Technology
Help Desk
IMP: Quick Start
Contents of this guide
1. Logging in to Simmons IMP Webmail
2. Symbols
3. Configuring Settings and Options
a. Personal Information
b. Deleting and Moving Messages
c. Display Options
d. New Mail
e. Message Composition
5. Composing and Sending Messages
7. Replying and Forwarding Messages
10. Deleting and Moving Messages
11. Selecting and Marking Messages
12. Moving or Copying Messages
15. Setting up a Distribution List
1. Logging in to IMP WebMail
In order to log in to Simmons IMP WebMail, go to http://email.simmons.edu/ and enter your email username and password. If you do not know your username or password, please contact the Help Desk at 617-521-2222 or via email: helpdesk@simmons.edu
Please be sure to include your full name and your ID number, which you can find on your Simmons ID card, and in the mailing you received just before orientation from your school or department.
Back to contents
2. Symbols
Below are the symbols used by Simmons IMP WebMail and that appear throughout this document.
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INBOX |
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Refresh INBOX |
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Apply Filters on INBOX |
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Unread |
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Answered |
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Compose a message |
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Draft message |
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You are the primary recipient of this email |
3. Configuring Settings and Options
Before you get started, you should customize your Simmons IMP WebMail account.
3a. Personal Information
In Options: Personal Information, you can change the name, address, and signature that people see when they read and reply to your email (your "identity" as Simmons IMP WebMail calls it).
Click
(Options) from the toolbar at the top of the screen and click Personal Information. Click "Edit your identities." Choose the default identity from the pull-down list at the top, and then fill in your name, email address and signature (if desired).
Technology recommends that you select "Save sent mail" at the bottom of the page. If you do not do this, your outgoing messages will not be saved.
When you are finished editing your default identity, click Change to update your identity.
3b. Deleting and Moving Messages
In Options: Deleting and Moving Messages, you can change how IMP WebMail handles your deletions, and choose whether you want to go to the next message after you delete, copy or move a message instead of going back to the list showing all of your email messages.
Click
Note: If you use some mail clients (such as Apple Mail), messages you delete in the client may still display as marked for deletion with a strikeout. Once you delete one message using WebMail, the lines will disappear and your deleted mail will, from your Apple Mail client's perspective, be in two places.
The first time you delete a message, you will be notified that a trash folder has been created successfully. An additional icon
(Empty Trash) will automatically appear in the tool bar at the top of the screen and you can click this icon to permanently remove all the messages from the trash folder.
Technology strongly recommends that you move messages to your Trash folder instead of marking them as deleted. Moving messages to your Trash folder helps you manage your deleted messages by storing them in one particular folder, which can be managed easily and will prevent messages marked for deletion from cluttering your Inbox and other folders. This will also allow you to perform routine maintenance to permanently delete all messages from your Trash folder, which Technology recommends as a strategy to avoid surpassing your mailbox quota.
3c. Display Options
Display options include sorting criteria, sorting direction, setting the number of messages per page in the mailbox view, and showing spelling errors.
Click
Technology recommends sorting your mail by Message Date in Descending order. This is the standard sorting criteria for most email clients; it will position your newest messages at the top of the screen so you can see them when you first log in.
Click Save Options to save your changes.
3d. New Mail
Options: New Mail allows you to control how often WebMail will check for new mail and whether or not to notify you (through a pop up notification) when you have new mail.
Click
3e. Message Composition
Use Options: Mail Composition to customize how you send mail and where drafts are saved.
Click
Technology recommends setting Text wrap at 80 characters for optimal compatibility with other mail clients. Many users also find it preferable to use the Compose messages in a separate window option.
Click Save Options to save your changes.
4. Reading Messages
You can select a mail folder from the Open Folder list at the top right hand corner. Click the folder that you wish to open and the messages contained in the selected folder will be displayed.
To read a message, click the sender or subject link of the message. You can sort messages by date, sender, subject, or size simply by clicking on these headers. You can also reverse the sorting (from ascending to descending) by clicking on the triangle arrow next to the header.
5. Composing and Sending Messages
If you want to write a new email message, click (Compose) from the toolbar at the top of the screen. A Message Composition window will pop up for you to type your message. When you finish composing your message, click Send Message.
You can use the Address Book function to find an email address by clicking 
(Address Book) when you compose a message. You can locate someone by Name or Email Address. From the list of addresses, you can select an email address and add it into the appropriate To, Cc or Bcc fields. For more infomation about your Address Book, please see Section 14.
If you have configured your identity to save sent messages, the message will automatically be saved to your chosen sent folder. For more information on configuring this option, please see section 3a.
6. Saving Draft Messages
If you are composing a message and want to finish it later, you can click Save Draft in the Message Composition window. The draft message will be saved in a drafts folder. (This folder will be automatically created the first time you use Save Draft). You can retrieve the draft messages by using the Open Folder pull-down list at the top right hand corner.
