10 Minute Guide to Lotus Notes Mail 4.5 - 12 - Managing Mail Messages In this lesson, you learn about deleting mail messages, creating folders, using the Discussion Thread view, archiving old mail, and viewing sent mail. Deleting Mail To keep your Mail database manageable, you should make it a practice to clear out old messages periodically. If you're not sure if you'll need the message again, archive it. If you know you won't need the message any longer, delete it. In Lotus Notes, deleting messages is a two-step process. First you mark the message for deletion; then you remove it by emptying the Trash. You can mark messages for deletion while you're reading them, or you can do it from the View pane. To delete a message while you are in read mode: 1. In the opened message, click the Delete button on the action bar, or press the Delete key on your keyboard. 2. Lotus Notes marks that message for deletion, and your next message appears. Panic Button: You Didn't Mean to Click the Delete Button So far, you've only marked the message for deletion. If you didn`t mean to mark it for deletion, open the Trash folder, select the message, and press the Delete key to remove the mark. 3. Continue reading the rest of your messages, deleting those you don't want to keep. To mark messages for deletion while you are in the View pane (or Inbox), you must first highlight the message, or if you are deleting multiple documents, select the messages using one of the following methods: Select a message you want to delete by clicking the document in the view. Then press the Delete key or use the Delete button. If you want to select several messages in a row, click the first message and drag up or down the left side of the messages. This will place a check mark next to all of the messages you drag past. You can also select messages that are not below each other, by placing a check mark next to them. Choose Edit, Select All to select all of the messages in the view. If you accidentally selected a document you didn`t mean to mark, click the check mark to remove it. To remove all the check marks, choose Edit, Deselect All. To mark the selected documents for deletion, press the Delete key or click the Delete button on the Action bar. A trash can appears next to each item you have marked for deletion (see Figure 12.1). When you exit the database, you may be prompted with a message asking if you want to permanently delete these messages. Click Yes. Figure 12.1 Messages marked for deletion. Creating Folders When you frequently use your e-mail at work, you'll receive many messages. You might not want to delete every mail message, but you can organize your work by creating folders to store your mail messages. You can create whatever folders you need and then put the appropriate messages into the folders, much like organizing a file cabinet. To create a folder: 1. Choose Create, Folder from the menu bar. 2. In the Create Folder dialog box, enter a name in the Folder name box (see Figure 12.2). Figure 12.2 The Create Folder dialog box. 3. If you want to put the new folder inside an existing one (like putting a manila folder inside a Pendaflex® folder in a filing cabinet), click that folder from the Select a location for the new folder list box. Timesaver Tip: Don't Check Shared Unless you are an Applications Developer (one who designs Notes databases), you don't have the rights to create "shared" folders. Shared folders are accessible to many people. Folders you'll make are private folders--for your use only. 4. Click OK. To place mail messages in the folder, you can: Drag them Use the menu commands Use the action bar To drag documents to folders from your Inbox: 1. Select the document (or documents) you want to move into the folder. 2. Click the document and drag it until it is over the folder. 3. When the mouse pointer is over the folder, it changes to a small document icon with a plus (+) sign over it. Then release the mouse button. Dragging a mail message moves the message to a folder, removing it from the current folder (in this case, your Inbox). If you hold down the Control key while dragging, you can add the message to a different folder, leaving a copy of it in its current folder. Timesaver Tip: Documents or Views? In Lesson 1 you learned that everything in a Lotus Notes database is stored in a document. Mail messages are no exception. Technically, we call them documents. In e-mail terms, we call them messages. Other ways to move mail messages are to use the menu commands. To move a mail message to another folder using the menu: 1. If you're in the Inbox, select the documents you want to put in a folder (if you're reading the message, only that document will move to the folder). 2. Choose Actions, Move to Folder or click the Move to Folder button on the Action bar. 3. In the Move To Folder dialog box (see Figure 12.3), click a folder name in the Select a folder list box (click the Create New Folder button if you haven't made the folder yet). Figure 12.3 The Move To Folder dialog box. 4. Click the Add button to put the mail message into the folder without removing it from other folders. Or click the Move button to put the mail message into the folder while removing it from other folders (you cannot remove the message from a view). Using the Discussion Thread View With mail messages, you frequently develop conversations. Joe sends a message to Mary, Tim, and Jack inquiring about their vacation plans. Mary replies that she is going to Cape Cod for a week in August. Joe replies to Mary that he knows a great place for dinner on the Cape. Meanwhile, Tim responds to Joe's original message, as does Jack. A conversation is born. Messages that are responses to previous memos will have a Re: at the beginning of the subject and a Document Link icon. The icon links you back to the message being replied to. Figure 12.4 Message that is a reply. If you have a long conversation, the best way to follow it from beginning to end is to look in the Discussion Thread view. Click the Discussion Thread View icon in the Navigator pane to see the list of documents organized by conversations (see Figure 12.5). The subject line of reply messages appears indented, and replies to replies appear further indented. Figure 12.5 The Discussion Thread view. Archiving Mail There are several strategies for reducing the size of your Mail database, and archiving old mail messages is one of them. Archiving stores the old messages in another database, making your Mail database more manageable. You can have these messages archived automatically or do it manually. To set up automatic archiving: 1. In the Navigator pane, double-click the Archiving view icon to open that view. 2. Click the Setup Archive button on the Action bar (see Figure 12.6). 3. The Archive Profile form appears, as shown in Figure 12.7. Complete the Archive Profile form. You can fill in any of the following options: Check Archive Expired documents and set how many days before a document is archived. Check Archive documents which have no activity and set a time limit (in days). Check whether you want to Generate an Archive Log each time an archive occurs. Check Include document links if you want to add them to the archive. Choose whether the documents will be archived Locally or On Server by clicking the appropriate radio button (the small round button in front of the option; you can only choose one). You must be allowed to create databases on the server to create the Archive database there. You may not have this ability. You may enter the name of the database file, if you don't want to use the one Lotus Notes generates automatically. Figure 12.6 The Setup Archive button. Figure 12.7 The Archive Profile form. 4. Click the Save Profile button on the Action bar. 5. When the dialog box appears saying that the Archive database has been created, click OK. 6. Click the Close button on the Action bar. 7. Switch temporarily to another folder or view in your Mail database and then back to the Archiving view. 8. Click the Enable Scheduling Archiving button on the Action bar to activate the automatic archiving. If you decide to turn off the automatic archiving, open the Archiving view and click the Disable Scheduled Archiving button on the Action bar. You don't have to wait for Lotus Notes to archive your messages based on the schedule you set up. Select the messages that you want to archive and choose Actions, Mail Tools, Archive Selected Documents. Once you have documents in the Archive database, you may view them by opening the database. From the Archiving view, click the Open Archive Db button on the Action bar. Then simply open the messages you want to read. If you set up an Archive Log in your Archive Profile document and chose to include document links, you can also view the archived messages by opening the log. From the Archiving view, open the Archive Log that has the message you want to see. Click the Link icon, read the message, and then close it. Viewing Sent Mail If you save your mail when you send it, Lotus Notes automatically stores it in the Sent folder. To view all the messages there, click the Sent Folder icon. In this lesson, you learned about managing your mail messages by deleting or archiving old messages, viewing conversations in the Discussion Thread view, seeing the messages you sent in the Sent folder, and creating your own folders. In the next lesson, you learn about attaching non-Notes files to your messages.

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