The upgrade from Netscape Messenger 4.0 to 4.5 shouldn't present any major challenges to users. Some new features have been added, some options have been opened up and, of course, a few of the old features/commands have been moved for no particular reason. The following guide should be helpful in making adjustments.

Screen Layout Changes
Modifying the 3-panel View
Filing Messages
Location of Sent Messages
Drafts and Re-sending Messages
Filing Drafts and Saving messages to a text file
Multiple Recipients
Address Books/Searching for Addresses
Autocomplete Addressing

Screen Layout Changes

The main thing users might find puzzling is the switch from a default 2-panel layout (headers on top, message bodies on the bottom) to a 3-panel layout (folders showing along the left side).

Users can change the screen from 3 panels to 2 panels by clicking on the bar shown in the illustration below. Once the left panel is closed, Messenger will produce a drop box for changing folders (just like the older version provided).
 
 

Modifying the 3-panel View

For the 3-panel view, you can also change whether the panel containing the folder list runs all the way along the left side of the screen or just occupies the top left corner. This modification is done under Preferences.
 
 

To change the preferences: Click on the Edit menu Select Preferences Select Window Settings under Mail and Newsgroups Select the desired layout Click OK

 

Filing Messages

One of the handy aspects of keeping the 3-panel view is that it allows for easy file management. The previous method (still available) was to select the message then click on the File button on the toolbar to move the message into a different folder.

With the list of folders visible on the left now, you can move a message from the current folder to any of your other folders by dragging it.

Note: the list of folders and their locations as shown in the illustration below is not common for Oakton.

 

Location of Sent folder When you send a message, a copy of the message is placed in your Sent folder. The location of the active Sent folder has been changed from under borg.oakton.edu to under Local Mail. If you see no folders under Local Mail, click on the plus sign to make them appear.

 

Drafts & Re-sending Messages In the previous version of Messenger, if you wanted to  re-send a message, you would select the message in your Sent folder then click on File|Edit Message to open it in a composition window.  This won't work anymore.      The current method for re-sending is to: Select the message you wish to edit or re-send Click on the Message menu Select Edit Message as New When the message opens in a composition window, you can edit the body of the message or recipient list before sending (or saving again as a draft).

Filing Drafts and Saving messages to a text file   These actions have changed a bit as well. There is no longer an option on the file menu called "Save as Draft." Both actions cascade off the File menu selection "Save as."  To save a draft of a message so you can work on it later: With the message open, click on the Composition window's File menu Select "Save as" On the next window, select Draft

 
 

To save a message as a text file: Select the header of the message in the main Messenger window Click on the Main Messenger window's File menu Select "Save as" On the next menu, select File You'll be prompted for a file name and a destination directory.

(Note that you can save multiple messages to a single text file at the same time)
 
 
 
 

Multiple Recipients When you receive a message with a large number of recipients, not all the recipients may show at the top of the message's body. To view the complete list, click the down arrow to the right of the last viewable name.

 
 

Address Books/Searching for Addresses

Several changes have been made to the way we search for addresses. If you should need to search for an address for someone from Oakton, you still go into the Address Book. Here you'll find that we no longer have separate directories for Staff, Faculty and Administrators. Search for all employees in the Employee directory.
 
 

As was the case with the previous version of Messenger, there are two ways to go into the Address Book, depending on what you want to accomplish:

When creating a Mailing List for your Personal Address Book, you'll normally go in by clicking on the Communicator menu and selecting Address Book.
When searching for names to include in an actual message, use the Address button on the composition window's toolbar.

To search for names/addresses when composing a message:

1. Select the proper directory
2. Type as much of the person's name as you are sure of
3. The list of possibilities will show up on the right side of the screen
4. Click on the correct person's name/address
5. Click on the To:, CC:, or BCC: button at the bottom of the window
6. Click OK

Autocomplete Addressing
 

Autocomplete addressing fills in remaining characters of an email address as you type it in to the header. It searches through the employee directory looking for matches. If there is more than one match, you will see the message "Multiple Matches Found." This means that you must either keep typing until you type a character that differentiates one address from the other possibilities or press enter and select one of the possibilities from the popup list.

When you type in enough characters to distinguish one address from the others, autocomplete fills in the rest of the address. If this address is incorrect, you may backspace and try another character.

Autocomplete will search addresses in one of two ways:

1. It will check your personal address book first for the closest match and ignore other matches from the employee directory; or
2. It will ignore your personal address book and check only matches in the employee directory

To set your preferences for searching,  Click on the Edit menu and select Preferences Select Addressing under Mail & Newsgroups In the Addressing dialog box, if you wish Autocomplete to only search your personal address book, check the box next to Use the address and do not search in the directory Click OK to save your preference and exit