Tutorial: Opera Mail

Online version: http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/mail/

Introduction

Opera includes a revolutionary messaging client, with support for POP3, IMAP, (E)SMTP, RSS (RDF Site Summary and Really Simple Syndication), Atom, and NNTP. This tutorial will help you use Opera's messaging client to its fullest potential.

If you are looking for a quick introduction to using Opera for e-mail, try the Quick start guide.

This tutorial was last updated for Opera 9.0.

Table of contents

• Setting up an account and importing messages
• Sorting messages
• Writing and sending messages
• Handling received messages
• Using Opera Mail
• Using IMAP, newsgroups, and RSS or Atom newsfeeds
• Contacts
• Troubleshooting tips
• Advanced topics

Setting Up an Account and Importing Messages

Setting up an Account

To begin, you will need to set up a new account or import account settings from another application. Go to Tools > Mail and chat accounts. If you have not yet created any accounts, you will be prompted to create an account now. If you have already created an account, click the Add button. Select which kind of account you would like to create.

Ask your ISP for the specific server names or IP addresses to enter into the incoming and outgoing mail servers. If your ISP uses a non-standard server port (default ports are 143 for IMAP, 110 for POP, and 119 for NNTP), you can enter it after the server name in the form "servername:port", i.e. "pop.example.com:111".

The "Leave messages on server" setting is enabled by default for POP users. This setting tells Opera Mail to leave all received e-mail on the mail server, so it's accessible from other computers. Most POP users will want this setting disabled if they'll only be accessing their e-mail via Opera Mail.

Once you have created an e-mail or newsgroup account, the Mail menu and Mail panel should appear. You can use these to access your accounts.

Security

TLS and SSL (the precursor to TLS) enable encrypted communications between a mail client and server. Encrypted communications allow your password and other sensitive data to be sent across the Internet without others being able to spy on it. Opera Mail supports both TLS and SSL. The server must support e-mail encryption for you to use this feature.

If you want to use TLS encryption, enable the "Secure connection" setting. If you want to use SSL encryption, enable the "Secure connection" setting and add the necessary port (port 993 for secure IMAP and port 995 for secure POP) in the "Incoming server" input as described above. These settings can also be adjusted on the "Servers" tab in account settings once your account has been created.

Useful Account Settings

From the Tools > Mail and chat accounts dialog, you can create, delete, and edit your mail and news accounts. To edit account details, select an account and click "Edit". Important account settings are described below.

Account category

On the "General" tab, you can add a custom account category to be used with the account selector. Type a new category name or choose an existing category from the drop-down. You can then restrict visible messages to specific categories using the context menu in the Mail panel or from Mail > Show account.

Settings

On the "Servers" tab of account settings, the authentication scheme can be adjusted. The "Authentication" drop-down for incoming servers is set to "Auto" by default and will show the current authentication method (i.e. "Auto (AUTO LOGIN)") being used by the account. "Auto" attempts to use the most secure authentication method available first and if it fails, tries the next most secure method until one succeeds. These authentication settings only control encryption of your username and password. TLS or SSL is needed to encrypt all your mail data, while it is being transferred between Opera and your mail server.

If you do not want to use "Auto" authentication or have problems making it work with your account, simply use the drop-down to specify the type of authentication to use. Not all servers support all methods of authentication.

If your account requires authentication for sending e-mails, change "Authentication" for your "Outgoing server" to "Auto" and enter your username and password.

Opera supports:

• CRAM-MD5, APOP, login, and plaintext authentication for POP accounts
• CRAM-MD5 and plaintext authentication for IMAP and NNTP accounts
• CRAM-MD5, login, and plaintext authentication for SMTP accounts.

Security password

You can set a security password to control access to your mailboxes. Go to Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Security, set a master password with at least one numeric and one alphabetic character. Tick "Use as master password for e-mail and Wand". You can set the frequency of a system password prompt using the "Ask for password" setting.

Important: Be sure to remember your master password, because you cannot retrieve it.

Opera Web Mail Premium

Users of the fee-based Opera Web Mail Premium service can access their Opera Web Mail account using POP. Opera Mail will automatically fill out much of your account information when you choose to setup an Opera Web Mail account. Your "Login name" should appear as follows: "username:operamail.com#operamail.com", where "username" is your Opera Web Mail account ID. For your reference, the incoming server is "pop3.operamail.com" and the outgoing server is "smtpx.operamail.com". More information about Opera Web Mail is available in the Opera Knowledge Base.

Message import

It is possible to import e-mail from earlier versions (before 7.x) of Opera, Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape Mail (only version 6 and 7, and related email clients such as the Mozilla suite), Thunderbird, or any mailbox stored in the generic mbox format (usually *.mbx or *.mbs files), including older versions of Netscape. You can import different accounts settings, folders, and contacts. Your imported account's folder structure will be displayed under "Filters", and the imported messages will be available in "Received". Filters cannot be imported.

