WebMail is an e-mail program specific to your BCPL.NET e-mail address, capable of allowing you to view and send e-mail through your web browser. Rather than being a program installed on your own hard drive, WebMail runs off of BCPL.NET's web site. This means that you don't have to set up an e-mail program to use WebMail. You simply visit the WebMail web site, provide your username and password to WebMail, and you are granted access without the need for any special "mail program" software.

Advantages

• Easy - No setup is required to use WebMail. Just log in and go!
• Versatile - Because your e-mail stays on the WebMail server, you can log in to WebMail from any Internet connection from anywhere in the world and have access to the same e-mail.
• Safer - Messages are never downloaded to your PC; they are only shown to you via your web browser. This keeps malicious e-mails from ever touching your computer.
• Inbox Maintenance - If you use a program other than WebMail primarily and find that your inbox is often "clogged" from spam or large file attachments, you can use WebMail to delete individual problematic messages. For example, if somebody sends you a large picture or movie that you can never finish downloading with a program like Netscape or Outlook Express, you can use WebMail to view and/or delete the message so that the rest can come through to your main e-mail program after you have finished using WebMail.

Disadvantages

• Problems displaying image attachments in the BODY of the e-mail (regular attachments are fine).
• E-mail messages are never stored on your own PC; you must be connected to the Internet to browse them via WebMail.
• Address book and e-mail messages can not be exported to another mail program.
• WebMail does not allow you to block messages or run filters on the messages that come into your inbox. In this sense, you are limited to the filtering that the Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall provides.
• If you use WebMail in addition to other e-mail programs for your BCPL.NET address, these other mail programs will frequently take e-mail away from WebMail, storing it on your local computer, instead of on BCPL.NET's server. Once this happens, the mail no longer exists within WebMail and can only be found in the particular e-mail program that downloaded it.

WebMail - Logging In

1. Visit http://www.bcpl.net/ (the BCPL.NET Web site)
2. Click the blue WebMail button near the top of the BCPL.NET website.
3. At this point, you should see the WebMail login screen. (Example below)
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Click into the Username box and type your BCPL.NET username. This is the beginning of your BCPL.NET e-mail address. For example, if your e-mail address is jdoe@bcpl.net, you would simply enter jdoe.
5. Click into the Password box and type your normal BCPL.NET password.
6. Click the Log In button.
7. After a few moments, you should be taken to your WebMail inbox. (Example below)
   
   

At this point you are logged into WebMail and can Read and Write e-mails.

WebMail - Reading and Writing E-mail

Reading an E-mail Message in WebMail

To read one of your e-mail messages, simply click either the Sender's Name or the Subject of the particular message you wish to view. When finished reading a particular message, click the X in the upper right hand corner of the WebMail portion of the screen to return to your index.

Warning: In the extreme upper right of your browser window there is an X that will close your entire web browser (surrounded with red). Make sure the X you click is in the Webmail portion of the screen (surrounded with green).

Writing an E-mail Message in WebMail

To write someone an e-mail, first click the button. This will open the Create Message page.

1. Fill out the To: field with any e-mail address to which you wish to write. If you wish to include more than one, separate them with a comma (,). If you don't know what CC and BCC are, don't worry about it; you won't need to use them normally. You may also use your address book to add your recipients.
2. If you wish to include a subject, type one in the subject field.
3. Fill out the message body with the main content of your letter.
4. When you are ready to send your message, click the button near the top.

Warning: If you like to write long e-mails, but can't complete writing them before your Webmail session times out (generally no less than 30 minutes), you may find yourself automatically logged out of Webmail, causing your current message to be lost. If this frequently causes you problems, you can write your message offline in a word processor such as Microsoft Word, Wordperfect, or Notepad. Then, copy & paste the message directly into the message body of a new Webmail message and send as normal.

Webmail - Using your Address Book

• To use your address book, first click to start writing a new message.
• Across the top of WebMail, click the Address button.
• You should now see your current WebMail address book. If you have used the address book before, you may have some entries already. If you have never used it before, it will most likely be blank like the example below.

Adding to your WebMail address book

• To add an entry to your address book, you will use the bottom portion of the address book screen.
• Type in the person's Name and E-mail Address, and then click the Save button.
• The screen should refresh, now listing the new address in the large white box to the left.

Deleting from your WebMail address book

• Click on an entry in the large white box to the left. This should cause it to highlight.
• Click any of the three DEL buttons next to the three white boxes to the right.
• This will delete the highlighted entry from your address book.

Selecting recipients from your address book

• Click a single entry to highlight it.
• Click the TO, CC, or BCC button next to the three white boxes to the right. This will move that particular person into an addressable field. In most cases you will just use the TO button.
• Repeat the first two steps as necessary (for multiple recipients)
• When you are finished selecting recipients, click the OK button.
• You will now be returned to the Create Message screen with all of your recipients' e-mail addresses input as you specified. You can now write and send the e-mail as normal.

Creating a Distribution List

• Select recipients as normal using the TO, CC, and BCC buttons (as if you were writing a message)
• Once you have selected all of your recipients, type a name for your list next to where you see Save "Selected Recipients" as a personal distribution list named:.
• Now click Save List.
• Your distribution list should then appear in your address book, beginning with a # symbol, and will be followed by [DList].

Using your Distribution List

• To use your distribution list, click it in your address book and then click the TO button. All of the addresses within the list should move to the right side of the screee, indicating they will be written to.
• Click the OK button at the bottom.
• Write and send your e-mail as normal.

