GWE WebMail Tutorial

This page contains a brief tutorial for GWE's WebMail that is well suited for beginners.  To learn how to get your email going through a web-based interface, look over the following steps and don't be afraid to experiment--you can't hurt anything...well, not seriously :-)

Setting up an Account

To get started using WebMail, we must first create an account for you.  Don't worry, this is easy.  And if you already have a WebMail account and you just want to learn some more about WebMail's various features, please feel free to jump down to whatever section interests you.  Plus, remember that WebMail has a built-in help function that you can find on almost every page--make use of it.  For the beginners, however, we will start, naturally enough, at the beginning.

Firstly, you will need to surf to the GWE WebMail login page, which can be found HERE.  There is also a link to WebMail on our main home page, located HERE.  Alternately, you can simply type the URL into your browser's address bar to achieve the same result--the URL is webmail.gwe.net/scripts.  Any one of these methods will suffice for our purposes.  Once you have arrived at the WebMail login screen, you will see something very similar to the following:

Your Username and Password fields will be blank when you get here, so when you see the WebMail login screen, go ahead and type your information into the two boxes provided for you.  For the purpose of this tutorial, I have set up a test account that I will use for providing examples.  As you can see from the screenshot above, this test account is called "testaccount."  I know, I'm not much fun.

Anyhow, after you have your username and password typed into the boxes provided, you need to click on the Login button located to the right of the two boxes.  Keep in mind that your username and password were provided to you when you first signed up for Internet service at GWE (in fact, you probably chose them yourself).  Usernames are usually your first initial followed by your last name (Example: John Smith would probably have a username of "jsmith").  Passwords are entirely up to you (you had to choose one when you signed up), but remember that they must be at least six characters in length, and they are definitely case sensitive, so watch your caps lock key on your keyboard.  If you can't remember your username or your password, or you just seem to have trouble logging on to WebMail, please give us a call (249-6266) and we can refresh your memory or fix what's wrong.

When you first start a WebMail account, you need to provide some very basic information to the program before you can get started sending and checking your email.  After you click on the Login button in the step above, you will be taken to the New Account screen seen immediately below:

It's asking you for some information before we can go any further, so let's give it what it wants.  In the Your Name field, you should type in whatever you want people to see when they receive an email from you.  This doesn't necessarily have to be your name.  For example, if I wanted people to see "From: Mumpy" when they get an email from me, I would type "Mumpy" in the Your Name box.

Your Default reply address is the email address that will be used when someone sends a reply to one of your emails.  You want to make sure that your correct email address appears in this box, as is usually the case by default, but it's good to be sure.  The Default reply address takes its cues from what you provided for a Username in the previous step, so if you have an email address that differs from your username, then be sure that your actual email address is in the Default reply address box.  For example, if my username were "bugabuga" but I decided that I wanted an email address of "bugmeister@gwe.net" when I signed up for GWE Internet service, then I'd want to make sure that "bugmeister@gwe.net" was in the Default reply address box and not "bugabuga@gwe.net."

Max message size to download is used to limit the size of emails you choose to download.  If, for example, you didn't want to be bothered with messages larger than 2500 kilobytes (2.5 megabytes), you could specify this in the box provided.  Then, if you were to receive a message larger than 2.5Mb, it would not be downloaded, saving you some time.  However, I recommend leaving this setting at the default as it will probably cause you no trouble.

Your Signature File is a short piece of text that will be appended to each email that you send.  If you've never seen a signature file on someone's email before, or if you don't want to use one, you can just leave this box blank.

When you're finished providing the required information, click on the Save Config button at the bottom of the screen.  Don't worry if you made a mistake, or if you want to change this information later--it's easy to do.

Checking Your Mail

Having finished the New Account setup process, you will be taken to your default mail screen, an example of which appears below:

There are a lot of buttons here, but it's all actually quite simple.