Select File > Import and export > Import mail to import. If your previous mailer is not listed above, see if it includes the capability to export to the mbox format.

Sorting Messages

One of the first things you may notice when starting to use Opera for handling your messages is that you will be spending less time organizing them. Opera does a lot of the work for you, automatically.

"Views" form the foundation of the way Opera handles messages. Contrary to traditional folders, views are merely collections of links to messages, which means that one message can appear in any number of views without being copied or moved. Opera automatically groups messages with attachments, mailing lists, threads you have recently participated in, contacts you have recently received mail from, and spam into separate views. Users can additionally organize messages using message labels, static keyword searches, and filters.

Example: A message that is part of a thread you have participated in, and that also has a document attached to it, will appear under the "Received", "Active contacts", "Active threads", and "Attachments > Documents" views.

The Mail Panel

The Mail panel is the key to seeing how messages are sorted. Use F4 or the Mail button on the panel selector to open it. Opera Mail comes with a set of default views to help users access their messages more efficiently. The views are organized into groups under headings. These views and headings are described below.

Unread

New messages are delivered to your "Unread" view. If the messages are considered spam they will also show in the "Spam" view. By default, new newsgroup messages are not shown in the "Unread" view.

All messages

All messages end up in one of the views in this access point. However, this usually isn't the best place to access your messages. Labels, contact views, mailing list views, and the "Unread" view are all easier places to get to your messages. Messages cannot be removed from one of the All messages views without being deleted from all views.

Received

The "Received" view is the message database where all received messages are stored and from which most other views retrieve the messages. Messages in "Drafts", "Outbox", and "Sent" are not accessible via this view.

Outbox

Queued messages awaiting sending are temporarily stored in the "Outbox" view.

Sent

Messages sent from Opera Mail are displayed in the "Sent" view. From this view, you can resend messages and cancel newsgroup postings.

Drafts

All message drafts are stored in this view. See the section on drafts for additional details.

Spam

All messages identified as junk mail will be sent to "Spam" automatically. See the section on spam for more details.

Trash

The "Trash" view stores all messages that you have deleted from Opera Mail's views. When you delete a message in "Trash" or empty the trash view, it is removed from all views and, for IMAP accounts, deleted from the server. You can undelete a message from the trash to restore it to its previous views, but once a message is deleted from the trash, it cannot be recovered.

You can undelete a message by pressing the "Undelete" button on the "Trash" view toolbar. Empty the trash by selecting "Empty Trash" from the Mail panel context menu.

Active threads

Using the "Active Threads" view, Opera keeps track of message threads you have participated in. You will not see the "Active threads" heading in the panel until you have actually participated in a thread.

Active contacts

Active contacts are automatically added when you create a new contact or send a message to a contact. Clicking on the contact will display messages from his or her e-mail addresses from the "Received" view, including messages posted in newsgroups, as well as messages written by you to the contact. These messages can be displayed in threaded view, so you can follow the whole conversation in order.

The "Active contacts" heading will not appear until you have corresponded with someone who appears in your list of contacts.

Labels

The "Labels" views help you further categorize your e-mail. From any message list window, you can add a label to a message to have it show in the specified label's view: just choose the desired lable from the pull-down menu on the far right of the message list. The default labels are Important, Todo, Mail back, Call back, Meeting, Funny, and Valuable.

Searches

When you run a search through your mail, it acts as a sticky search and is automatically saved under the "Searches" access point in the Mail panel. Future messages will be sorted through these filters. See the section searches for more details.

Attachments

Messages with attachments automatically show up in the "Attachments" views. The attachment categories are Documents, Images, Music, Video, and Archives.

Mailing lists

Mailing lists you are subscribed to are automatically recognized by Opera (as long as they contain an "X-Mailing-List", "List-ID", "List-Post", or "Mailing-list" in combination with "Delivered-to" header) and are shown in individual views under the "Mailing lists" heading.

Newsfeeds

When you subscribe to an RSS or Atom newsfeed, the "Newsfeeds" heading will appear in your Mail panel with individual views for each subscribed feed. See the tutorial section on Newsfeeds for more details.

Filters

Any custom filters are accessible under the "Filters" heading, that appears as soon as you start adding your own filters. You can manually choose to show certain messages in a view or create a rules to automatically sort your e-mail.

Filters are selections of the messages in the "Received" and "Sent" views. Like all other views, messages in Filters are only stored in one place, so if you delete them from a filtered view, they will be deleted from all other places they were previously displayed. But unlike the default views described above, you have complete control over the messages available in filters. You can move messages into filtered views manually or by defining rules that will sort messages automatically. If you want to remove a message from a Filter, but not delete it, use the "Remove from view" option.

Imported e-mail is initially shown in filters that mimic the folder structure of your previous e-mail client. You may of course continue using your imported folder structure, but we suggest you give Opera's internal organization methods a try. They may just revolutionize the way you handle your messages.

