10 Minute Guide to Lotus Notes Mail 4.5 - 10 - Reading and Printing Mail In this lesson, you learn how to use the Preview pane and change views while you are reading your mail. You'll also learn about read marks and printing. Opening Your Mail Panic Button: No Mail? If you're new to Lotus Notes Mail, you may not have mail in your Inbox. In preparation for this lesson, call your co-workers and ask them to send you mail so you have mail in your Inbox to work with during this lesson (or send some mail to yourself). There are a couple of ways to access your incoming mail. From the workspace, you can double-click your Mail database icon. When the database opens (by default, at your Inbox view), you can double-click on the piece of mail you want to read. Click the Inbox icon located on the bottom right of the status bar. Select Scan Unread Mail. This will open the first unread mail message in your Inbox. When you finish reading your mail message, you can press the Esc key to return to your Inbox, or you can continue to read unopened (unread) messages by using the SmartIcons. Once you open a mail message, there are four SmartIcons to assist you in navigating through your mail, without the need to return to the Inbox. Use the plain up and down arrow icons to navigate to the next or the previous mail message. The up and down arrow icons with stars take you to the next or the previous unread message. When you finish reading your mail, you'll be returned to your Inbox. Understanding Read Marks When you see your messages listed in the Inbox, you can tell at a glance which messages you've read. Mail messages you haven't read appear in red and have a star located to the left of the mail message. Once you open and read the message, the star disappears and the mail message appears in black in your Inbox. Figure 10.1 shows mail messages in the Inbox that have been read and some that haven't. Figure 10.1 Read Marks display in Inbox. Changing Views As you learned in Lesson 3, there are several ways to view your mail. You can sort how mail appears in your Inbox by using the sorting icons located on the column headers of the Who and the Date columns. The default sort for the Inbox is by date, with the most current date at the bottom of your screen. So, new mail appears at the bottom of the list. If you click the triangle located in the header of the Date column, the triangle turns to a blue color, and your mail sorts with the most current mail first, or at the top of the list. If you click the triangle located in the Who column, the triangle turns blue and your mail sorts alphabetically by the first name of the person who sent it. This view is useful when you need to find a mail message sent to you from a particular person, and perhaps you don't remember the date or the subject. You can elect to have only unread mail show in your Inbox. To do so, select View, Show, and Unread Only from the menu. Now only those mail messages you have not read will appear in your Inbox. You can turn on and off the option to show only unread mail at any time. You can also see all of the mail by selecting the All Documents view. Once you've read messages, you'll probably want to reply, delete, or file those messages. Lessons 11 and 12 cover replying to and filing messages. You can also view a list of selected documents. To select documents, click to the left of the document listing in your Inbox. A check mark appears next to that document. You can select one, many, contiguous (in order), or non-contiguous documents. Once you have several selected, choose View, Show, and Selected only from the menu. Figure 10.2 shows documents selected in the Inbox. Figure 10.2 Selecting documents in the Inbox. Using the Preview Pane You may prefer to read your mail by using the Preview pane so you can view a mail message while you still see the Navigator pane and the list of documents in your Inbox. The Preview pane splits your Inbox into three panels. To turn on the Preview pane, select View and Document Preview from the menu. The Document Preview pane activates (see Figure 10.3). The Document Preview pane is adjustable. You may decide you want to see more of the message and less of the Inbox documents list. To size the Preview pane, place your cursor on the gray horizontal line that stretches across the screen above the mail message; when your cursor changes to a sizing cursor (a double- headed arrow), click and drag the line up or down, depending on whether you want this section to be larger or smaller. You can use the scrollbars located in any three of these panels (the Navigator pane, the Documents pane, or the Preview pane) to scroll through the contents of each window. What displays in the Preview pane is driven by which mail message you have selected in the Documents pane. To preview mail in your Inbox you can move through the documents located in your Inbox by: Using your up or down arrow keys on your keyboard. Using the Tab key (or Shift+Tab to move backward). Using the Navigator SmartIcons located on the toolbar. Using your mouse to select a mail message. Figure 10.3 The Preview pane. Panic Button: Previewing Is Not Reading Using the Preview pane to read your mail does not really count as reading mail. Lotus Notes will not mark the mail as "read" if you've only previewed it. Many people find previewing a quick way to read their mail. You can configure the Preview pane to look differently than the three panel split you see here. Select View, Arrange Preview to see the Preview Pane dialog box for your options. (See Figure 10.4.) Figure 10.4 The Preview Pane dialog box. The default selection is Bottom, which refers to the position of the Preview pane. You can select Bottom Right or Right, and you can also resize these panels after you make your selection. Printing Mail You can print one or several pieces of mail at a time. Like many Windows products, you can activate the Print command in several ways. In Lesson 3, you added the Print SmartIcon to your toolbar; using the Print icon is one way to print a single copy of mail. To print more than one mail message at a time, select those messages by clicking next to each one in the left column of the Inbox view. This will place a check mark next to the mail message. Then print by using one of the following methods: Click once on the Print SmartIcon. This will print one copy of the mail message you have open. Hold down the Ctrl key while pressing the letter p. This also prints one copy of the mail message you have open. Select File, Print from the menu. This gives you the option to print multiple copies, headers and footer, change the orientation of the printer, or change the printer selection. If you want to print more than one copy of your mail, choose File, Print from the menu. In the File Print dialog box (see Figure 10.5), indicate the number of copies you want to print in Copies box. Then click OK to print the copies. Figure 10.5 The File Print dialog box. It may be useful, at times, to print a view. To print a view, select File, Print from the menu. In the View options portion of the Print dialog box, click Print View. Click OK to print. In this lesson, you learned how to work with Read Marks and set your preferences for scanning unread documents. You also learned about various views and previewing mail. You also learned how to print your mail. In the next lesson, you learn how to reply to mail.

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