How to use the Windows Mail email client

Windows Mail includes a tool called Instant Search. Much like Vista’s Windows Search, this can be used to hunt down specific emails by typing in keywords. The Instant Search box is located in the top-right of the window; just type in the word or words you are looking for and press Enter. To perform more precise searches, such as those limited to specific dates or from specific people, the Find Message tool offers more options and can be accessed by clicking on the Edit menu, selecting Find, then Message.

Protection from potentially dangerous (phishing) emails and spam has also been improved with Windows Mail. To view and change the settings, click on Tools, then Junk E-mail Options. Use the Options tab to specify the overall junk email policy. There are four settings available, starting with No Automatic Filtering, which allows all emails through except those that come from blocked senders (addresses can be added to this list via the Blocked Senders tab). The highest setting, Safe List Only, only allows emails from predefined addresses. However, we would recommend starting with the Low setting. If junk email still gets through, try the High setting, but be sure to regularly check the Junk Email folder for genuine mail misidentified as junk.

Staying with the security settings, Windows Mail also features built-in protection from phishing emails (malicious messages that try to get the reader to divulge personal information). To check the current setting, click on the Phishing tab. If the ‘Protect my inbox from…’ box is ticked, any suspected phishing emails will be flagged as such. However, they will still appear in the email inbox. To stop them from reaching the inbox, tick the ‘Move phishing E-mail to the Junk Mail folder’ option as well. Click OK when finished.

Email signatures add a professional touch to messages. To set one up in Windows Mail, click on the Tools menu and select Options. From the list of tabs at the top, click on Signatures and you will see a variety of options. Click the New button then, in the Edit Signature Text box, type some text to serve as your signature. Alternatively, import the signature text from a file: to do this, click on the File option, then select Browse and locate the file that holds the signature text. At the top of the Signatures window, use the tickbox to specify whether the signature should be automatically applied to all emails.

Now we need to tell Windows Mail what to do when it receives an email. In the Actions section, scroll down and select the Reply with message option. In the third section, labelled Rule Description, click on the ‘message’ link (this will be blue and underlined). In the window that appears, use the dropdown menu located just above the Open button to change the document type to Text, then browse to where you saved the ‘response.txt’ file from the previous step and double-click it. The New Mail Rule window will reappear, and all that remains is to give the rule a name and click OK. Don’t forget to switch the auto-responder rule off upon your return.

Windows Mail offers the option to set up an ‘auto-responder’ to tell people you are not able to reply to emails. First, use the Windows Notepad program to create the auto response message and save it (use a file name like ‘response.txt’). Now, from within Windows Mail, click on the Tools menu, Message Rules and then Mail: the New Mail Rule window will appear. The first stage is to tell Windows Mail that the rule should apply to all incoming emails. So, in the Conditions section, scroll down to the bottom and select the ‘For all messages’ option.