New filters are created by right-clicking in the Mail panel or going to Mail > Filters and choosing "New filter" from the "Filters" menu.

Showing messages in filters

To make a message appear in a filtered view, you have several options:

• Open the mail panel and click on the "Filters" heading so that the target filter is visible. Then select the message and drag it from the message list to the target view.
• Select the message(s) in the list of messages, right-click on them and choose "Show in", then select the target filter. From this sub-menu, you can also create a new filter, or specify that a rule should be added to the filter to add similar messages to the filter automatically in the future.

Removing messages from filters

Removing messages from Filters will not delete the messages, but will prevent them from being displayed in the currently selected Filter. To remove a message from a filter, highlight it and press Ctrl+X (Cmd+X on Mac) or right-click and choose "Remove from view".

This command can only be performed from within filtered views, including the Spam view. You can also click the "Not spam" button on the message window toolbar to denote that a message is not spam. See the section on spam for details.

Deleting a filter

To delete a Filter, right-click on the Filter with your mouse and select "Delete" from the context menu or highlight the view in the mail panel and press the Del key. Press Enter to confirm deletion or Esc to cancel deletion. Note that only the filter itself is deleted, and messages in the deleted filter will not be moved to the "Trash" for deletion. To delete any or all of the messages in the filter, select all the messages in the filter, then press Del or use the "Delete" button on the message window toolbar.

Rules

You can set up rules for custom filters and for the "Spam" view. Each filter can contain multiple rules. Regular expression ("regexp") rules are also supported. Right-click on a filter and choose Properties to edit its rules and other properties.

Mark messages as filtered

When this option is enabled, the filtered messages will be hidden from all other views (including those under "Labels" and "Attachments", as well as "Unread", and "Received"). This is the easiest means of simulating folder-based organization of messages. If a message appears in two or more filters with this setting enabled, the message will still appear in all of those filters.

Mark matching messages as read

Messages matching the filter rules will automatically be marked read and therefore will not appear in the "Unread" view or cause the filtered view to appear bolded when new messages arrive.

Limit filter to messages in parent

If you make nested filters, that is, filters within filters, enable this option to let the child filter inherit the rules you have added to its parent filter. This setting is not available for filters that are not nested.

Filter existing messages

When enabled, the filter will also apply to messages in your archive, not just incoming messages

A Note about Regular Expression Filters

Opera uses the same Regular Expression (regexp) format that is used in ECMAScript and Perl. For more information see, the ECMAScript Language Specification §15.10. The Regex Coach is a free program that helps you experiment with Regular Expressions and may help you use Opera's regexp support.

Finding your messages

Finding the messages you are looking for is a breeze using the "Quick find" and "Search" functions.

Quick find

"Quick find" boxes are placed throughout Opera's user interface to help you quickly locate specific information. In the Mail panel, typing in the Quick find box will make the Mail panel show only matching views. In a message window, Quick find searches through message bodies and certain headers. Each letter you type will automatically narrow the results as fewer messages match the search term.

Search

The "Search" box searches all message headers and bodies for matches creating a new view in the process under the "Searches" access point. Searches are persistent, i.e. they remain and accumulate new results until you remove the view.

You may also perform a more advanced search using Mail > Search.

Writing and Sending Messages

Opera's e-mail client uses format=flowed formatting for messages, making them more readable for you and for those receiving messages from you. In addition, there are various other features to make sending messages simple and powerful.

Quick Reply

One of Opera Mail's unique features is "Quick reply", which is useful for brief, chat-like correspondence. In a message window, type your message in the "Quick reply" field at the bottom of the window and click on the "Quick reply" button to send it. The original message will be quoted in the reply, and it will be sent to all recipients of the original message. When quick replying to a news message, your reply will be sent to the message sender's e-mail address. You can disable the "Quick reply" field under the "View" button in message list windows.

Message Drafts

You can save a message to the "Drafts" view by clicking on the "Save" button. While you are composing a message, Opera will also periodically save it automatically. After you send the message, it will be moved from "Drafts" to "Sent".

Contacts

If you have added a contact for the message recipient, simply start typing their name or e-mail address and a drop-down will appear with matching contacts. You can also select contacts by clicking on the "To" button. A list of contacts and contact folders will appear, including the option, "Add all contacts in folder", which will add all the contacts in the current folder (but not nested folders) as message recipients.

Message Composition Font

To change the font used in the message composition window, open Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Fonts, choose "Interface compose e-mail", press button "choose", and select your desired font.

Message Encoding

Using the encoding drop-down, you can override the encoding setting for your account on a per-message basis. If the current message contains characters that are not part of the selected encoding, Opera Mail will ask what action to take when saving a draft or sending the message. The default override value is "UTF-8".