When you arrive at the mail screen, you will be informed of any new messages that you may have.  For example, I have one new message (pictured above) in my box, the subject of which is "Greeting Test Account."  If I wanted to read this message, I would simply click on it (more on this later).  For now though, let's go through each button on this screen and see what they can do for you.  I will list each button on the mail screen below, along with a description of what the button does.

Check Mail: This is an easy one.  Clicking on Check Mail will do just that: it will check your mail here at GWE again and inform you of any new messages.

New Message: Clicking on this button will take you to another screen (more on this later) from which you can type out an email to someone and then spell-check it, modify it, and ultimately send it on its way.

New Mail (Drop-Down Box): If you click on the drop-down box to the right of New Mail, you can select which of your mail folders are currently active.  In addition to the default of New Mail, you can also view your trash can (i.e., your deleted mail) and your copies to self (i.e., messages that you have sent to others appear here for confirmation/record keeping).  You will probably want to keep this setting on New Mail most of the time.

Options: From the Options screen, you can change your Name, see your Current disk usage (i.e., how much space all your mail takes up on our mail server), change your Default reply address, change your Max message size to download, change your Signature File, and change your POP (i.e., email) Password.  An example screenshot of WebMail Options appears immediately below.

The WebMail Options screen

Address Book: You can store your frequently used email addresses here and give them nicknames to make them easier to use and remember.  The examples on the screenshot below do a good job of explaining the process.

The Address Book screen

Empty Trash: Clicking here will permanently erase any and all emails you may have sent to your deleted items mail folder.  Any emails in your deleted items will be permanently, irreversibly, and forever deleted when you click this button, so be sure to be sure before you click.

Logout: When you are finished with your WebMail session, click here to close WebMail and go on to other things.  If you do not close your WebMail account before you shut down your browser or surf somewhere else, this can muck up your account, making it more difficult to access your mail in the future.  So please be sure to logout after you're finished using WebMail.

Help: Click here to see the full User Manual for GWE's WebMail program.  It goes into much more depth than this basic tutorial does.

Del Sel Items: Clicking here will send all selected messages to your deleted items folder.  You can select messages by putting a check in the Select box to the right of each message or by checking the Select all displayed messages box.

Fwd Sel Items: This button will send a copy of each selected message to a recipient of your choosing.  Again, you can select messages by putting a check in the Select box to the right of each message or by checking the Select all displayed messages box.

The extra set of buttons at the bottom of the screen (i.e., Check, New, Copies, Trash, etc.) are just shortened duplications of the buttons at the top of the screen, which we have already covered above.  Use either set--it makes no difference.

Reading Your Mail

Now, on to actually reading your mail.  As explained in the step above, to read an email message, you simply click on it and it will be displayed.  For example, when I click on the message that appears in my box as shown above (i.e., the "Greeting Test Account" message), I will be shown that message on a separate screen.  See the screenshot below:

An example of reading an email message

This is just an example of how an email message could appear when you click on it.  The links up at the top of this screen should be fairly self-explanatory: Prev message (if you have more than one message in your box) will allow you to backtrack to the message you looked at before the current one.  Next message (again, you need more than one message in your box for this choice to be available) will take you to the next email message in your inbox.  Mail List will take you back your default mail screen and will show you a list of any mail you have in your box.  Reply will format a return email to the sender's address and allow you to type and send a response.  Reply-All is exactly like Reply, but you can choose multiple recipients, not just one.  Forward will send a copy of the email message currently displayed to an address of your choosing.

At the bottom of each of your read emails, you will see another set of options that look like this:

The bottom of your screen when reading an email

The top portion of this screen is exactly like the screenshot immediately above, but there are some new additions at the bottom, and here's what they do:

View headers will allow you to see some information about the currently displayed email message that is normally behind the scenes (e.g., the return path, message ID, MIME version type, and so on).  Most of this information is absolutely useless to you in the vast majority of cases, so you should probably leave this box unchecked.  Variable width font can sometimes be used to correctly display email messages that are formatted in an uncommon way.  Again, this is something that you will probably never use, so keep it unchecked.  Inline Images will allow you to view any picture attachments the currently displayed message may have without having to open a separate window or image viewing program (i.e., the picture will be displayed underneath the email message itself).  View as HTML is a funny one.  HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the language that many web pages are written in, and it is possible to include HTML code in email messages.  If someone sends you some HTML in an email and you have the View as HTML box unchecked, you will see only the HTML code itself, and not the end product as the sender intended.  Therefore, it is a good idea to put a check in this box.  Execute HTML will allow your browser to perform some additional functions with certain kinds of HTML code that you may be sent, but this can sometimes be time consuming and/or dangerous from a security standpoint, so you should leave this box unchecked.

