EMAIL INSTRUCTIONS

You can use your own email account or your student email account to correspond electronically. All registered students have a student email account.  To use your student email account you must know your unique user id and password.  Your user id and password give you access to the college's LAN (Local Area Network).  The following links contain the information needed to send and receive email using your student email account.

Determining Your User Id and Password

How To Log On To Your Email Account

Email Addresses

How To Send An Email Message

How To Read An Email Message

How To Send An Attachment

How To Read An Attachment

Important - Cleaning Out Your Mailbox


Determining Your User Id and Password:

User Id:

The first letter of your first name followed by the first 12 letters of your last name. For example:

Joe Brown = jbrown
Jane Washington = jwashington
James Stephanoppolis = jstephanoppol

If two or more users have the same or similar names, the following format is used:

Joe Brown = jbrown
Jay Brown = jabrown
Jane Brown = jabrown1

If you are not sure what your user id is, contact the IT help desk at 426-4141 or email them at IThelpdesk@nvcc.edu.  You can also locate your user id on the web.  Link to https://www.nvcc.edu/Stu_Id/, type in your social security number and click on the Search button.  

Password:

Passwords are created using the following format:

Your birth month (2 digits), your day of birth (2 digits) and the last 4 digits of your social security number.

Examples:
Name SSN DOB Password
John Smith 123-45-6789   July 23, 1978 07236789  
Ann Rogers   987-65-4321 October 4, 1980   10044321


How To Log On To Your Email Account:

You can access your student email account from any campus workstation or from home if you have an Internet connection. If you are at home and have an Internet connection you must first connect to your Internet Service Provider. Then from the desktop of your home computer or from a workstation on campus, perform the following steps:

  1. Double click the Internet Explorer icon (or another Internet browser e.g., Netscape).
  2. Type in the following Internet address to link to the NVCC home page.

    http://www.nvcc.edu/


  3. Scroll down and click on the Mail & Web link.  The Welcome to NOVA Web screen appears.  

  4. Under the Students section (to the right) click on the word here in the box that says Click here if you would like to access your E-mail on the Student E-Mail Server.  

  5. Enter your LAN user id (Ex: John Smith = jsmith) in the Log On box and press the Enter key.  The Enter Network Password box appears.

  6. Enter your LAN user id.  Note that your user id is referred to as the user name in the Enter Network Password box. This is the same id that you just entered. Note that this process requires you to enter your user id twice.  

  7. After you enter your user id, hit the Tab key or click in the Password: box.  

  8. Enter your password.  Your password will appear as a series of asterisks (*) so make sure you type it in carefully.

  9. Click the OK button or press the Enter key.  Make sure that you have entered both your user id and password before you click OK or press Enter.  

  10. Once you have successfully signed on to the college's LAN, you will see a listing of all your email.  Your email is contained in the Inbox .  The contents of the Inbox are shown on the right-hand-side of the screen.


Email Addresses:

To send email you must know the recipient's email address.  To receive email you must give your email address to those who will need to send you email. Your instructor probably already knows your email address  Your student email account or address is made up of two parts as follows:

userid@domain name

The user id (to the left of the @ symbol) is the same id used to sign on to the LAN.  The domain name (to the right of the @ symbol) is the same for all NVCC students and is:

student.nvcc.edu

So if your name is John Smith, your email address will be:

jsmith@student.nvcc.edu

This is the address that your instructor or other students in the class will use to send you email.


How To Send An Email Message:

  1. To send a message to another person you must create a new mail message. To create a new message click the first button (Compose New Mail Message) on the toolbar.
  2. To address an e-mail message, type the email address of the recipient into the To: box.
  3. Type the title of the email message in the Subject: area
  4. Type your message (or paste it from the clipboard if you previously copied something from your word processor) into the large white area.
  5. When you have completed the message, click the Send button located on the toolbar. The Send button is the leftmost button on the toolbar.


How To Read An Email Message:

  1. When someone sends you an email, it will appear in your Inbox.  Unread email is shown in bold. Single click a message to read it.
  2. After you read the message you can reply to the sender, close the window containing the message you just read or delete the message. To reply to the sender, click the Reply to sender button on the toolbar. It is the leftmost button.
  3. Type in your reply following the earlier instructions that explained how to send a message.
  4. To simply close the window containing the message without replying, click the Close button located on the upper right-hand-side of the window.  
  5. To delete the message, first close the window.  You will see the screen displaying the contents of your Inbox.  
  6. Locate the message(s) you wish to delete and click the small checkbox to the left of the message.  A small check mark will appear in the box.  If you click the wrong box you can click it again to remove the check mark.  
  7. After you have checked all the messages that you wish to delete, click the Delete marked items button on the toolbar.  It is the fifth button on the toolbar.  All the messages that you checked should now be deleted.


