Welcome to the Spoken Tutorial on Compose Options for Emails.
In this tutorial, we will learn:
about the email recipients, namely- To, Cc, Bcc.
Format the email text
Attach files to emails
Share files via Google Drive
Insert a photo or link into an email
and about the Compose window options.
For this tutorial, you will need a working Internet connection
and a Web browser.
For this demonstration, I will be using Firefox web browser.
Let's begin.Open your web browser and type: http://gmail.com
The Login page opens.
Enter a username and password in the respective text boxes.
If the Login page opens with the username, this means that you have already accessed this account from your machine.
Enter the password
and click on Sign in button.
We are in our Gmail page.
Now, let us look at the options available for writing an email.
So, first let us click on the Compose button.
The Compose window opens up.
The To segment is where we specify the recipients.
It has 3 options, To, Cc and Bcc.
Cc stands for Carbon Copy and Bcc stands for Blind Carbon Copy.
We have to add the email address of the person to whom we are sending the email in the To field.
Here’s a screenshot.
If we want to send the same email to more than 1 person, simply add the email-ids in the field To.
Here’s a screenshot.
Use Cc option to mark a copy of the email to others.
All the recipients marked in To and Cc fields can see all the other recipients.
Here’s a screenshot.
We can also use Bcc option to mark a blind copy of the email to others.
In this option, the recipients in To and Cc cannot see the recipients added in the Bcc.
The recipient in the Bcc can see the To and Cc recipients
but not the other Bcc recipients.
The sender of the mail can see the complete recipients list.
Here’s a screenshot.
Important Note:
We can add any number of email-ids in the recipients field - To, Cc and Bcc.
But the maximum limit is 500 recipients per day.
Each mail-id has to be separated by a space or comma or colon.
Let us now switch back to our Gmail Compose window.
By default, the cursor is in the To field.
Let's enter the recipient addresses as follows-
In To field, let's give the email-id as "ray.becky.0808@gmail.com".
In Cc field, "0808iambecky@gmail.com".
In Bcc field, "stlibreoffice@gmail.com" and "info@spoken-tutorial.org".
Click in the Subject line and enter a short description for your email.
I will type: Partner with us".
In the contents area, let us type the message:
Spoken Tutorial Project is helping to bridge the digital divide.
Gmail allows us to do basic formatting to the text in the body of our email.
It is displayed, by default, at the bottom of the Compose window.
If not, to access the formatting toolbar, click the Formatting options button.
Here, we have options such as different Font, Size, Bold, Italic, Underline, Text color, Align, Numbered and Bulleted lists and Indentation.
These options are exactly like the ones in any word processor application.
You may explore these options by yourself.
This is how I have formatted my text.
To hide the formatting toolbar, click the Formatting options button.
In the Compose window, there are options for attaching files, photos, links and emoticons.
To share files or documents with others,
we can use Attach files or Insert files using Drive" options.
All Mail providers allow to send files as attachment.
You can attach up to 25 megabytes (MB) in size.
To send files that are larger than this, you can use Insert files using Drive option.
Let us first attach a 'pdf file' which is less than 1Mb in size.
Click on the Attach file icon which looks like a paper clip.
This will open the file browser.
Browse and select the file you want to send via mail.
From the Desktop, I will select "myscript.pdf" and click on Open.
We can see that our file is getting attached to our mail.
Multiple files can also be attached to the same mail by using Attach files option.
To remove a file you've attached to a message, click on the 'x' mark to the right of the filename.
Now, let us attach a file which is around 30Mb.
I have a zip file on my Desktop which is around 30Mb file size.
Click the Attach files icon once again.
Browse and select the 30Mb zip file and click on Open.
We will get the popup message:
"The file you are trying to send exceeds the 25mb attachment limit".
And it gives us the option to Send using Google drive.
Click on Send using google drive button.
Let me close this for a moment.
Clicking on Insert files using Drive option also gets us to the same window as before.
Here, we can see 3 tabs:
My Drive, Shared with me and Upload."
By default, the files which are already uploaded, will be available under My Drive tab.
Here you can see a file.
This was shared by Google Team at the time of account creation.
Let’s click on Shared with me tab.
Here we see the message- "No one's shared any files with you yet!"
If anyone shares a file with you, it will be available under Shared with Me tab.