There are also two buttons near the bottom of this screen.  Delete will simply send the currently displayed message to your deleted items folder.  Set View Style will make active all of the changes you may have made to the checkboxes at the bottom of the screen.  So if you make any changes here, be sure to click on Set View Style before you leave to make your changes active.

Sending Your Mail

Sending mail is the next logical step, so here we go.  Clicking on the New Message button from the default mail screen will get you to the point where you can compose and then send someone an email message.  After you have arrived here, you will see a screen that looks like this:

The Send Mail screen

There are a number of fields to fill in here, but it's all pretty simple.  Here's the lowdown:

The buttons across the very top of the screen have already been dealt with in the step above, so we'll concentrate on the new stuff.  The TO field is where you type the email address of your intended recipient (I have included an example address in the screenshot above).  The CC field stands for Carbon Copy.  When you type email addresses into this field (separated by either commas or semicolons) and then send your message, it will be sent to each and every address you type in here.  Think of CC as a bulk email sender.  BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy, and it does exactly what CC does except for one thing.  While CC will send to multiple addresses at once, it will also let each recipient know every other email address on the CC list.  For example, if I sent an email message to you and four other people using the CC field, you would be able to see that I had sent the message to four others besides yourself because you would see their email addresses right beside your own.  Using BCC will eliminate this (i.e., each recipient will see only their own email address on the TO list).  Reply-To is automatically filled in from your Options screen, so if you want to change this field, you should do so from Options.  Reply-To is the email address that will be used when someone wants to send a reply to you, so make sure that there is a valid email address here.  In the Attach field, you can specify a file to send along with your email.  This is normally done with pictures, text documents, movies, etc.  Type the path to the file into the box provided, or click on the Browse button and you can search for the file on your computer, which is usually easier.  In the Subject field, you should type something descriptive about the email you're sending so that your recipient will have some idea of what he/she is about to read.  The large, white box under the Subject is where you type the actual text of your message (hopefully, it's something other than "Yadda yadda yadda").

When you've finished with the above, click on the Send Now button, and you're done!  In a matter of seconds, you recipient will have your email.  There are several more options at the bottom of the screen, however.  Here's what they do:

The Spell-Check button will run the text of your email though WebMail's internal dictionary and check for misspelled words.  It will also offer to correct any misspelled words it finds.  The Add Signature check box allows you to attach your signature (which you can define on the Options screen) to your outbound email messages.  The check box that says Send CC to self for confirmation will do exactly that.  If you have this box checked, immediately after you send an email, an exact copy of that email will be sent to you as well.  I guess some people like to be absolutely sure that their emails have been sent, but personally I would leave this box unchecked--it will save disk space on your account.  The check box that says Save a copy in copies to self folder will do exactly that.  This is a good box to have checked as it will keep a record of all the mail you have successfully sent--just in case you have a selective memory, like me.

Well, that's it.  We're all done here.  There's lots more to learn, but hopefully most of that will come naturally as you explore the capabilities of GWE's WebMail.  Remember that you can always make use of the Help button in the WebMail program.  There's much more information to be found there once you're ready to learn more.  If you have any questions or comments, you can email them to either techsupport@gwe.net or postmaster@gwe.net.

You're still reading, aren't you?  Well, off with you!!!  Go email somebody or something!!!  Geez :-)

p.s. If you're new to the Internet in general, and not just new to email, you might want to check out a descriptive list of some of the terms you may encounter when surfing the 'net.  Click here to check it out.