1. Toolbars
2. Menus
3. Panels
4. Speed Dial
5. Bookmarks
6. Extensions
7. Opera Widgets
8. Notes
9. Geolocation
10. Opera Link
11. Opera Turbo
12. Opera Unite
13. Content blocking
14. Fraud and Malware Protection
15. BitTorrent
16. Display modes
17. Developer tools
18. Preferences
    • General preferences
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    • Searching in Opera
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19. Advanced Preferences
    • Tabs
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20. Skins
21. Keyboard shortcuts
22. Using the mouse
23. E-mail and news
24. Feeds
25. Chat
26. Dialogs
27. Auto-update
28. Backing up Opera

E-mail and news

Press Page Down and Page Up to switch slides.

Introduction

Opera's news and email client is designed for speed, elegance, and user friendliness.

All messages you receive are automatically indexed and sorted based on sender, contents, and the type of message. They are kept in a single database and can therefore appear in multiple views without copying and moving.

Importing messages

Follow this procedure to import messages, contact information, and settings from other email clients:

1. Select Mail and Chat Accounts.
2. Click "Add" and select "Import email".
3. Select which email client to import from.
4. If Opera has not located the correct folder, click "Choose" to select the folder the messages are located in.
5. Select which account to import into; choose "<new account>" to import to a fresh account.
6. Select whether to import settings, contacts, messages, or a combination.
7. Click "Import" to start importing.

Imported messages are treated as follows:

• Your old folder tree is put under "Labels" in the Mail panel.
• Messages in your old Outbox, Sent, Drafts, and Trash folders are put in the corresponding views.
• All old incoming messages (from your inbox and folder tree) will appear in the Received view.

Setting up a new account

Follow this procedure to set up a new account without importing old messages:

1. Select Mail and Chat Accounts.
2. Click "Add" and select the type of email account you want (most likely POP if you are unsure).
3. Enter your name, email address, and optionally an organization you belong to.
4. Enter your user (log-in) name and password (given to you by your service provider).
5. Enter mail server information from your service provider.
6. Click "Finish" to create the account.

Messages that are not already on your computer will then be downloaded from the mail server.

Writing messages

• Click "Compose" or press Ctrl + M to compose a new message. Your message is automatically saved as a draft and remains in the Draft view if you do not send it.
• Auto-completion of email addresses will be offered for contacts.
• To add files to the message, click "Attach".
• Your message is automatically checked for spelling and errors are marked by a dotted red line. Right-click for a list of spelling suggestions. See Spell Checker for more details.
• Send the message by clicking the "Send" button.
• Double-click a message in the Drafts view to continue editing a draft.
• Double-click a message in the Sent view to edit and resend an old message.

Composition fonts and styles

You can change the default font in the compose window in fonts preferences. You can also send rich text messages include inline images, styled text, links and/or custom HTML. To enable rich text composition as the default:

1. Go to Mail and Chat Accounts and select the account.
2. Click "Edit".
3. Select the Outgoing tab.
4. Check "Prefer HTML formatting".

Reading messages

By default, new messages will be downloaded to your computer at regular intervals, but you may also choose to do this manually, for example if you are using a dial-up connection. Display the Unread view in the Mail panel or menu to go through new messages.

Message view explained

The message view is divided into four parts:

1. Toolbar with buttons for common actions
2. Field that lists messages
3. Field that displays the contents of the currently selected message
4. Field where you can type and send a quick reply to the currently selected message

Click on the columns to sort listed messages according to the corresponding criteria.

• The left-most column displays a symbol for each message:

  Symbol	Meaning
  Star	New messages are marked as unread
  Arrow pointing up	The message has been sent (outgoing messages)
  Arrow pointing left	You have replied to the message
  Arrow pointing right	You have forwarded the message

• The "Subject" column displays a triangle if the message belongs to a thread (click to expand), and an envelope to indicate an email message.
• The paper-clip column displays an icon for messages that contain file attachments.

Messages that appear in blue in the message list have not been seen (selected by cursor) yet. Messages in bold have not been marked as read yet.

Smileys

Opera can present textual emoticons in the form of graphical smileys in email and news messages. This is toggled from the email toolbar in View > Display > Enable smileys. For an overview of available smileys, please see the Chat help.

Quick find

To quickly search all the messages in your current view for a specific term or phrase, use the "Quick find" field in the email toolbar. The messages will be sorted as you type.

