Email software is usually free and you can open an email account with Yahoo, Google, MSN and other well known email service providers. You can access your account from anywhere in the world as long as you have access to the Internet and you can remember your unique log-in and password details. You can also download email software onto your computer. Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft and incorporates email software into it.

Your email software will usually:

• Have an inbox for received emails
• Have a ‘Sent’ folder to store emails you have sent
• Have user friendly functions which enable you to create, access, reply to and forward emails
• Have the facility to cc a message
• Have the facility to insert a subject heading
• Enable you to send and receive attachments e.g. text files.
• Enable you to create draft emails to complete and send later.

Given the quantity of emails you are likely to receive over the years it is best to organise them neatly into folders. Your spam filter removes junk mail from your regular inbox and stores them in a separate place. If you receive spam in your regular inbox you can highlight it and identify it as spam so that emails from the same place will be filtered in the future. You also need to check your spam folder for important emails which may have slipped through by accident.

If you regularly send emails to the same group of people you can save time by creating a mailing list. This removes the need to enter each email address individually. Similarly if you keep your address book up-to-date, the program will recognise the address as you type the first few letters and offer to insert the full address for you.