View Button

From the "View" button in the message composition window, you can choose which message header fields to show when composing messages. Settings apply to the account currently selected in the "From" field only, which means that if you have two accounts you want to change, you have to change each account individually.

The "Reply-To", "Automatically CC", and "Automatically BCC" fields are automatically filled (and cannot be disabled) if the relevant fields are populated in account settings. (Tools > Mail and chat accounts > (Account) Edit > General.).

Redirecting a message

In addition to forwarding and replying to messages, you can also redirect them. When redirecting a message, certain message headers (Resent-To, Resent-From, Resent-Date, and Resent-Message-ID) are used to specify the message redirector, while the original sender, date, and message-id headers are maintained. In other words, a message appears as if it is coming from the original sender, though it is still possible to establish that it was actually sent by a third-party. When redirecting a message, Opera inserts the original message body, but does not quote it.

Handling Received Messages

When new messages are received, Opera Mail does most of the work for you. E-mail messages are automatically displayed in the "Unread" view. Mailing list messages are displayed under the "Mailing lists" access point. Newsgroup messages are shown in newsgroup views under a main news server heading. IMAP messages are shown in "Unread" and in your IMAP server's Inbox.

Learning filters

You can use this setting to let the e-mail client train itself into recognizing which messages belong in the filter, and which messages do not. A learning filter can act as a substitute for adding rules, or in addition to the rules.

Spam

Opera Mail features a spam filter designed to help keep spam out of your way. You can set the spam filter to "Off", "Medium" or "Strong" in the "Spam" view properties (right-click "Spam", choose "Properties", and switch to the "Filter" tab). The default value is "Medium". You can also set additional rule for spam in the "Spam" properties dialog.

If a message in the "Spam" view is not spam, click on the "Not spam" button.

Marking messages

New messages are initially considered unseen and will revert to unread once selected. To mark a single message as read, click on the "Read" button in the message window toolbar, or press K. Mark all messages as read by right-clicking and choosing "Mark all as read". To make a read message unread again, right-click on the message and choose "Mark as unread" or press Shift+K.

You can set Opera Mail to automatically mark e-mail as read from the "View" menu inside the Mail panel.

Deleting messages

Deleting a message moves it to the "Trash" view. You can delete messages by highlighting them and pressing Del, using the "Delete" button on the message window toolbar, or right-clicking highlighted messages and selecting "Delete".

The first time you delete a message, Opera Mail will give you the option to delete the message entirely or remove it from the currently visible view (and optionally, save your selection for future messages). Some default views don't allow you to remove message, only delete them (e.g. you can't remove unread messages from the "Unread" view or news messages from newsgroup views).

Note: If a message is deleted and emptied from the "Trash" view the message, it will be permanently deleted from all other views.

Using Opera for E-mail

Opera uses a highly configurable three-pane interface for displaying your messages. On the left is the Mail panel which gives you easy access to all your mail and news views, gives information about server communication, and allows you to easily check and send mail or compose a new message. The top pane on the right contains a toolbar and lists the messages in the current view. The bottom pane shows the selected messages body.

Mail Panel

When there are unread messages in a view, it appears bolded with the number of unread messages indicated in brackets next to the name of the view.

Show account

By default, Opera will display all e-mail and news accounts that you set up together within the mail panel and message views. Right click on any item within your Mail panel, and select "Show messages from" to restrict the display of messages to only e-mail or news accounts, one account category, or one single account.

The "Mail accounts" and "News accounts" settings restricts message display to only e-mail accounts or newsgroup accounts respectively. Choosing one of your e-mail or news accounts will restrict message display to only that account. Using the Account category setting for an account, you can create custom account categories and then use the account selector to display messages from that category exclusively.

Status window

The status of server communications is shown at the bottom of the Mail panel. If you want more detailed information about each server, click on the arrow next to the status text. This will open a small status window where you can see what each server is doing, such as connecting, authenticating, or fetching messages.

Message Window

On top of the message window, the name of your active view is displayed on a drop-down button. Click the button to find a menu of all available views. Views with unread messages appear in bold with the number of unread messages next to them.

Message views have their own toolbar, that contains some of the most important functions for messages, like "Compose", "Reply", and "Mark as spam". There is also a dropdown button to give messages particular labels, such as "Call back", or "Funny", and the "View" dropdown button, that features multiple display options.

You may edit the toolbar by going to Tools > Appearance > Buttons > Mail and Mail view. You can then drag and drop buttons and fields to the message window toolbar.

View menu

The View button on the message window toolbar drops down a menu that gives access to some useful global settings, that is, settings that apply to all views.

The first two entries on the View menu are mutually exclusive; you select that the view should either show messages in a flat, unthreaded list or threaded according to "In-Reply-To" and "References" headers, attempting to group messages that belong to the same discussion. For contact views there are two additional options: display messages to the contact and display all messages both to and from the contact. Flat display is the default for mail views, threaded is the default for newsgroup views, and "To and from" is the default for the contact views.