Message list context menu

Right-click a message for multiple choices:

Reply	Answer selected message
Reply All	Answer selected message and include all recipients
Forward	Pass selected message to a third party, with you as the sender in the "From" field
Redirect	Send selected message to a third party, keeping original sender in the "From" field
Follow/Ignore »	Mark selected thread so that it will be followed or ignored
Mark »	Mark selected messages as read, unread, spam, and so forth
Label As »	Mark selected messages as Important, Funny, and so forth
Go To »	Navigate messages
Cut	Copy selected messages to clipboard; remove them from active view
Copy	Copy selected messages to clipboard; enables pasting to other views
Paste	Show copied (clipboard) messages in active view
Remove From View	Remove selected messages from active view
Move to Trash	Move selected messages to Trash view
Delete Permanently	Delete selected messages permanently, without moving to Trash
Fetch Complete Message	Finish downloading selected messages (low-bandwidth mode)
Cancel Post	Request all news servers to delete posting (use in Sent view)
Edit	Continue editing selected outgoing message
Add Contact	Recognize senders of selected messages as contacts
View All Headers and Message	Show the selected message with headers

Click the View button in the email toolbar for multiple choices on how to display messages:

Flat	Show related messages sorted separately (not in Contacts view)
Threaded	Show related messages sorted in threads
Show »	Show certain types of messages
Period »	Decide how far back in time to look at messages
Display »	Decide how to display the message body
Mark as Read »	Mark message as read manually or automatically
Show Quick Reply	Enable the "quick reply" function

If you use quick reply to answer a message, Opera will remove text that has been quoted more than twice.

Tip: You can specify quote levels to strip in "accounts.ini". The replacement text can be edited in "english.lng".

Warning: HTML messages may contain markup that fetches data from the Internet. For example, spammers may send you a unique image to help them identify your email address, and therefore external images in HTML mail are blocked. To unblock external images, uncheck the menu item View > Display > Block External Elements. For security reasons, JavaScript in HTML mail is always disabled.

Organizing messages

The mail panel displays a tree of views that organize your messages. Note the following details about the message tree:

• Click the root elements (for example "All messages" or "Labels") to show or hide all of the underlying views. Right click a root element and select "Customize" to selectively show or hide individual views.
• Left-click a view to show the messages it contains.
• Bold views contain unread messages.
• You can navigate the tree with the cursor keys (more about keyboard navigation).
• The root elements can be reorganized by dragging and dropping them. To restore the default ordering, select the "View" icon at the head of the panel, and choose "Reset Mail Panel to Default".

Right-click a view for multiple choices:

Compose	Write a new message
Check Mail	Download new messages to your computer
Mark All As Read	Hide all messages (in selected view) from Unread view
Move Spam to Trash	Move all spam messages to Trash
Empty Trash	Permanently remove deleted messages from Trash view
New Label	Create new label
Search	Open search dialog, with multiple search options for finding messages
Delete	Delete selected view and all sub-views
Show Messages From »	Hide or show messages from certain accounts
Export	Export selected messages in the standard UNIX mailbox format (MBS)
Properties	Properties dialog

Note: Mailing lists are identified by looking for standard mailing list headers. See IETF RFC 2919 for specifications.

Labels

Spam

The spam view separates advertisements and unwanted messages from messages in other views. By default, Opera's internal spam filter is set to medium strength, and it will analyze messages that are added to and removed from it to continually improve its automated sorting.

The internal spam filter examines messages for suspicious content, missing sender address, and so forth. If too many questionable matters are found, the message is considered spam. You can change the spam filter settings by right-clicking on "Spam" in the panel and selecting "Properties" from its context menu.

Creating your own labels

If you wish to organize your messages beyond what is done automatically, you can create your own labels to resemble traditional message folders. Top-level labels are created by right-clicking anywhere inside the mail panel and selecting "New Label".

You can label messages manually, by right-clicking a message in the message view, and selecting a label under "Label As", or automatically, by setting up labels with specific rules for message sorting. Each message can appear in as many views as you like.

To edit the name of a label or the rules associated with it, right-click the label in the panel, and select "Properties" from the context menu.

Finding messages

As the number of messages on your computer grows, it becomes necessary to quickly retrieve particular messages. Type your search term into the search field on the toolbar for a quick full-text search of all messages. Click on the button "Save Search" to save the search as a label.

Managing accounts

You can choose different settings for each of your accounts in Mail and Chat Accounts.

General

• The account name is only used within Opera, not in your messages.
• Account categories lets you select between groups of accounts, for example only display your three work accounts or your two home accounts.
• Your name and email address appear in outgoing messages, for example Nice Person <someone@example.org>.
• Outgoing messages can indicate an organization you belong to (optional).
• Outgoing messages can indicate an alternate address people should send replies to (optional).
• You can send copies (Cc) or blind copies (Bcc) of all messages sent from the account to a particular email address (optional).

