Getting started with computers
The email basics nobody ever explains
Email has been around long enough that everybody assumes you already know how it works. Nobody sits you down and explains it, so most people learn by trial, error, and the occasional embarrassment.
Here are the parts that actually cause trouble.
Reply and reply all
Reply sends your response to one person: whoever sent the message.
Reply all sends it to everybody who received the original, including people you may not have noticed were on it.
Reply all has a bad reputation for good reason. It is how someone’s private opinion of a colleague reaches forty people at once.
The rule: use reply unless you have a specific reason why everybody needs to see it. When in doubt, reply.
CC and BCC
These are the extra address boxes, and they are less mysterious than they look.
CC stands for carbon copy, from the days of typewriters and carbon paper. Everybody in CC receives the message, and everybody can see who else received it. Use it for people who should know but do not need to act.
BCC is blind carbon copy. Those people receive the message, but nobody else can see they were included, and they cannot see each other.
BCC is the polite and correct way to email a group of people who do not know each other. Putting thirty addresses in the To field shares everybody’s email address with everybody else, which most of them would rather you did not.
If you send a group email to a club, a family list or a street group, put your own address in To and everybody else in BCC.
Where the email went
The three most common answers, in order:
It is in Junk or Spam. This folder is in the list on the left. Email providers guess at what is unwanted and get it wrong regularly, particularly with messages from small businesses, clubs and anything with an attachment. Check it before concluding a message never arrived.
It is in Archive. Many programs put an archive button next to delete, and they are easy to confuse. Archived mail is not deleted; it has been filed away. Look in All Mail or Archive.
It was filed by a rule you do not remember setting up. Use the search box at the top and search for the sender’s name. Search finds messages wherever they are, which is far quicker than opening folders one at a time.
Attachments
To attach something, look for a paperclip icon. Click it, find the file, choose it. The file must exist somewhere on your device first, which is where people often come unstuck.
Photos are large. Most email systems refuse anything over about 20MB, and a handful of photos from a modern phone can exceed that easily. If your email will not send, the attachment is usually why.
For a few photos, most email programs offer to shrink them as you attach. Say yes. For many photos, share a link from Google Photos or iCloud instead.
Received an attachment and cannot open it? You may not have a program that understands that type of file. A .docx needs Word or a free equivalent. A .pdf opens in any browser. If it is a type you have never heard of and you were not expecting it, do not open it at all.
Attachments you should not open
The single most common way computers get infected is an attachment somebody was not expecting.
Be suspicious of any attachment that:
- Arrived from someone you do not know
- Arrived from someone you do know, but with no message or an oddly generic one
- Is an invoice for something you did not buy
- Asks you to enable content or enable macros when you open it
That last one is a red flag with no innocent explanation.
If a message from a friend looks odd, ring them. Their account may have been taken over, and they will want to know.
Two settings worth changing today
Turn off the reading pane preview if you are nervous about scams. It stops messages being partially loaded before you have decided to open them.
Turn on a signature. In the settings, add your name and phone number so it appears at the bottom of everything you send. Small, but it makes replying much easier for the recipient.
Tidying an inbox that got away from you
If you have twelve thousand unread messages, do not try to deal with them one by one. Nobody has ever finished that job.
Instead:
- Search for the sender who bothers you most and select all of their messages at once.
- Delete or archive the lot.
- Repeat for the next few worst offenders.
- Unsubscribe as you go, using the link at the very bottom of legitimate marketing emails.
Twenty minutes of that removes most of the volume. Do not unsubscribe from anything that looks like a scam, though: for those, just delete.
If it has all become a bit much
Email is one of the most common things I get asked about, usually after years of it quietly getting worse. An hour of somebody sitting beside you sorting out the folders, the junk settings and the sheer volume makes a genuine difference to how much you dread opening it.
That is a standard part of lessons for seniors and help for adults alike.