Show and Period sub-menus

The sub-menu "Show" lets you select what kinds of messages should be displayed in the view you are currently in. If, for example, you would like to be able to see new newsfeed items in your Unread view, or you would like to see only unread messages for one of the mailing lists you are subscribed to, not the ones you have already seen, then use this sub-menu.

In the sub-menu "Period" you can choose whether Opera should show all messages ever received that correspond to the criteria, which is the default "Forever" setting, or simply show messages received within a specific period of time.

Display and Mark as read sub-menus

The Display sub-menu lets you set your preference of whether Opera should interpret messages as plaintext or HTML messages by default. Some messages can contain both plaintext and HTML parts. In these cases, the setting determines which part will be displayed. The default setting is to prefer HTML. If a message only contains plaintext or only HTML, that part will always be displayed. The Display sub-menu also allows you to suppress external embeds - HTML that references Web sites for items such as images and stylesheets. These items are often used in spam to detect valid e-mail addresses. As a privacy measure, the display of external embeds is disabled by default in e-mail and newsgroups.

In the same sub-menu you can determine the layout of the message view: message list only, message body only, or both message list and message body. Message list with message body below is the default layout.

The default settings also transform textual smileys into graphical ones. If you prefer not to have graphical smileys displayed in your messages, this can be switched off in the Display sub-menu.

The sub-menu "Mark as read" allows you to let messages be marked as read automatically mark after they have been selected for a specified amount of time. This setting is also global, with the exception of the Unread view.

Quick reply

The final entry on the View menu toggles the display of the small "Quick reply" window below message bodies. This is a global setting that is enabled by default.

Message list

Messages appear in three font formats:

• Bold text in blue indicates "unseen[1]" messages. These messages are unread and have not been read in another e-mail client.
• "Unread" messages, those you have previously viewed but not marked as read appear in black bold text
• Messages in plain text have been marked "read"

[1] Unseen messages follow the color settings of unvisited links. This means that you can change the color of unseen messages in Tools > Preferences > Web pages > Normal link color.

The status column shows the current status of the message. Message statuses include unread, replied, sent, and redirected. The Sender/Recipient is preceded by an image indicating the state of the contact, unknown or known. You can add a custom icon for known contacts in the properties dialog for each contact. The sender/recipient column is named "From" in all views except the view for sent messages, where it is named "To". If a view is set to "To and from" message display, sent messages will be preceded by the text "To" to indicate that they are sent messages.

Offline access

You can read and compose messages offline. Go to File > Work offline to avoid Opera connecting to the Internet unless explicitly told to do so. When replying to messages offline, they are queued in the "Outbox" view. When Opera is on line again, click "Check/Send" in the Mail panel and choose "Send queued", or press Ctrl+Shift+K.

IMAP, Newsfeeds, and Newsgroups

Using IMAP

When you use POP, messages are left on the server and managed with a web interface or downloaded to your computer and managed by your e-mail client. With IMAP, you can use Opera Mail to manage your mail directly on the server. Since your messages are still on the server, they are accessible from other on-line connections, or offline if you have downloaded the message bodies.

If you are on line while making changes, such as marking messages as read, moving messages, or deleting them, the mail server will also make these changes. This also applies if you make changes in while offline and then connect to the mail server before exiting Opera. If you use Opera for e-mail on two different computers, you can keep them synchronized with the server and each other, or use different settings on each computer.

Opera will by default download only headers (the subject line and some other information about the message) when checking for new messages. Then, when you select a message header, Opera fetches the message body (the text and any attachments). If you use the default configuration, you must be on line in order to read your messages. If you want to read messages offline, you can change your preferences to fetch message bodies as well as headers when the system is checking for new messages.

Subscribing to IMAP folders

Opera does not automatically honor folder subscriptions. Choose Mail > IMAP folders to open the "IMAP folders dialog". Your IMAP folders will automatically appear in the Mail panel under the IMAP heading.

You can use the "Quick find" input box to quickly locate a specific folder in the subscription dialog. Use the account drop-down to change the account you are viewing folders for. Click "New account" to create a new account. Clicking on a folder name will toggle the subscription status for that folder. Click OK when finished. The folders will be added to the account access point, and messages in them will be fetched during the next check for new messages.

Folder display

Opera will display a separate heading in the Mail panel for your IMAP account. Your "INBOX" folder will be shown under this heading, and all incoming message headers from your account will be downloaded to it. As with all accounts, your messages will also show in the default views, such as Unread, Received, and Spam.

Deleting messages

Deleting IMAP messages is dealt with the same way as deleting any other message: they are moved to the Trash view and permanently removed when you empty the trash. Messages will not show in your server's Trash folder and will not appear in the deleted mail folders in other clients.