WebMail - Organizing Files in Folders

WebMail allows you to create folders to better organize your e-mail messages. All new e-mail initially goes to your main inbox folder which WebMail calls New-Mail. You can choose to leave mail in the inbox, or file it away in a folder of your choice. To get started working with files, click the File icon.

You should now be at the WebMail - Select Folder screen which you can see in the following two examples.

Creating Folders

To create a folder, you will use the bottom portion of the folder screen. Type the name you'd like to use for your folder in the Folder: box. You may optionally include a text description in the Description: box. Then click the Create button at the bottom.

After you click the Create button and actually make your folder, you will then be looking inside of your new blank folder which might look something like this:

Deleting Folders

To delete a folder, first select the folder from the Folder: drop down box near the top of the folder screen. Then click the Delete button nearby. You should then see a prompt warning you of how many messages are in the folder you are trying to delete.

To continue and delete the folder (and the messages in it), click the Green Check Mark. To cancel the deletion, click the Red X.

Switching Folders / Viewing a Folder's Contents

At the bottom of every WebMail screen, you should see the folder navigation bar:

You can see a list of the folders you've created by clicking the white drop-down box. To view a different folder, first select it in the drop-down list, and then click the Go button directly to the right.

Remember, new mail will always come into your "New-Mail" folder first, so remember to go back there when you are looking for new messages.

WebMail - Sending and Retrieving Attachments

To Send Attachments:

1. Create a new message.
2. Click on the Attach button.
   
3. The Attach Files dialogue box will appear empty as shown below. Click on the Browse button, select your file and click on Open. The path for your file will appear in the Filename: box.
   
4. Click the Add File button. Depending on the size of your file, this might take a while! The file will then be listed in the Attached Files: box. You can add more files by clicking on Browse again.
5. Click on OK when you are finished. The files you have attached will be listed under the Subject line on your message.
6. Click on the Send button to send the message and the files!

To Retrieve Attachments:

1. If you receive a message with files attached, a disk will be pictured with the envelope in the [Status] column.
2. Open the message by clicking on the sender's name or on the subject.
3. The files will be listed at the bottom of the message, next to the disk icon.
4. Click on the file name to view the file. Choose Save As under the File menu to save the file. (Unless you save the file, when you delete the message, you will also delete the attached files.)
5. To get back to your message, click on the Back button.

WebMail - Cleaning up your inbox

Anyone using e-mail these days knows that it's easy to get overloaded in terms of e-mail. All it takes is a few days without checking your account, or a friend that sends you a large file via e-mail. With all of the large file attachments and spam sent through e-mail these days, it can make getting to the mail you WANT to receive quite difficult.

WebMail can defeat this problem because it is capable of viewing and/or deleting messages in any order you want. Messages are not shown to you unless you specifically click on them. This allows you to delete problematic e-mails while leaving normal e-mails on the server for later viewing with either WebMail or your regular e-mail program.

How to spot problematic e-mails

• E-mails with Attachments (denoted by icon)

• E-mails that are very large in size. E-mails over 100-200K will usually contain an attachment. The example below shows a message that is 2789 kilobytes (This equates to about 2.7 Megabytes)

• Any message that is clearly spam.

• Any other message that appears to be jamming your e-mail program, preventing you from downloading all of your messages.

How to delete e-mails from WebMail

While looking at your index, you can delete multiple messages at a time by placing a check in the checkbox located at the far left side of the message subject. When you've selected all the messages you wish to delete, click the Delete icon (looks like a trashcan) at the upper left corner of the WebMail screen.

In the following example, 3 messages are checked for deletion:

After clicking the Delete button, WebMail will refresh your index. The messages you deleted should no longer be in the list. This means that when you next try to download mail with your regular e-mail program, the messages you deleted from WebMail should no longer be coming through!

WebMail - Dealing with Login Failed errors

Login failed can have any of the following meanings:

• The username was entered incorrectly.
• The password was entered incorrectly.
• You are currently or recently (usually within 5-10 minutes) logged in to your BCPL.NET e-mail account through another e-mail program.
• Your account is expired, or no longer exists.

To solve this problem, make sure you don't have any other e-mail programs checking mail at the same time by explicitly closing any running e-mail programs such as Netscape Messenger, Outlook Express, Eudora, etc. Visit the WebMail page and carefully retype your BCPL.NET username and password and try again. If you still get a Login Failed error message, wait 15-20 minutes and try again. If the problem still persists after this period of time, contact the Help Desk.

WebMail - Tips for using WebMail effectively

• Only check e-mail from one program at a time. If you use WebMail, make sure any other mail clients you use are CLOSED.
  
  
• If WebMail gives you a Login Failed message, and you KNOW that you are using the correct login information, make sure that you do not have any other mail programs open, then wait 10-15 minutes and try again. Only one mail program can be logged into your account at once, so make sure you are only logging into your e-mail once at a time.
  
  
• To navigate around in WebMail, use WebMail's own controls rather than using your browser's Back and Forward buttons. Back and Forward may confuse WebMail by loading old copies of your index rather than showing you what is actually present.
  
  
• To send an e-mail to multiple people at once, you can write in multiple addresses separated by commas into WebMail's To: field. For example:
  
         To:  jdoe@bcpl.net, janed@comcast.net, etc@aol.com 
  
  
• If you take too long typing an e-mail message to someone in WebMail, you may be disconnected from the Internet due to being idle. To prevent this, write your e-mail message ahead of time in a word processor and Copy & Paste it into a WebMail message. This means you won't have to spend nearly as much time in WebMail, so disconnects should no longer be an issue.