To type an E-mail address into the directory, go to the line where you wish to insert the e-mail entry and press Control+I, or at any point press Control+A to add the new entry at the end.

MOUSE users can click on the corresponding toolbar button or item on the drop-down edit menu.

A dialogue box opens with the cursor in an edit box requesting a name. Type in the name that you wish to use to refer to this entry. This is commonly the name of an organisation or person for a contact detail, or some descriptive text for a task or action.

When you have entered a name, press Tab to move to the "information" edit box.

In this case, the information required is the e-mail address. For example, to store S.W.H.-Wintextware's e-mail address, it would be "steven@wintextware.com" in this box.

Type this in and press ENTER or click the Insert or Add button to save the new item. You are returned to the directory and the newly entered line is highlighted. Whenever you create or modify a directory entry, the updated list is immediately saved on your computer, you do not have to issue an extra command to make sure your changes are permanent.

To modify a directory entry, highlight it and press Control+M. The same dialogue box appears with the fields filled in as per the original entry and the cursor in the information field, since it is assumed that a person's telephone number, for example, is more likely to change than their name. Press Shift+Tab to move to the name box if you do want to edit this text. Press ENTER to save the changes, or ESC to abandon them (cancel).

Delete a directory entry by highlighting it and pressing the delete key (DEL). A message box appears asking for confirmation that you do intend to delete this item, with yes and no buttons. To confirm, Tab to the Yes button and press ENTER, or click it with the MOUSE, or press letter "y". Pressing ENTER immediately would chose not to delete, a design that is intended to help prevent accidental deletion.

The name can contain spaces or any other character except a colon (":"). This allows you to type in a complete organisation or person name or an abbreviation of your choice, or both (you could use a separator such as underscore to have both the abbreviation and the full name available for searching).

To find a directory entry, you could arrow or scroll through the list, but this is not very convenient in all but the shortest directories. simply type text that is contained in the entry you want to find and the highlight will change as you type. The text you type can be in either the name or information field (part of the address or whatever), and does not have to start at the beginning of that field. Tap the Control key or move to the top of the directory by pressing Home to start a new search.

To send an e-mail message from the directory, select a recipient's address

either by clicking with the left MOUSE button anywhere in the line containing it or by highlighting the line then pressing ENTER. Usually, Braille users with a screenreader can press one of the "cursor routing button" above or below their Braille display line to select the item in the line shown on the display.

A new message is created with the selected address in the "To" box and you can type in the subject and body of the message and send it exactly as if you had started a new message in your e-mail program. Once you have started a message in this way, selecting further e-mail addresses pastes them into your text at the cursor position; this allows you to enter more recipients into the to or carbon copy boxes, or blind copy box if your e-mail program displays one, as well as making it easy to include e-mail addresses as part of your message to give to other people. Click the send button, or do whatever you normally do, when ready to send the message and it will be queued for sending in your e-mail program's outbox. If you are online, messages that you have written may be sent immediately, depending on your system settings.

Sometimes it is convenient to store the sender's address of a message that you have received. To do this, press WindowsKey+F2 while you are reading the message in your e-mail program, or while it is highlighted in your e-mail program's message list. The Launchpad directory Opens for you to go to where you want to store the new address, then when you open the store dialogue to insert or add an entry or modify the highlighted one, the information box is already filled in with the required text. Fill in the name box and press ENTER to save the new item, or ESC to cancel. You can use the same method to store an e-mail address from any other document by selecting the text of the address and pressing WindowsKey+S, or you can use it to send an e-mail message immediately, without storing it first, by pressing WindowsKey+ENTER after selecting the text. Note that if you have copied an address to the Windows clipboard, you can press Control+V in the directory to paste a new entry; the information box of the store dialogue that opens is filled in with the text on the clipboard and you can change the selected radio button to add or modify, but the above method is usually easier.

You can insert an e-mail address

stored in the Launchpad directory into a document you are working on by highlighting the line containing it in the directory and pressing Control+ENTER, or simply double click the line with the left MOUSE button. To use this procedure, press the Launchpad shortcut key at the point where you want to insert the item to bring up the directory, move to the required line using the arrow keys or by typing search text, then press Control+ENTER or double click; The Launchpad directory closes and the information appears in the previous window as if you had typed it. Braille users can usually perform a double left click by pressing one of the "cursor routing buttons" above or below their Braille display line twice quickly.

Retrieving directory information is a very powerful feature of Launchpad. It enables you to easily include your stored information in correspondence or e-mail messages, or when filling in an Internet form, and in many other situations. You can also press Control+C instead of Control+ENTER to copy the information to the clipboard, then

close the directory (by pressing ESC or Alt+F4) and the required information can be pasted where you will by pressing Control+V or clicking your application's paste button.