Using RSS and Atom Newsfeeds

Opera can also act as an aggregator for Atom, RDF Site Summary and Really Simple Syndication newsfeeds.

Some Web pages will offer newsfeeds using a link to the feed. Click on a link to a newsfeed in Opera, and it will be automatically recognized and added to your subscription list. Some pages will use automatic feed discovery, and will automatically tell Opera that a newsfeed is available. When Opera loads one of these pages, it shows a button in the right side of the address field. Click this button to subscribe to the newsfeed.

Once you have subscribed to a newsfeed, the Feeds menu will appear, which you can use to read and manage newsfeeds. You can also manually add a newsfeed from the "Manage newsfeeds" dialog. When you select a newsfeed from the Feeds menu, it will open a message view showing the items in the newsfeed. Each newsfeed item appears as a separate message. New items are downloaded after a set period of time (1 hour by default).

If you have also created any e-mail or newsgroup accounts in Opera, the newsfeeds will be shown in the Mail panel. Each newsfeed is displayed as a separate view. As with any message in Opera, newsfeed messages can be stored indefinitely, searched, labelled, shown in filters, forwarded, or deleted.

Using Newsgroups

Opera includes support for multiple news servers, offline reading, and easy separation between news and e-mail.

Subscribing to newsgroups

After you set up your news account, Opera will download the list of available newsgroups for that server. Note that these lists are often large--1 MB or more in size--and do not issue status reports. Click on newsgroup names to subscribe to them and click "OK" when finished.

You can subscribe to more newsgroups at a later time by going to Mail > Newsgroups to open the Newsgroups subscription dialog. Use the "Quick find" field at the top of the dialog to narrow your selection.

Reading newsgroups

By default, newsgroup messages will not show in the "Unread" view. Each news account will have its own access point in the Mail panel with a view for each newsgroup you subscribe to. The first time you access a newsgroup, it will download up to 250 headers and/or message bodies from the last posting. This is a default number and cannot be altered. For news accounts, headers only are downloaded by default. You can change this setting in the account settings.

To download new messages from a server, click the arrow on the "Check" button in the Mail panel and select your news account from the drop-down list, or open the newsgroup view and new messages will be downloaded for that newsgroup automatically.

Downloading specific messages

Opera supports the "nntp://" protocol, often used for linking to messages. Use the following syntax to download a specific message:

nntp://<newsserver>/<newsgroup>/<message range>

For example, to download the first message in the opera.general newsgroup at news.opera.com, you'd use nntp://news.opera.com/opera.general/1. To download the first through one thousandth messages, use nntp://news.opera.com/opera.general/1-1000. Message numbers are usually located in the "Xref" message header, as in "Xref: news.opera.com opera.wishlist:16983" which has the form "Xref: <newsserver> <newsgroup>:<message number>".

Since these addresses are simple URLs, you can enter them directly into Opera's address field.

Opera Contacts

Contacts allow you to keep track of all sorts of information about people you communicate with, group messages you've received from certain addresses or groups of addresses together, and easily send messages to groups of addresses.

Contacts panel

Contacts are easily manipulated through the "Contacts" panel, which will appear after you create a mail, chat, or newsgroup account. Double-clicking a contact will open a view containing all your correspondence with that contact.

Manage contacts dialog

The "Manage contacts" page offers a larger interface to organizing your contacts. You can access it from Tools > Contacts. The page's top field is a "Quick find" input to help you quickly locate specific contacts.

Contact folders

Contact folders are a convenient way of grouping contacts together. Selecting "Compose" while having a contact folder selected in the Contacts panel will open a message composition window addressed to all the contacts in the folder.

Creating contacts

To create a blank contact, use the "Add" button or "New contact" context menu item in the Contacts panel or the "New" button in the "Manage contacts" dialog. If you have received a message from an address that you would like to add as a contact, select the message and press A, or click the "Add contact" button on the e-mail toolbar. If you are using contact folders, you can use the drop-down next to the "Add contact" button to add a contact to a specific folder by selecting "Add contact here" once you have chosen the correct folder.

Contact properties

In the contact properties dialog, you'll be able to add, remove, and change information about contacts. You can leave any field blank, but leaving "Name" and"E-mail address" blank will limit the usefulness of contacts.

General

Picture

You can associate an image with a contact that will be displayed here in contact properties and at the top of contact views. The image is specified on the "Images" tab. Note that there has been problems uploading photos from localhost. The reason for this is that the photos need to be cached to be able to show. You can however use photos from the Web by specifying a URL.

Primary e-mail address

Use the "E-mail address" field for your contact's primary e-mail address. You will be able to add additional e-mail addresses on the "Notes" tab.

Notes

Additional e-mail addresses

Put additional e-mail addresses for the contact in the "Additional e-mail addresses" field. Addresses should be separated by commas, like this: "username1@example.com, username2@example.com, username3@example.com". E-mail messages sent to and received from the addresses listed here will appear in the view associated with this contact together with messages from and to the contact's primary address.

