account and fill in the details: type a descriptive name for the account into the Name box; enter your Pop3 server name in the Server box, your username under Login and your email password under Password.

Pick a colour from the dropdown menu to identify the email account and then click Save Account to store the details. Now check that your details have been correctly entered by clicking Test Account: after a short time a message should appear saying that the login was OK along with the number of messages – if any – that are on the email server waiting to be downloaded to the PC. Click OK to close this dialogue box – if you want to check other email accounts, add them by clicking Add Account and following the same procedure as before.

Click the Mail tab. Your email accounts will be listed as a series of tabs along the top. By default, Poptray will check for new mail every five minutes, or you can check manually by either clicking the Check Now button (to check all accounts), or Check to preview the currently selected account only. Notice that the number of new messages for each account appears next to its name – switch tabs to view different accounts. You’ll also see a number flash over the program’s envelope icon, giving you an at-a-glance view of how many messages are waiting to be downloaded.

Double-click an individual message to preview its contents – by default the body is shown, while attachments are listed separately (to save one to the Windows Desktop, right-click it, but remember to scan it with your security software before attempting to open it). Click OK to close the preview. Click Delete to remove the message from the server without ever downloading it – Delete Spam will remove all messages automatically flagged as spam (see the next step). Click Reply to set up a reply to the message using your usual email program without having to download the message itself.

Right-click a message or group of selected messages and choose from Spam, Rules or Lists to start automatically flagging unwanted messages. Spam marks the selected message(s), so they can all be quickly deleted with the delete button. Rules enables you to mark all future emails from the same people or containing the same subject as spam. Use Lists to create blacklists of unwanted email addresses and white lists of safe email addresses to override all other rules.

Right-click a message or group of selected messages and choose from Spam, Rules or Lists to start automatically flagging unwanted messages. Spam marks the selected message(s), so they can all be quickly deleted with the delete button. Rules enables you to mark all future emails from the same people or containing the same subject as spam. Use Lists to create blacklists of unwanted email addresses and white lists of safe email addresses to override all other rules.