&Daniel.Naber;
&David.Rugge;
Getting Started with Email
Emailgetting
started
&kmail;
&kde; features a powerful and easy-to-use email client called
&kmail;, which allows you to send, receive, and organize your email
quickly and efficiently. Let us look at how to set it up. If you have
any problems with this procedure, refer to the full &kmail; manual.
Information you will need before you start
Many email settings can vary greatly depending on the setup of
your system, your ISP's configuration, or your local network
setup. You will need to find out some information before you can start
setting up your email:
Your email address
This should be provided by your ISP or system administrator.
Your username and password for your email account
The username is often the same as the part before the
@
symbol in your email address, but not always: check
with your ISP.
EmailSMTP
server
Your outgoing email (SMTP) server name and
details
Again, your ISP should have provided
you with this information. If not, you can try the form smtp.your-isp-name.com.
EmailIMAP
server
EmailPOP3
server
Your incoming email (IMAP or
POP) server name and details
If you do not have this information to hand, you can
try imap.your-isp-name.com
for IMAP or pop.your-isp-name.com
if you use POP3.
Once you have that information, you are ready to start setting
up &kmail;. Open &kmail; from the K menu (you can
find it in the Internet submenu, or use one
of the methods described in .) Once
&kmail; has opened, select the menu entry
SettingsConfigure KMail...
. The next sections describe how to use the dialog that
appears to set up &kmail;.
Setting your Identity
The settings in the Identities page are fairly
straightforward. Select the default identity and
click Modify.... Fill in the Your
name field with your full name (⪚ John
Doe) and, optionally, the
Organization field with the appropriate
information.
Next, fill in the Email address field with
your email address (⪚ john@example.net).
That is all for this dialog unless you want to use the more
advanced features (cryptography, a signature, &etc;). You can find
more information about these features in the full &kmail;
manual. Click on the OK button to close this
dialog, and move on to the next configuration page...
Setting up your Account
Click on the Network icon to move to the
network configuration page. It contains the settings that
tell &kmail; how to send and receive your email messages. You will see
two tabs on the right-hand side: Sending and
Receiving. You need to set up both, so let us look
at them each in turn:
Sending Messages
Emailsending
The Sending tab provides a list of
ways to send messages. The first item in the list is the default
way to send messages. Using the Add...
button you can choose between two different ways of sending messages:
SMTP and
Sendmail. &Sendmail; here
means a local software installation — this has a
reputation of being difficult to set up, so if you do not already have a
working &Sendmail; configuration, choose
SMTP and fill in the Name
field with a descriptive name
(⪚ My Mail Account)
and the Host
field with the name and domain of your mail server
(⪚ smtp.provider.com). You will probably
not need to change the Port setting (the default is
25).
A description of the other options can be found
in the full &kmail; manual. Click on OK to
close this dialog, and then click on the
Receiving tab.
Receiving Messages
To set up an account so you can receive mail, press the
Add... button in the
Receiving tab. You will then be prompted for the
type of your email account; most users should select
POP3 or IMAP. If you wish to
use a different system, consult the &kmail; manual.
You will then be presented with
the Add account window. First, fill in the
Name field to name your account. You can choose any name
you like. Login, Password, and
Host should be filled in with the information you
gathered earlier. You should not usually need to change the Port setting.
You are now ready to send and receive mail. For
IMAP, just open your folders in the
folder tree in &kmail;'s main window. &kmail; then connects to your
server and displays the messages it finds. For POP3 use
FileCheck
Mail.
Testing your Setup
Emailtesting
First, you should send yourself a message to test your
configuration. To send a message, either hit &Ctrl;N, select the
New Message icon or select
the MessageNew
Message... menu item. The
composer window will appear. Fill in the
To: field with your email address and type
something in the Subject field. Send the message by
selecting Message Send
.
To check your email, select
FileCheck
Mail. In the lower-right corner of the main
window, a progress bar will indicate how many messages are being
downloaded. If you receive the message you just sent, then
congratulations! If, however, you receive any error messages while
testing your setup, make sure that your network connection is working
and recheck your settings at
Settings Configure
&kmail;....
Related Information
The &kmail; Handbook has full descriptions of advanced
email settings and so on. You can read it in the &khelpcenter; or by
entering help:/kmail in &konqueror;'s
Location bar.
The &kmail; website at http://kmail.kde.org contains
latest news, tips and tricks, and plenty more.