10 Minute Guide to Lotus Notes Mail 4.5 - 6 - Creating Mail In this lesson, you learn how to create and address a mail message. You can start a mail message from several places in Lotus Notes. If you are on the workspace, choose Create, Mail, Memo or click the Create Mail Memo SmartIcon. If you are on the workspace and you have selected your Mail database icon, choose Create, Memo. If you have opened the Mail database and can see the Action bar, click the New Memo button. Click the Mail icon on the status bar and choose Create Memo. Using the Address Options When the New Memo window opens, you see several fields that you must complete (see Figure 6.1). A field holds a piece of information stored in the database. Square brackets mark the fields where you enter text. Figure 6.1 A new mail memo. Entering text in Lotus Notes fields is like typing in a word processor. You can use the Backspace and Delete keys to remove unwanted text. You can move the insertion point (cursor) using the arrow keys or by clicking with the mouse. You can insert text wherever you place the cursor. The first field to complete on your memo is the To field. This is where you put the name of the person who will receive your message. You can enter this information by using the Typeahead option or by looking up names in the address books. Using the Typeahead Option The Typeahead option saves you work. When you type the first letter of a name in the To field, Typeahead finds and enters the full name of the first person in your address book that starts with that letter. For example, when you type P, Notes fills in the name Paul Abbott. Then as you enter the second letter, e, Notes finds and enters Peter Anderson, and so on. Typeahead will also accept last names. When you enter the begin-ning letter(s) of the last name and press Tab to go to the next field, Notes finds the name and reverses the order when it fills in the field. So, when you type A, Notes might find Ann Rutherford. But when you type a b and press Tab, Notes should locate the last name Abbott and insert Paul Abbott in the address field. Typeahead only works if the name of the recipient is in an address book. Otherwise, you must type the full name and address of the person. Plain English: Address Book A database that contains all the names and electronic mail addresses of all the users you communicate with through e-mail. Lotus Notes Mail has two address books: Personal and Public. The Personal Address Book is stored on your local drive, while the Public Address Book is on the server. Lesson 8 covers the address books in detail. If you want to address the memo to more than one person, separate the names with commas. Typeahead works for each name. Addressing from the Address Book If you aren't sure of a person's last name or the spelling of his name, you can look him up in the address book. You can choose to insert the person's name into the To, cc, or bcc fields. In the cc (carbon copy) field, enter the names of people you want to receive the message you send to the recipient. The names in the cc field appear on the recipient's message, and all these people will also see the cc names. Use the bcc (blind carbon copy) field to send hidden copy. The name of the bcc recipient does not appear on any other messages; only you and the person you bcc know he received a copy. If you put two names in the bcc field, those two people don't know that the other received the message. To use an address book, follow these steps: 1. Click the Address button on the Action toolbar. When the Mail Address dialog box appears, you'll see a list of names from your Personal Address Book (see Figure 6.2). At this point, your Personal Address Book is probably empty. To access the Public Address Book, click the drop-down menu and select Public Address Book. Remember, you must be able to attach to the server to access the Public Address Book. Figure 6.2 The Mail Address dialog box. 2. Select the name of the person that you need from the available list of names. You can use the scrollbar to move up or down the list. 3. Click the To, cc, or bcc button, depending on which address field you want to fill. 4. Repeat the last two steps for each name you want to enter. 5. Click OK. If you are sending Internet mail, refer to Lesson 8 to learn how to address Internet e-mail. Filling in the Mail Message Document Complete the Subject field by entering a short description of your memo in this field, similar to a headline for a newspaper article. Every time someone replies to your message, her reply memo will show the same subject, which appears on all replies and replies to replies. After the subject field is the body field. When you finish typing your message, you should spell check the message before you mail it. If you feel you don't need to spell check the message, click the Send button on the Action bar to send your mail (see Figure 6.3). Figure 6.3 A completed mail message, ready to send. Using Spell Check Spell Check compares your text against a stored spelling dictionary of tens of thousands of words. If any of your words aren't in the spelling dictionary, Spell Check alerts you that the word is possibly misspelled. In addition to your misspellings and typos, Spell Check will also alert you about proper names and unusual words that may be spelled correctly but are not in the spelling dictionary. Running Spell Check doesn't guarantee a perfect mail message. If you accidentally type the word "form" when you wanted to type "from," Spell Check won't catch it. An incorrectly typed word may be a word found in the dictionary. Spell Check won't catch incorrect punctuation or missing words. Lotus Notes looks in two dictionaries for correctly spelled words. The main dictionary is extensive, covering most of the common words in American English. Proper names, acronyms, and business jargon not included in the main dictionary, are then looked for in your user dictionary. The user dictionary is one you can add to. Spell Check will also report duplicate words, such as "the the," but it won't look at single-character words such as "a" and "I" or words that are longer than 64 letters. It also ignores text that doesn't have any letters, such as the number 1,200,543. When you want to check the spelling in your message, you must be in edit mode. Edit mode means that you have the ability to change the text in the document in which you are currently working. When you're creating a new mail message, you're automatically in edit mode. To run Spell Check: 1. Choose Edit, Check Spelling or click the Edit Check Spelling SmartIcon. The Spell Check dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 6.4. Figure 6.4 The Spell Check dialog box. 2. When Spell Check finds a word it doesn't recognize, choose one of the following options: Skip Ignores the misspelling and goes on to the next word. Use this option when the word is spelled correctly. Skip All Tells Notes to ignore all the instances of this word in the message. This is useful when a correctly spelled proper name crops up several times in a memo. Define Lets you add the word to your user dictionary. Once added, Spell Check will see this word as a correctly spelled word. Replace Lets you change an incorrect spelling to a correct one. If the correct spelling of the word shows up in the Guess box, click the correct guess and then the Replace button. If Spell Check provides no suggestions and you know the correct spelling, click in the Replace box and make the correction by deleting or adding characters. Then click Replace to make the change in your message. 3. Once the Spell Check ends, click Done. Panic Button: No Spell Check Icon? If you don't see the Spell Check SmartIcon on your toolbar, refer to Lesson 3 to add it to your toolbar. By default, Spell Check checks your entire mail message. If you want to Spell Check one word or a paragraph, select the word or text with your mouse; then start the Spell Check as previously mentioned. To change words that you add to your user dictionary: 1. Choose File, Tools, User Preferences. In the User Pre-ferences dialog box, click the User Dictionary button (see Figure 6.5). Figure 6.5 The User Preferences dialog box. 2. You can then make any of the following changes: To delete the incorrectly spelled word, select it and click Delete. To change a misspelled word, select it from the list, enter the correct spelling in the small text box at the bottom of the dialog box, and then click Update. To add a word, enter it in the small text box and click Add. 3. When you finish, click OK. In this lesson, you learned how to fill out a mail message and use the Typeahead option. In the next lesson, you learn how to format text.

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