Module 2: Email Task

Email Questions:-

1. What information about a user’s email, the origin of a message, and the path it took, can you glean from an email message? Firstly from the actual email address itself you could tell if it was from a government institution or home email via the various suffix or email provider. For example a home email may be jim@hotmail.com whereas a university or work email may be jim@uow.edu.au. In various forms of email programs it is also possible to tell if the email was forwarded from another source, the time and date it was sent, the senders email address and the actual path the email took until it reached your own inbox.

2. In what cases would you find it useful to use the ‘cc’, and ‘bcc’ and ‘reply all’ functions of email? These terms all come to light from the days when typewriters and so on were used. The term ‘cc’ means “Carbon Copy” and relates to when carbon paper used to be placed in typewriters to copy messages. ‘cc’ is used when you want to send the same email to more than one person for example as an office memo or in university when the tutor wants the whole class to be made aware of the same information.

The term ‘bcc’ (Blind carbon copy) is quite similar, it is also used to send the same email to more than one user however the recipients are not made aware of who else the email was sent to. This is usefull in maybe any business situation whereby certain people want privacy and do not want other people to view their own email address or come into contact with it.

Finally the ‘reply all’ function is used to send out emails to all recipients on your mailing list. This is useful say if you want to give out information to all your mailing list on your travels or experiences when you are away from home. It is more efficient and quicker than selecting a few people to actually email.

3. In What ways can you ensure that an attachment you send will be easily opened by the receiver? The most obvious way to make sure an attachment is easy to open is to firstly ask the recipient what format they would like the attachment in. If you are sending pictures or photos most computers support jpeg so anything like this will be easy to open. The same goes with Microsoft word documents. Another way to make an attachment easy to open is to label it a good name so that the document is easy to find on the email and the recipient knows exactly what it is. Finally if you also save the attachment as a ‘MIME’ file (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) this may help as well.

4. What sorts of filters or rules do you have set up, and for what purpose? Myself personally I usually only deal with my hotmail account, so the mail filters I have going are the use of the ‘Junk’ email file which filters out emails which aren’t in my contact list. I have also setup my spam filter on the email which asks me before I open an email or attachment from an unknown source. My computers antivirus AVG also helps to scan my mail.

5. How have you organized the folder structure of your email and why? I have organized my own email so that it is easy to access and to understand as I have numerous emails coming in everyday. It is setup so that it is basic and I know exactly what is going on and where all my previous emails are. I have a horizontal toolbar focusing on – compose, delete, junk, mark as unread and a vertical toolbar which has the basic functions – inbox, junk, drafts, sent, deleted. Therefore it is all setup and easy to navigate.