7. Replying to and Forwarding Messages
To reply to a message, click on the message (in order to open it). Click Reply (see "A" in picture below) to reply only to the sender, or Reply to All (see "B" in picture below) to respond to the sender and all other recipients. A window similar to that of Message Composition will be displayed. When you finish composing your reply, click Send Message.
Similarly, click Forward (see "C" in picture below) to forward the open message to others and click Send Message to send your message.
8. Sending Attachments
In the bottom section on Attachments in the Message Composition window, click Browse to select from your computer's directories and double click the file name to select a file. The selected file will be shown in the Attachment window. Click Attach, and the file name, size and file type will be shown. Click Send Message to send your message.
In case you wish to remove the attachment before sending your message, click the box next to the file name and click Remove Selected. The selected files will be removed from the attachment list accordingly.
9. Checking Spelling
If you would like to check for spelling errors in the message you are writing, click Spell Check in the Message Composition window. Click Next to go through the following pages until the end. Select Done when the spell check is done.
10. Deleting and Moving Messages
To delete a mail message, select the message by clicking the checkbox on the left of the message. Then click Delete (either at the top or bottom of the page), or you can click Purge Delete to remove messages from your Inbox permanently.
If you have selected the option to move all deleted messages to the Trash folder instead of just marking them to be deleted, then your deleted messages will be put in the Trash folder. You can click Empty Trash to remove the deleted messages from the Trash folder.
11. Selecting and Marking Messages
You can select the messages in a certain folder from the Select pull-down list in order to scan through, move, copy, or delete them. 
For example, if you want to move all the messages to which you have already replied to another folder, you can choose Answered from the Select pull-down list on the left side of the screen, and these messages will all be selected. You can then move them all at once by using the Move|Copy option in the pull-down menu on the right side of the screen (described in Section 12). If you would like to select all messages in the folder, select All from the Select pull down list on the left side of the screen. Other criteria in the pull-down list include: Seen, Deleted, Draft, and Personal.
You can also mark the messages under different categories from the Mark as pull-down list. For example, you can mark a message that is important to you by first highlighting it and then choosing Mark As Important from the Mark as pull-down list on the left side of the screen. Later you may want to select all the important messages you had marked before by choosing Important from the Select pull-down list. Now, all the messages that you had marked as important will show up with an exclamation point in front of the messages to indicate that they are selected.
12. Moving or Copying Messages
You can move or duplicate a copy of one or more messages to different folders. To do so, select the message(s) that you wish to move or copy by selecting the checkbox at the left of the message(s). Then select from the "Messages to" pull-down list (right side of the screen) the folder to which you wish to move or copy the messages. Finally, click Move or Copy.
13. Managing Mail Folders
You can manage your mail folders by clicking 
(Folders) from the tool bar at the top of the screen. This will display the following screen:
To create a folder, click the Choose Action pull-down window and click Create Folder. A dialog box will appear. Type the name of the folder to be created. Then click OK. The new folder will appear in the Folder Navigation window and you can also find it from the Open Folder pull-down list.
You can rename or delete the mail folders by clicking the appropriate options under the Choose Action pull-down list. All the messages inside a folder will be deleted if you delete a folder.
14. Setting up Address Books
You can store email addresses and personal contact details in your Address Book.
Each user has a personal address book. To edit your address book, click 
(Addressbook) from the toolbar at the top of the screen.
14a. Add an address:
Click
(Add). The mandatory fields are Name and Email. When you finish entering the information, click Save.
14b. Search an address:
Click
(Search/Advanced Search) to search a saved address.
The Search function allows search by Name or Email, and the Advanced Search function provides more fields for searching. You can search your own address book or the entire Simmons Directory (see below). Enter the word for which you would like to search and click Search to start searching.
14c. Browse the address book:
Click
(Browse) to browse and select My Addressbook to browse the contents of your address book. You cannot browse the entire Simmons directory here; you can only perform searches on it.
14d. Import/Export an address book:
Click
(Import/Export) to import an address book into your address book under IMP WebMail or to export your address book saved under IMP Webmail to your own disk.
When you finish editing the address book, click
(Mail) on top or the browser's Back button to go to the Inbox screen.
15. Setting up a Distribution List
To create a distribution list:
Note: you must have at least one email address in your address book before you can make a distribution list.
(See 14i. to add an address.)
1) To edit your address book, click (Addressbook) from the toolbar at the top of the screen.
2) Click Browse and select My Addressbook to see all the email addresses.
3) Check the boxes in front of the e-mail addresses to be added to the list.
4) In the Select List pull-down box on the right, select New List .
5) Click the Add to button to add the selected names to the list.
6) Give a name to the distibution list.
1) Click Compose to create an e-mail
2) In the To field, enter the name of the distribution list.
3) Click Expand Names.
4) All email addresses in the distribution list will be shown in the To field.
5) Compose the mail and send.
How to hide the full distribution list of email addresses:
1) Insert the sender's own email address in the To: field and put the distribution list name in the Bcc: field. This will hide the email address in the distribution list so recipients will not see the whole distribution list.
2) Remember to click Expand Names.