Notes

Add any additional information you would like to keep stored about the contact in the "Notes" field.

Chat

Add your contact's IRC nickname in this tab to let Opera keep track of the contact's on-line status. Contacts with registered nicknames will show up in your chat panel when you and your contact are logged on to the same network. For more information on using chat in Opera, see the Opera tutorial.

Images

Picture URL

Use the "Picture URL" field to enter the Web page address of an image that you would like to associate with your contact. The maximum image size is 150 x 150 pixels.

Icon

The icon displayed in the message list window in front of messages received from your contact can be set by selecting an icon in the list. Opera defaults to using the first contact icon in the list.

Troubleshooting Tips

General

Authentication

Opera supports a variety of authentication schemes for protecting your username and password as they are sent to your mail or news server. To make account configuration easier, Opera Mail automatically tries to find the most secure authentication method your server supports. Unfortunately, this does not always work. If you are receiving authentication errors, try choosing a different authentication method for the server in the account's server properties. The authentication methods are listed in order of security, with the most secure at the top.

We are always interested in improving the automatic authentication negotiation. If you have run into problems that are solved by changing to another authentication method, please file a bug report (including a log of client server communication) or visit one of the relevant discussions forums.

Enabling logging

Opera allows users to log incoming and outgoing server communications to a text file. For more information about enabling logging, please see our knowledge base article, Activating e-mail logging in Opera.

Outgoing mail

SMTP authentication

Some ISPs require "SMTP authentication" to send e-mail. Opera will normally show an error message similar to "Internal Error [553 This SMTP server requires authorisation. Most mail clients can be configured with "my server requires authorisation" to allow this]" if this is the case. To enable SMTP authentication, go to the "Server settings" tab in account properties, change "Authentication" for your outgoing server to "Auto", and enter your username and password.

Relaying denied

One of the most common problems users experience when sending e-mail is a "relay access denied" error. Many ISPs are trying to fight spam by making it more difficult for spammers to send their e-mails. Outgoing mail (SMTP) servers are often configured to only allow outgoing mail from users it recognizes through a process called "SMTP authenication". If you've received a "relay access denied" error, your outgoing mail server probably requires "SMTP authenication" to send e-mails. See the above troubleshooting tip for instructions to enable "SMTP authentication".

POP3 before SMTP

As an additional step to fight spam, many ISPs require you to check for new e-mail before being able to send messages. Opera allows you to do this by queuing e-mail, then sending it when checking for new messages. To enable this, go to the "Outgoing" settings tab in account properties and enable "Queue messages" and "Send queued e-mail after checking e-mail".

Getting more help

Other than this tutorial, there are several means of finding help for Opera Mail. As always, hit F1 to invoke Opera's built-in help files.

Discussion forums

The my.opera.com forums host a Mail / News client forum, where users help each other with Opera Mail problems. The forums are moderated and often visited by Opera employees, though they are not an official customer support channel.

Newsgroups

The news.opera.com newsgroup servers hosts a newsgroups, opera.mail+news, another place where users help each other with Opera Mail problems. Like the forums, the newsgroups are not an official customer support channel, though they are often visited by Opera employees. The Opera newsgroups are unmoderated. For more information about the Opera newsgroups, please see the on-line help for newsgroups.

Advanced Topics

Stand-alone Opera e-mail client

Some users prefer to separate their browsing and e-mail use into two applications. For this purpose, Opera's Rijk van Geijtenbeek created Hugin and Munin, Opera Mail and Opera browser configurations, respectively.

Using Hotmail with Opera

Hotmail, a webmail service and part of MSN, can be accessed from Opera Mail by using one of several free third-party programs. Some of these programs are Hotmail Popper, HotPOP3, and MrPostman. Opera Software does not provide customer support for nor recommend any of these programs.

Random signatures

Opera does not natively support random signatures, but they are easy to set up using a sigmonster (such as KookieJar). The signature for each account is stored in the "Mail" sub-directory of your Opera/profile folder. Simply set your sigmonster to replace the appropriate file to change your signature. Opera will reread the file each time the signature is needed.

Message templates

Opera's Notes feature can be used to create message templates. Open the Notes panel and create a folder called, for example, "Templates". Add a new note and add the template for your message as the note text. Whenever you want to use this template, either select the note in the Notes panel and double-click it, or right-click a message composition window, and pick the template from the "Insert note" sub-menu.

Thanks to Mark Schenk for this idea.

You can also create message templates using drafts. Open a message composition window and create the message template. Then click "Save" or close the message to save it to the Drafts view.

Now, create a new custom view and name it "Templates". Check "Hide messages from other views" in its filter properties, then click "OK" to save your changes. Now you can drag your message template from "Drafts" to "Templates".

Thanks to MarcFou for this idea.

