Participating in Internet Newsgroups : Downloading Messages

With some newsgroups selected, you’re now ready to start grabbing messages to read. With Windows Mail, you have two ways to proceed:

• Online— Working online means you’re connected to the news server. You can download message headers at any time, and highlighting a message downloads the message text immediately.

• Offline— Working offline means that you connect briefly to get the available headers in a group. While you’re not connected, you examine the subject lines of the messages and mark those that you want to retrieve. You then connect again and tell Windows Mail to download the marked messages.

In Windows Mail, you switch between offline and online mode by activating and deactivating the File, Work Offline command.

Downloading Message Headers

When you’re in online mode, Windows Mail offers the following methods for downloading a newsgroup’s message headers (this known as synchronizing the headers):

• Click the newsgroup in the Folders list— Windows Mail will download the headers for you automatically. For busy groups, the default download limit of 300 might not grab every header. To get more headers, select Tools, Get Next 300 Headers. (As you’ll see later, you can adjust this header limit to your liking.)

• Click the newsgroup and then select the Tools, Synchronize Newsgroup command— In the Synchronize Newsgroup dialog box, activate the Get the Following Items check box, activate the Headers Only option, and then click OK.

• To synchronize all the newsgroups at once, select the news server in the Local Folders list— Select all the groups, right-click any selected group, click Synchronization Settings, and then click Headers Only. Now select Tools, Synchronize All. Windows Mail downloads all the available headers for the newsgroups.

If you’re on a dial-up connection, you might want to switch to offline mode at this point so that you can review the headers.

Downloading Messages

To view the contents (the message body) of any message while you’re online, just select it in the message list. Windows Mail then downloads the message body and displays it in the preview pane.

Working Offline: Marking Messages for Downloading

While working offline, you have to mark those messages that you want to download. Here are the techniques you can use:

• Marking a single message for download— Right-click the message and click Download Message Later.

  Tip

  An easier way to mark messages for downloading is to the use the Mark for Offline column. To display this column, right-click any column header and then click Columns (or select View, Columns). In the Columns dialog box, activate the Mark for Offline check box and then click OK. To mark a message for download, click inside the Mark for Offline column. Windows Mail adds an arrow to the column.

  
  

• Marking a thread for download— Right-click a message in the thread and then click Download Conversation Later.

If you change your mind about downloading a message, repeat the techniques just mentioned.

Working Offline: Getting the Message Bodies

To get the message bodies, follow these steps: