In this article we examine in simple terms how e-mail works, Outlook's limits, Gmail, and more to help you work more effectively with your e-mail. A simple explanation has e-mail work similar to the postal mail with mail boxes and post offices. The mail boxes are our computers that hold the e-mail messages after they have been retrieved from an Internet post office.
An Internet post office is a computer called a server that is most often dedicated to sending, receiving, and routing e-mail messages. The receiving side is often a POP3 (post office protocol 3) server, and the sending side is a SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) server. Both POP3 and SMTP are performed by the same computer. The current post office mail servers for Comcast and Verizon can be found by searching their web sites or calling customer support.
E-mail is created on our computer - the mail box. After it is composed it is sent to the e-mail server post office at your Internet Service Provider (ISP). The e-mail server checks the mail received to assure it was from you (and not some bulk e-mail distributor), then routes it to the destination post office server. This takes from seconds to minutes to complete.
The e-mail message is held at the post office server until the recipient signs in to view or retrieve their e-mail. Generally, the e-mail is checked for attachments that could be viruses (EXE and similar files), and they are stripped from the e-mail. E-mail attachments have size limits. For some e-mail servers the limit may be 10 MB and with others is around 16 MB. E-mail differs from on-line chat applications. Chatting applications transfer messages between actively connected users.
E-mail messages while delivered to the post office, they reside at the post office until they are picked up by the message recipient. With e-mail there is less of a need to coordinate sending and receiving times between the parties using e-mail. Flash mobs may use e-mail to set the general time of flash mob event, and chatting to coordinate activities while the event is going on. Home and business computers use Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail, and other programs like the free Thunderbird to manage the mail box on the computer.
These programs can be configured leave mail at the post office for several days or until deleted, filter spam messages, maintain a list of contacts and more. The mail and contacts used by these programs are files stored on the computer's disk drive. The Microsoft Outlook key files are PST files. At one time contacts were stored in separate address book files (WAB and PAB files).
Outlook Express e-mail files were DBX files. Windows Live Mail uses EML as the main file extension. To view these files as e-mail messages, you run the appropriate Windows program, Outlook, Outlook Express, or Windows Live Mail. The e-mail files are stored in very specific locations in Windows computers. The locations are different for Windows XP and Windows 7. In Windows XP they are located under the user account in Documents and Settings. In Windows 7 they are stored in the user account under Users.
The easiest way to find these files is to search for the file extension in the Documents and Settings or the User folders. When you find them, it is good to make note of the folder in which they reside because this can be helpful in recovering e-mail messages. The size of these files is also important. Computers users including myself tend to save all e-mail messages.
It seems easier on a computer to do this as compared to saving all mail we ever received from the post office because the messages reside in the small computer box and do not fill our home. However, saving all e-mail is not a good idea. First as the e-mail files increase in size they tend to make Outlook, Outlook Express, and Windows Live Mail work slower. This is particularly noticeable on older XP systems with less than 1 GB or Random Access Memory (RAM).
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