Introduction

Important Notes:

• Always take the time to log off when you're done with your email. If you walk away without logging off, the next person will have access to your mail.
• The AOL default browser may not be fully compatible with WebMail. For more information see IT's AOL user notes.
• Click on a  and you will get context-sensitive information about whatever action you are doing at the time.

Using IMP WebMail: Log In Screen

1. Choose and click on your user role: Either Student or Faculty, Staff, Administrator, Trustee.
2. The login screen will appear. Type in your regular Oakton network login ID in the username field.
3. Type your regular Oakton password in the password field.
4. Click the log in button

The IMP Main Screen

The Menu Bar contains several important elements and links. Clicking on any of these will either alter the contents of area to the right of the menu bar where the Inbox initially shows or float a second, active window over the original window.

• Use the folder drop menu to move between your mail folders (Inbox, Trash, Drafts, etc.)
• Click on the INBOX link at any time to return to your email Inbox.
• Click on Compose to Create an outgoing message.
• Click on Address Books to access the Oakton email address lookup and your personal addresses.
• Click on Folders to subscribe to your existing Oakton mail folders (folders you have created) or to create new folders.
• Click on Preferences to set up your signature file, your name as it appears in headers, and how you wish to manage trash.
• Click on Change Password to change your password for all Oakton network access.
• Click on Logout to exit IMP WebMail (this does not close the browser or impact your use of the computer in any other way)

Managing the Inbox

You can sort mail by clicking on any of the column headers: DATE, FROM, SUBJECT, SIZE. Each of these column headers has a small arrow next to it indicating whether the messages have been sorted in ascending or desending order. Click the arrow to reverse the order.

Only 20 messages will show at a time in the browser window. You can move to the next or previous page's worth of messages by clicking on the backward or forward arrows (center top of Inbox frame).

Checkboxes and Icons

Each message header in the inbox may have several icons to its left: 

• Checkbox: Use this to select the message for purposes of deleting it or moving it to another folder
• Envelope: Indicates a new message
• Paperclip: Indicates the message has an attachment.
• Trashcan: Message has been marked deleted
• Checkmark: Message has been replied to

To open and read a message, left-click on the header showing in the inbox. The message you selected will show in place of the Inbox.
 
 

After opening the message, you will see several clickable commands running above the message headers.

With these commands you can

• Click Move or Copy (upper right) to save the message to a different email folder. Select the desired folder from the drop menu.
• Click Move to Trash to delete the message
• Click Reply or Reply to All to respond to the sender. Reply to All will cc your response to all the original recipients. See also: Composing Messages
• Click Forward to send the message to someone else. See also: Composing Messages
• Click Bounce to redirect the message to someone else (the recipient will see the original sender's name in the inbox rather than the person who "bounced" it. The "bouncer" is listed only in the header.)
• Click Resume to open the message in a compose window as if it were a new message (similar to Netscape's Edit Message As New command) See also: Composing Messages
• Click Save As to save a copy of the message to a local drive as a text file
• Click Back to Inbox to close the message window and re-open the Inbox window
• Click the left or right Arrows to open the previous or next message in your Inbox

Composing Messages (New, Reply, Forward, Resume)

The composition window has the basic components of most any email program equivalent screen and they function the same way. A quick overview:

• The "To:," "Cc:," and "Bcc" fields: Separate multiple addresses in each field by commas. Example: jsmith@123.com,doe@456.org
• Click on Address Books to search for addresses. You can search the Oakton directory or access addresses you've saved under Contacts. See also The Address Book.
• Clicking "Save Draft" saves the message to your Drafts folder on borg.oakton.edu. You can access this draft later to continue working on it.
• Attach files by either typing in the path and filename or clicking the Browse button and browsing your local folders to the file. After you locate the desired file, click the Attach button. This will alter the Composition window to show an additional entry for attachments. Repeat the process for each desired attachment. If you wish to delete one or more of the attachments you've selected, check the box next to the filename(s) and click Remove Attachments.
• IMP provides a rudimentary "Spellcheck" feature. Click Spellcheck and a browser window will appear showing the full message you have typed. Misspelled words will be highlighted in red but no suggestions for correcting will be provided. When finished checking spelling, close the browser window.

IMP is limited in its handling of HTML-formatted mail. (Messenger uses HTML code to add formatting like Bold/Size/Typeface/etc.)

• IMP cannot format new messages with HTML. You can only write in plain text.
• Messages received with HTML formatting and embedded images will display much as they would in Messenger.
• Forwarding or a replying to a HTML-formatted message will give the recipient a message that includes visible HTML commands and thus be difficult to read.

The Address Book

LDAP Address Search

To search for Oakton addresses:

1. Select a directory from the directory drop menu
2. Select email address or name (full, first, or last) from the second drop menu
3. Select contains, begins with or ends with from the third drop menu
4. Type the data to be searched for in the open field
5. Click Start Search

The drop menu will contain all possible matches found from your search. After picking one, you may click on one of the four buttons to insert the result into the header of the message (if you opened Address Book from the Menu Bar, clicking the To/Cc/Bcc buttons will launch a new composition window) or add the result to your Contacts file. When you click Insert into Contacts, this only places the search results into the fields in the Contacts section. To save the results into your contact file, go to the Contacts area and click Add Contact.

Contacts

Contacts is like Netscape Messenger's Personal Address Book. Here you can store names and addresses of people (in and out of Oakton) you frequently correspond with.

If you searched for an address and clicked Insert into Contacts, the results will show in the Contact fields. Click Add Contact to add the address to your contact file.

Search contacts by using the drop menu and selecting the desired name/address from the list. Information about the person will show in the Address, Nickname, and Fullname fields. With the info showing in these fields you may now:

• Insert into the headers of a message
• Delete the contact
• Update the information about the contact

To import address book entries from Netscape Messenger:

1. Export the addresses from the Messenger address book in CSV format. More information on exporting addresses from Netscape Messenger.
2. Click on the browse button and select the exported CSV file.
3. Press the Import button.

Preferences

• Set up your signature file. Your signature file in Messenger does not transfer to IMP and vice versa. You need to create one in each mail program.
• Edit your Full Name for how it will show in the headers of people receiving messages from you. Otherwise messages will show only your email address.
• Change the language used on the program's interface (Choisissez votre langue)
• Set how messages will be deleted.