Sometimes when you use this feature, the directory information may not appear as required in your text or form field. If this happens, you can paste it in immediately by pressing Control+V or clicking the paste button; this must be the very first action after the failed directory paste. The directory information is available on the clipboard until you continue working, but as soon as you do, the contents of the clipboard before you invoked directory paste becomes available again.

By default, when you use Launchpad to compose an e-mail message, a "signature" is appended to the message. An e-mail signature is standard text such as a business description or invitation to visit your website that you want to appear at the end of your e-mails, but do not want to

keep retyping it. The signature supplied with Launchpad merely states that the message was generated by the Windows Launchpad, but you can edit it to provide information of your own choosing.

To edit the Launchpad e-mail signature, select

"E: Edit e-mail signature"

on the dialling/setup menu in the directory. You can either left click "Dialling/setup" on the menubar then the above option on the dropdown menu, or use the keyboard by pressing Alt+D then letter "e". The signature file opens for editing. Change the text to what you want, then close the editor (normally by clicking the close symbol at the top of the screen or pressing Alt+F4), accept to save changes when prompted, and this text will be appended to all your e-mail messages unless you suppress it using the more advanced e-mail capabilities described later. Note that it is conventional to begin an e-mail signature with "--", to separate it from the rest of the message.

The signature can be controlled for individual messages with the more advanced e-mail syntax for storing an e-mail address described in the next section. These options, together with the built-in support for Web by e-mail and using address book items give Launchpad e-mail a lot more application than simply sending messages to other people; it makes it very easy to perform repetitive e-mail tasks, manage your membership of e-mail lists, send out circulars, and more.

More Advanced E-mail

Selecting an e-mail address in the Launchpad directory simply starts a new message for you to write to the selected address, filling in the subject and body of that message yourself. When you store an e-mail address, if you add a colon (":") after the address itself in the information box of the store dialogue, you can then add more text to determine exactly what happens when this address is selected. You can specify a subject heading to be automatically filled in whenever you start a message with this directory entry, turn the signature on or off an d specify a file to use for the text of the message.

The use of the signature or a file for the body text of the message is determined by the character following the colon:

"-", No signature or file is used;
"+", The signature is enabled or text is added to the message from a specified file;
":", you are prompted whether to include the signature or text from a file when you select this directory entry.

If the signature is simply being turned off, the rest of the text after the hyphen (minus sign), if any, is used as the subject line of the message. If no text follows the hyphen, the behaviour is exactly as for selecting a normal e-mail entry except that the signature file is not appended to the message, even if it is enabled by default.

If a plus sign is used to enable the signature or body text file, the name of the required file should immediately follow it, followed by an oblique stroke then the subject heading, if one is required to be automatically filled in as well. If no text follows the plus sign, or an oblique stoke immediately follows it to designate a subject heading, the default signature file is used.

Using a colon to allow you to specify at the time whether or not to include the signature on text file requires exactly the same syntax as wit a plus sign, but when the entry is selected, a message box will be displayed with yes and no buttons for you to confirm whether or not to use the file.

Support for adding attachments to e-mall messages will be available in the next version of Launchpad, together with inboard use of mailing lists. It is currently possible to use mailing lists stored in your Windows personal address book with the address book item features described below.

Using Address Book Items with Launchpad

The most direct way to send an e-mail message from the Launchpad directory using addresses stored in the Windows personal address book is to press Control+Shift+E or select

"M: Send an e-mil message"

from the e-mail submenu under tools on the menubar. This opens the address book and you can select one or more e-mail addresses as standard recipients, carbon copy recipients or blind copy recipients. A blind copy is a copy of th message sent to a recipient without showing who else the message is being sent to. Blind copying is useful for sending circulars where it is not necessary for each person receiving the message to read the list of other recipients. You can choose single addresses and/or distribution lists. When you click the OK button, the message is addressed as specified and ready for you to type in the subject and body text.

You can also create a Launchpad directory entry that starts a new e-mail message to a recipient in the address book. To do this:

1.	Invoke the store item dialogue as normal to make an entry in the directory, and fill in the name box as required;

2.	In the information box, type the name of an address book recipient. This can be a single recipient or the name of a distribution list;

3.	After the name, type an at sign. That is, a link to an address book recipient is designated by placing the normal e-mail at sign at the end of the information text, which specifies the address book name of the recipient or lit of recipients;

4.	Save the entry.

You can use the advanced e-mail syntax described in the previous section to automatically include a subject heading and/or control the use of the signature file or a body text file by placing a colon after the terminating at sign.

If a space is placed between the address book name and the at sign, the e-mail message is sent blind, as though the recipient had been selected for a blind copy. This facility is useful for sending out circulars when the address book name is that of a distribution list; each recipient on the list receives the message, but the other recipients are not disclosed.

Page url: http://wtcmanual.wintextware.com/index.html?lmq_storingane_mailaddress.htm

Making an entry in the directory that starts a new e-mail message to a person or organisation

More Advanced E-mail

Using Address Book Items with Launchpad