EMAIL ATTACHMENTS AND COMPUTER VIRUSES.

Here is a good rule of thumb to use when dealing with attachments:

Never open them, until you have scanned them with your antivirus program first.

If you're not sure who they are from, don't open them, ever. A lot of people send .doc files, by email, as opposed to actually typing their message into the email body. You must email them back, and request they copy the message from the .doc file, and paste it into the email, then send it back. You can use a canned response for this, so you don't have to type the same email over and over again.

When dealing with small or large amounts of email, you should have some sort of anti-virus email protection working for you, in addition to your regular antivirus software.

A good choice in this area would be Norton AntiVirus 2000, or the latest version they offer at the time you are reading this. Their email protection scans each message FIRST, before it downloads to your computer! You can then safely say, (providing your virus definitions are updated constantly!) that your mail will be virus free, although you still shouldn't open email attachments, unless you KNOW the person that sent them, and are 100% certain they're safe.

While your email is downloading, Norton Anti Virus email protection is hard at work, reading each email message, BEFORE it arrives in the mailbox. Here's a shot of how it looks, while your email is downloading. (It's the little grey envelope, on the taskbar)

Obviously it's very unobtrusive, sitting in your system tray, and uses up a very small amount of system resources! Depending on which anti virus program you use, you may NOT have the extra email protection. If you're not sure, check with the HELP file of your program.

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USING EMAIL FILTERS TO SAVE TIME SORTING

The use of email filters saves having to sort a lot of common email, such as order confirmations, support requests, or just about anything you repeatedly receive. Ideally, you should have all the support requests filtered into a special mailbox. That ensures the messages are not mixed up, lost, or overlooked. It's easy to set up mail filters in Eudora. If you're not sure how, you can use the example below, or, check the help file in your email program.

Here is how to open your filters, in Eudora:

Once your filters open up, you will want to create a new one, for support requests. Click on NEW, from the choices near the bottom left hand side of the open window.

A new window will appear after you click NEW. It looks like this:

Select: "Incoming"

Then click the drop down arrow by "header" and choose "TO" from that list, as shown below.

Make sure it says "Contains" as shown above.

In the space beside "contains" type your support@ email address. Generally it would be: support@yourcompany.com

There are two sections labelled "contains" and "Header" but you don't need to fill in the last two. Only the first ones are required. If you are confused, check our example at the end of this section, which shows a fully completed mail filter.

The next step is to choose the "ACTION". In this case, we want to choose "Transfer To", as shown below:

Once you click "transfer to" the following will appear, on the left hand side:

You obviously don't want your support@ mail filtered into the inbox, so you have to click where it says "in" and choose your mailbox from the drop down list. If you haven't yet made a mailbox labelled "Support" then you can do that now!

Choose "NEW" from the list that drops down, similar to this one:

A new box will appear, asking you to name the new mailbox. You can name it "support" or whatever you want to call it.

In our example we called it "Support Mailbox".

Once you've done that, then click OK. The long bar on the right hand side that previously said "in" will now say "support mailbox".

All you have to do is click on that, and all the mail addressed to "support@yourcompany.com" will then be filtered into that special mailbox!

When you are done making your filter, you can close the filters section, by clicking the X on the top right hand side. A window will appear, asking if you would like to save the mail filter. Definitely choose YES or else you'll have to create the filter all over again.