Servers

Enter the email or news account information you have received from your service provider. Contact your service provider if you are missing information.

Tip: To protect your email and news passwords, enter a master password in Opera's security preferences.

Incoming

• Leaving messages on a server makes it possible to retrieve the messages again from another computer.
• If you read messages from multiple computers, they can be marked automatically if you have already downloaded (read) them from another computer.
• You can choose whether to download message bodies while checking messages or when reading each individual message.
• IMAP users can also choose whether or not to store local copies of downloaded message bodies.
• You can choose how often to check for new messages automatically and which accounts to include.
• You can decide which accounts to include when you check for new messages manually.
• You can have a sound played when you get new messages.

Low-bandwidth mode

Low-bandwidth mode is a setting on mail accounts that uses as little bandwidth as possible. For POP, this means that Opera does not fetch more than the first 100 lines of a message unless requested. For IMAP, Opera only synchronizes new messages and does not fetch attachments unless requested. This mode is not advised if you set a POP account to delete message after X days, as messages that are not completely downloaded will be removed from the server and you will not be able to retrieve the complete message.

Outgoing

• International users may need to specify a character set for their language.
• Enable format=flowed wrapping in messages, and wrap at 76 characters for legacy clients (those without format=flowed).
• Enable queueing to have messages sent in batches when you click the "Send" button (useful if you have a dial-up connection).
• When sending or replying to a message, you can have all recipients automatically added to your contact list.
• Specify a signature that will appear at the bottom of all messages you send.

IMAP

About IMAP

IMAP organizes your email messages on the mail server. Regardless of where you are when you look at your email, you will see the same messages organized the same way, even if you use different computers.

Caution: Setting up an email account to use both POP and IMAP simultaneously is likely to cause problems. Therefore, use either POP or IMAP for each account.

Setting up an IMAP account

Before attempting to set up an IMAP account, make sure the email service you are using supports it. Then follow the procedure for POP and select IMAP instead of POP when asked.

Using IMAP

When your IMAP folder has been set up, and all messages are downloaded to your computer, your IMAP folder tree appears in the "Mail" panel under "Mail for...".

The INBOX folder is the default folder for incoming messages and cannot be deleted. Click it to read your messages. Reading and sending messages over IMAP is similar to working with POP.

Maintaining IMAP folders

Go to Mail > IMAP folders to customize your IMAP folder tree. Click the checkboxes to select which IMAP folders you want to access from your computer.

Note that when you delete an IMAP folder from the mail server, all messages in that folder will be lost.

To move a message from one IMAP folder to another, drag the message from the message view and drop it in the new folder.

Options

Account options are the same as for POP, with these additions:

• You can set the path to your IMAP root folder (if indicated by service provider)
• You can choose a folder on the IMAP server where you store messages sent from your IMAP account

Note: To take full advantage of IMAP capabilities, you should be connected to the Internet.

Exporting messages

If you want to export your email messages from Opera for use with a clean Opera install or a different email client, the easiest way is to make sure all incoming message types are displayed in the "Received" view. Then right-clicking it and selecting "Export". Opera will then export all the messages in the selected view to a single, compressed file that is convenient for import.

Note that any view in the mail panel can be exported individually. This includes sent messages and drafts.

News

While an email message is usually sent to a single person or a few people, posting a news article can be compared to putting notices on a public bulletin board.

Setting up a news account

1. Go to Mail and Chat Accounts.
2. Click "Add" and select "News".
3. Enter your name, email address, and organization (optional).
4. Enter the news-server information given to you by your service provider.
5. Click "Finish" to create your new account.

Tip: To participate in newsgroups about Opera, enter news.opera.com as news server.

Subscribing to newsgroups

1. Go to Mail > Newsgroups.
2. Subscribe to groups by clicking the respective checkboxes in the list.
3. Click to subscribe.

Tip: Enter text in the "Quick find" field to find particular newsgroups without scrolling through the whole list.

Reading news

To read a newsgroup, click the group you want to read under the "News at" heading in your mail panel. Reading and writing news articles is very similar to working with email messages. Note, however, the following:

• Click "Reply" to post a follow-up article, as an answer to the article you are currently reading.
• Click "Reply all" to both post a follow-up and reply to the author by email.
• Enter a comma-separated list of groups if you want to post your article in multiple groups (called "cross-posting").
• Enter email addresses in the CC field to send people copies of the article by email.
• Deleting a news article only deletes your local copy.
• Use "Cancel post" to attempt to delete an article from server. This is respected by some, but not all, news servers.

Learn more

• Learn to read your email using keyboard shortcuts.
• Read the Opera Mail tutorial.

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