Now, click on Upload tab to upload a new file.
Click on Select files from your computer button.
Browse and select the file, from your machine, that you want to upload and click on Open .
Click on Add more files button, if you want to add any more files.
I will skip this for now and proceed with the single file upload only.
After the file has been added, we have to mention how it has to be inserted in our mail.
Notice 2 buttons at the bottom right which say-
Insert as Drive link and
Attachment.
By default, Insert as Drive link is selected.
If we select Attachment then the file will be inserted as an attachment.
We will leave it as it is.
Click on the Upload button at the bottom left corner of the screen.
It will start uploading but this may take some time depending on your internet speed.
Once complete, here, in the content area, we can see a link to the uploaded file.
Now let’s click on Insert Photo option to insert images in the email.
The Upload Photos window opens.
We can upload photos from our computer or by giving the website address of the image.
For now, I don't want to upload any image.
So, I will click on Cancel button.
You may explore this option on your own.
The next option is Insert Link. Let’s click on it.
The Edit Link dialog-box opens.
In the Text to display field, type the text that you want as the link.
I will type Spoken Tutorial.
In the Link to section, by default, the Web address option is selected.
In the text field, type the url as http://spoken-tutorial.org
and click on OK button.
Now, in the content area, you can see the text Spoken Tutorial and it is hyperlinked.
Let me click on the hyperlinked text.
A small pop window opens below the text.
It says- Go to link:.
Clicking on the URL displayed, will take you to the Spoken Tutorial website’s Homepage.
To change the URL or remove the link, we can click on Change or Remove options respectively.
We can also insert various pictorial representations with the help of this emoticon icon.
Use this feature in your email communication wherever required.
Notice the text Saved just before the Trash icon.
Whenever we add or remove content, our email will be auto-saved in our default Drafts folder.
This is very helpful to retrieve our typed message, in case of a power failure or Internet disconnection.
If we want to discard this message, click on the Trash icon.
This action will delete the email from the Drafts folder as well.
Click on the More options button which is next to the Trash icon.
Default to full-screen option will make the Compose window bigger.
Label – We will learn about this feature in the future tutorials.
Plain text mode option will clear all the formatting we did before and convert the mail to plain text.
Print option will send the composed mail to the default configured printer.
Check Spelling will do spell-check of the typed content.
We are now ready to send our mail.
Click on Send button.
We get the following message on the screen-
This Drive file isn't shared with all recipients.
This is because we did not share the file with the people who are marked on this email."
Click on Share & Send button.
On the screen, we will see either of the two messages:
Your message is "sending"
or "Your message has been sent".
To view the sent mail, click on View Message link.
We can see the contents of the email which we sent here.
Let us cross-check one-by-one.
Here are the attachments
and here is the URL link.
Below the mail address, there is an inverted triangle that shows the header details.
Let me click on it.
We can see the email-ids of all the recipients in To, Cc and Bcc fields.
Let us see how the email will appear to the recipients.
This is the mail-id of the recipient marked in Cc.
You can see the message which is sent now. Let me open this to read.
Click on Show Details.
It displays To and Cc but not the Bcc recipients.
This is the mail-id of one of the recipient marked in Bcc.
You can see the message which is sent now.
Let me open this to read.
Click on Show Details.
You can see To, Cc and Bcc recipient details.
Let me come back to the sender’s gmail account.
Look over here, we mentioned 2 recipients in the Bcc.
But here we can see only one email id. The other one is not visible.
This is how the Bcc feature works.
Hope you are able to understand the differences clearly.
This brings us to the end of this tutorial.
Let us summarize.
In this tutorial, we have learnt about:
The email recipients namely, To, Cc, Bcc
Formatting the text of the emails
Attach files to emails
Share files via Google Drive
Insert a photo or link into an email and about the
Compose window options.
The video at the given link summarizes the Spoken Tutorial project.
Please download and watch it.
We conduct workshops and give certificates to those who pass our online tests.
For more details, please write to us.
Spoken Tutorial project is funded by NMEICT, MHRD, Government of India.
More information on this mission is available at this link.
This tutorial has been contributed by the Spoken Tutorial Team, IIT Bombay.
This is Srilakshmi Ramaswamy, signing off.Thanks for watching.