Email Reflector

This page is meant as information for club members only

What is it and How do I use it?

Most club communication is via email rather than telephone. Typically the Secretary, Treasureer and Meets Secretary have to maintain their own private mail groups on their computers to enable bulk emailing. These are difficult to keep in sync. We now use an email reflector so that only one email address is required for the whole club. This potentially will enable use to be even more Hi-Tech in the future if things go OK. In the short term the use of this will be limited to email reflecting. We originally used a service by Smartgroups/Freeserve but the quality of service plummeted to such an extent that we have now switched to googlegroups.

• A mail reflector has been setup using GoogleGroups
• I (neil) am the owner of this and know the login and password to alter its settings
• The group has been setup as private, this means it is only possible to see messages or join the reflector if you have been invited to do so by me.
• I cannot add you to the list maintained by the computer, I can only request you subscribe. It is then upto you to log on and complete the required information (a name and password)
• The best way to do this is via the web page link in the email inviting you to join. If you do not have access to the web then press Reply on the email and then Send.

1. If I send an email to thehma@googlegroups.com then it will be sent to googlegroups. They then re-distribute it to everyone who has subscribed. These people receive the email and it will look like :
   
   Note Everyones email address is hidden.The email From field shows who the mail has come from and their email address.
2. Now the tricky bit..
3. If you open this email and press Reply then you end up with this :
   
   NOTE the To field is thehma@googlegroups.com. If you type a reply and press Send then it will be sent to Smartgroups and then sent to everyone in the club. This is quite often NOT what you want to happen!
4. THEREFORE :
   • To reply to only the person who sent the mail : press Forward and copy the email address of the sender into the To: field.
   • To reply to the person who sent the mail and the whole club : do as above (i.e. press Reply)

winmail.dat Problems : what is it, how is it fixed

Technoheads can refer to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q138053/

Some people have problems of not being able to receive emails from certain people. This usually results in them receiving an email with an attachment titled 'winmail.dat'. This is generally because they are not using Microsoft Outloook (Express) as their mail client. The solution is to up/down grade to Outlook or speak nicely to the person sending you the mails. The person sending you these emails has Microsoft Outlook (Epxress). They are sending you emails in a format called Rich Text (RTF). You need to ask them to stop doing this and to send you emails in either 'plain text' or 'html'. They can do this in 2 easy ways :

1. Change all their outgoing emails to either 'plain text' or 'html' by going to Tools>Options>Mail Format
2. Configuring their mail to send you messages that are only in plain text. A bit more tricky this. They need to find their PAB (personnal address book) and right click on your name and select 'Properties'. They can then select the option to only send you 'plain text', their mails to everyone else will remain in the ir default format.

Googlegroups Club webpages

If you subscribe to Googlegoups via the web then you will have access to our web page at http://groups.google.com/group/thehma.

http://groups.google.com/group/thehma	Group Home WebPage
mailto:thehma@googlegroups.com	Email the whole club