Improve Your E-Mail Skills By Taking This 5-Minute Quiz

Along with being the most popular service on the Net, e-mail has become an essential part of our everyday lives. Many websites require an e-mail address to take full advantage of their features. Friends send e-mails to set up meetings or plan their next get together. Employees communicate via e-mail with co-workers in different cities or across the office. Companies e-mail us about new products and special deals. Families send photos and updates to stay connected from anywhere in the world.

Understanding how e-mail works and appropriate e-mail behavior is essential. How much do you know about e-mail? Find out by taking our quick quiz.

How Did You Do?

If you struggled with this quiz, don’t worry. There are plenty of resources available on Learn the Net to help you better understand how e-mail works and proper e-mail etiquette. Start with our E-mail at a Glance section. It has everything you need to know to become an e-mail expert.

If you passed, great job! You’re ready for some serious electronic communication. Hopefully you already have an e-mail address and your communicating regularly with friends and family. If not, stop delaying. You’re ready!

So what’s next? Now that you’re an e-mail master, take a moment to ask yourself if there’s anything else on the Internet you should know more about? Have you harnessed the power of social networking? Will your web research skills hold up to scrutiny? Are you ready to take the big plunge and create your own website?

Whatever your online goal, we can help.

Next Steps

While you’re deciding on your next big Internet lesson, why not spend some time to taking your e-mail experience to the next level?

Go Mobile

Now that you’re comfortable using e-mail on a regular basis, you may want to take it with you. If you’re using a web-based e-mail service, such as Gmail or Outlook, this will be extremely easily. Most of the big e-mail services have apps you can download for every major mobile device. Just search for the appropriate app in your app store, install it, and enter your login information. Your e-mail will now be delivered directly to your smart phone or tablet.

If you’re using an e-mail provided by your internet service provider, work, or a hosting service, you should check with them for information about setting up e-mail on a mobile device. The setup may take a little more time than just downloading an app, but it’s well worth it!

Set Up Your Signature

E-mail signatures are a great way to bring a personal touch to your communications or to promote yourself and your business. If you haven’t set up your signature yet, take a minute to look over our article on E-mail Signatures and give it a try. Every e-mail client has some type of signature option, so go ahead and play around. Not sure what to say? Start simple: “Sincerely, YOUR NAME”.  If nothing else, you’ve saved writing it at the end of every message.

Create a Contact Group

Do you have contacts that you frequently e-mail at the same time? A group of coworkers all working on the same project? Friends who all share the same hobby? Family members you like to send regular updates to? You can save yourself time by creating Contact Groups. With a Contact Group, instead of entering all of their e-mail addresses individually, you can simply select the Group from your Address Book, and it will add all the names for you.

In order to create a Contact Group, you first have to have contacts. If you haven’t done so already, go ahead and add the people you e-mail most often to your Address Book. Once you have the people you want to form into a group, click the icon for New Contact Group–it’s usually right next to the icon for New Contact. In the New Group setup window, you’ll be able to name the new group and select contacts to add to it. If you want to add new contacts later, just drag them to the group from your Address Book.

Find Your Favorite E-mail Program

Every device comes with its own, built-in e-mail program. In most cases, it’s a good, reliable program. But there’s probably a better one out there for you. Two of the most popular e-mail programs for desktops are Outlook, which is included with many versions of Microsoft Office, and Mozilla Thunderbird. For mobile devices, there are plenty of powerful, easy-to-use e-mail clients available in your app store, and many of them are free (or at least offer a free version). Before you commit to a specific program, try at least a couple and give them each a few days of testing. You’ll probably find some things you really like, and some things you don’t like as much. In the end, you might even go back to that pre-installed program. And that’s fine, because now you know it’s the one for you.