The composer window is used to write new messages; it can be invoked via -> menu or from the New Message icon on the main window.
To write your message, fill in the appropriate fields in the composer window. Use the menu to select which header fields are displayed. The field offers a option; if it is checked, the current identity will become the default identity when you open a new composer next time.
There are a variety of shortcuts to help you with writing your messages. The buttons next to the To:, CC:, and BCC: fields will call up the address book so that you can select addresses from there.
When you start typing an address in the To:/CC:/BCC: fields, a popup will appear that offers matching addresses that have been used recently and matching addresses from your address book. If you use multiple addressbooks, you can use the TAB key to select the first entry of the next addressbook in the list. If you do not like the automatic popup you can disable it by clicking with the mouse button on the field and choosing a different completion mode.
Whenever you want to add more than one
recipient in one of the fields, use a comma to separate each address
from the next one.
You may need to specify fully qualified addresses
(that is, user@example.com
) even for local
users, depending on your system configuration.
When you are finished with your message, click the Send Now icon (the envelope) to send the message now, or click the Send Later icon to put the message in the outbox. If your message is not finished yet, select ->.
If you want to send an encrypted or digitally signed message, select the Sign Message or Encrypt Message icons in the toolbar. Moreover you can select the format that should be used to sign and/or encrypt the message. Depending on the installed encryption programs you can choose between:
KMail will use a format which is understood by all recipients of the message. The preferred format of the recipients can be specified in the KDE Address Book.
This format is outdated. If you use this format then only the message text will be signed and/or encrypted. Attachments will neither be signed nor encrypted. HTML messages cannot be signed with this format. You should only use this format if necessary, that is, if you send messages to users of email clients that cannot handle the more advanced formats.
This format is the successor of the inline OpenPGP format. If you use this format then the message text and all attachments will be signed and/or encrypted (at least by default). This is the recommended format if you use OpenPGP.
This format is an alternative format to PGP/MIME. If you use this format then the message text and all attachments will be signed and/or encrypted (at least by default). This format is mostly used by corporations.
This format is a variant of the S/MIME format. It should only be used if necessary.
Note that HTML messages are often regarded as an annoyance; therefore, you should avoid sending HTML messages if possible. Particularly, you should never send HTML messages to a mailing list unless HTML messages are explicitly allowed.
In order to be able to create HTML messages you first have to enable the markup tools. To do this enable in the menu. A toolbar with several tools to format the message will appear. Via the drop down box you can select between standard text and six different types of lists (three bulleted lists with different symbols and three numbered lists with different numbering). Moreover, you can select the font family, the font size, the font style (bold, italic, underlined) and the text color. Last but not least, you can select the alignment of the text (left aligned, centered, right aligned).
Creating tables and embedding images is currently not possible.
You can attach files to your message by using one of the methods below:
Click the Attach File (paper clip) icon and select the file you wish to attach;
Drag a file from the desktop or another folder into the composer window;
Drag a message from KMail's message list into the composer window -- that message will then be attached;
Select one of the options in the menu.
Once a file is attached to your message, it appears in the attachments pane at the bottom of the composer window. You can use the , or the attachment.
mouse button on each attachment toUse the item to open the Message Part Properties dialog. The first field contains the attachment's MIME type. Just like the Name field, it should be automatically filled with an appropriate value. Sometimes the MIME type value may be wrong. You can then type in any MIME type or choose from the list of common MIME types. You can also select an encoding method for your file from the list of encoding options (normally, the default value works fine). Check the Suggest automatic display option if you want to suggest to the recipient the automatic (inline) display of this attachment. Whether this works or not depends on the recipient's email client and on their settings.
You can also attach public keys to the message by using the appropriate options in the menu. PGP key attachments are handled like file attachments.
KMail will automatically check the spelling of your message (in HTML mode this currently does not work) and display unknown words using red color. If there are too many unknown words KMail will disable its checking. To select the language used for checking, select ->. You can disable automatic spellchecking in the menu.
To check the spelling of your message using a dialog, select ->. KMail uses TDESpell to check spelling, which is the KDE frontend to the ispell or aspell spelling checker. Note that you may first need to configure the spellchecker using ->.
When editing in the composer window you can store often used parts of text as snippets. To configure the capabilities of the mail snippets part select -> from the menubar. A new panel will appear on the left side of the composer.
To add a new snippet to Snippet Panel, right click on panel, click on in the context menu. A snippet editor dialog will appear, in which new text can be added and the snippet can be given a name. Also a Shortcut can be associated with the snippet. Snippets can be grouped together as well by creating groups and adding snippets to particular group. If you want to view the stored text in a tooltip window whenever you keep the mouse cursor over the title of that snippet.
The Snippets tool allows for a variable text in predefined places any time you insert a snippet into a file. To accomplish this Snippets provides its own variables' mechanism. You can set up its behaviour in the snippet text itself by using separators ( $ ) that enclose the variable names. For example : $variablename$, $invoicenumber$, $weekno$.
The variable separator can be changed to some other character by changing "snippetDelimiter" in [SnippetPart] section. The Text Snippet configuration file can be found here $TDEHOME/share/config/kmailsnippetrc .
snippetDelimiter=$
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