Account Settings Storage

Account settings are found in accounts.ini, located in your "Mail" directory. (Check Help > About for its exact location.) Information for each account is stored in a separate section of the configuration file. To find the relevant account section, search for your e-mail address and change settings for that account.

Note: Configuration file changes should only be made while Opera is closed.

Adding labels

A hack for adding more labels is described by one of the developers of Opera's e-mail client in a newsgroup posting. Please note that this hack is unsupported.

Changing labels

The "Labels" heading contains Important, Todo, Mail back, Call back, Meeting, Funny, and Valuable labels by default. If you would like to change the image and/or name of a label, you will need to edit the configuration file skin.ini, which is zipped with all the skin elements and located in your "Skin" folder. For name changes, edit your language file (english.lng is the default language file for English installs). You can find the relevant item to change in the table below. The numbers refer to a setting in your .lng file. Find the number and replace the text at that line to change the label text.

Customizing message and header display

The display of message bodies and headers is controlled by the file "mime.css", located in the "Styles" directory. As the file extension implies, message bodies are styled using CSS. By default the message headers are not styled, but they may be by deleting the div.header rule in "mime.css". Message formatting uses XML, and you can view the XML used by selecting a message and pressing Ctrl + F3. This will display the source of the message in your source viewer.

Customizing message reply/follow-up text

Using an accounts.ini setting, you can change the reply/follow-up text attribution line (for example "On Wednesday, October 27, 2004, Bob Hope <bob@example.org> wrote:") shown at the top of e-mail replies and newsgroup follow-ups. For e-mail accounts, use the "Reply=" setting. For new accounts, use "Followup=". The following is a list and description of the available parameters:

E-mail related:

%n – Name

%e – E-mail address

%f – Name & e-mail address

Time related:

%a – Abbreviated weekday name

%A – Full weekday name

%b – Abbreviated month name

%B – Full month name

%c – Date and time representation appropriate for locale

%d – Day of month as decimal number (01 - 31)

%H – Hour in 24-hour format (00 - 23)

%I – Hour in 12-hour format (01 - 12)

%j – Day of year as decimal number (001 - 366)

%m – Month as decimal number (01 - 12)

%M – Minute as decimal number (00 - 59)

%p – Current local A.M./P.M. indicator for 12-hour clock

%S – Second as decimal number (00 - 59)

%U – Week of year as decimal number, with Sunday as first day of week (00 - 53)

%w – Weekday as decimal number, with Sunday as first day of week (0 - 6)

%W – Week of year as decimal number, with Monday as first day of week (00 - 53)

%x – Date representation for current locale

%X – Time representation for current locale

%y – Year without century, as decimal number (00 - 99)

%Y – Year with century, as decimal number

%z – Time-zone name

%Z – Time-zone abbreviation

News-related:

%g – newsgroups

Character-related:

%% – %

\n – newline (that is, move the text following these characters to a new line)

Direct access to headers

%:Headername: (e.g. "Using %:useragent:, %n wrote:")

Syntax of the "Message-ID" header

The syntax for the "Message-ID" header sent by Opera is described below:

• It will always start with "op".
• The next 6 characters are a semi-base36 representation of the time_t returned from ::time() (seconds since 19700101 000000UTC).
• The next two characters are semi-base36 of either the 10 least significant bits of the milliseconds time of day (for Windows) or a 10-bit random value (all other platforms).
• The next 6 characters are semi-base36 of either the most significant 4 bytes of a 16-byte MD5 checksum of the "From" address or a random 32-bit value (if for some reason "From" is missing).
• The contents of the "Personalization" account setting.
• "@"
• The contents of the IDNA-version of the "FQDN" account setting.

In short:

<op[seconds since 1970][millisecond|random][md5 of From:|random][personalization]@[idna-fqdn]>

(Semi-base36 is a function that will take modulo-36 of a number and convert this to a character where 'a'=0...'z'=25...'0'=26...'9'=35, and add it to the left of the already calculated string. The number is then divided by 36, and the function loops until it has given the wanted number of characters.)

Personalizing the "Message-ID" Header

There are two settings that allow you to customize your "Message-ID" header:

Personalization

This setting is initially empty. You can add a short identifying string (such as "suoc" for "SomeUserOperaCom") to help you identifying your messages.

FQDN

Initially set to your outgoing e-mail (SMTP) server for e-mail accounts and your news (NNTP) server for news accounts, this is required to be a domain name that actually exists. Many news and e-mail servers will reject messages that do not have at least one ".", or they will simply append their own FQDN.

Using these settings, you can easily create a filter to catch all messages that you have posted to a newsgroup and any replies to those messages (as long as the replier's newsreader correctly cites your message) by filtering for any messages that contain "Personalization@FQDN" in any header. For instance, if "Personalization" is set to "suoc" and "FQDN" is set to "news.opera.com", create a filter for "suoc@news.opera.com".