How To Send An Attachment:

  1. If you are including an actual file with your email message you can send it (attach it) along with the message. After you type in the message, click the Attachment tab.
  2. Type the filename into the white box. Make sure you type in the fully qualified path name. For example, if your file is called Office Supplies Shopping List - Tuesday.txt and it is stored in the MyFiles folder on the disk in drive A, you would type in:  

    A:\MyFiles\Office Supplies Shopping List - Tuesday.txt


  3. If you do not know the name of the file, click the Browse button. At this point a dialog box will appear asking you the name and location of the file that you wish to attach.
  4. Once you have located the file click the Open button. The fully qualified path name of the file should now appear in the white box.
  5. Click the Add Attachment Now button to attach the file to your email message.
  6. If you wish to attach another file to the same email message, repeat steps 2-5.
  7. Click the Send button to send the email message along with the attachment(s).

Note that when you create a new message, there are three tabs - Message, Attachment, and Options. The Message tab will display your email message and the Attachment tab will display a list of any files that are attached to the message. You do not need to use the Options tab. You can toggle back and forth between the Message tab and the Attachment tab as many times as you want before you actually send the message.


How To Read An Attachment:

  1. If someone sends you an email message containing one or more attached files, the files will be listed under the text of the message.  Single click the message to read it.  
  2. Click the name of the file under the message that you wish to read.  The file will either open in a new window or you will be asked to save the file to a disk.  Usually the file will open immediately if the computer you are working on has the appropriate software installed.  For example, if someone sends you a Word file, then Word must be installed on your computer.  Note also, that the name of the file must have a .DOC extension for the computer to recognize that the file is a Word file.  
  3. If you do not have the appropriate software installed or if the correct version of the software is not installed, you will have to save the file to a diskette and find a computer with the software required to open your file.  If you do not know the type file, you will need to ask the person who sent you the attachment.
  4. Note that not all browsers handle file attachments the same way.  Most browsers will open a file in a new window.  When you are finished reading the file, close the window by clicking the X in the upper right-hand corner of the window.  
  5. At this point there may be several windows open.  If you do not see your email message, restore one of the minimized windows by clicking on the window's name located on the bar at the bottom of the screen.  You may need to try several of the names before you find the correct one.
  6. Note also, that when you close the window, the file you have just viewed is not automatically saved.  If you want to save the file you can do one of two things.  You can save the original email message by simply not deleting it.   The attachment will remain as part of the message.
  7. If you want to delete the email message but save the attachment, then you need to save the file to your disk before you close the window in which you were viewing the file.  Click File and then click Save As.  At this point a dialog box will appear asking you for the name and location of the file that you wish to save.


Important - Cleaning Out Your Mailbox

Every time you send an email message, a copy of the message is placed in the Sent Items folder.  In addition, every time you delete an email message, a copy of the message is placed in the Deleted Items folder.  If you don't clean out these folders periodically your mailbox will fill up and you will not be able to receive all or part of your email.  The following directions explain how to view and delete the contents of these two folders.

  1. To see the contents of these two folders, click the Up one folder icon.  It is a yellow box with an arrow located above the word Inbox on the left-hand-side of the screen.  You will see the word Mailbox and a listing of several folders.  
  2. Click the Sent Items folder to see a listing of all the messages that you have previously sent.
  3. Locate the message(s) you wish to delete and click the small checkbox to the left of the message.  A small check mark will appear in the box.  If you click the wrong box you can click it again to remove the check mark.  
  4. After you have checked all the messages that you wish to delete, click the Delete marked items button on the toolbar.  It is the fifth button on the toolbar.  All the messages that you checked should now be deleted.
  5. To get back to the listing of all your folders, click the Up one folder icon again.  You will see the word Mailbox and a listing of several folders
  6. Click the Deleted Items folder to see a listing of all the messages that you have previously deleted.  
  7. Locate the message(s) you wish to delete and click the small checkbox to the left of the message.  A small check mark will appear in the box.  If you click the wrong box you can click it again to remove the check mark.  
  8. After you have checked all the messages that you wish to delete, click the Delete marked items button on the toolbar.  It is the fifth button on the toolbar.  All the messages that you checked should now be deleted.  Note that it is better to delete the messages in the Sent Items folder before you delete the messages in the Deleted Items folder.  This will ensure that all the messages in the Deleted Items folder will be gone.
  9. Note - a quick way to delete all items as well as sub-folders in the Deleted Items folder is to click the Empty Deleted Items Folder button on the toolbar.  It is the eighth button on the toolbar.  If you choose this method, you do not need to check the messages that you wish to delete.  In fact, you do not even need to view the messages in the Deleted Items folder.
  10.  To get back to the Inbox, click the Up one folder  icon again and click on the word Inbox.

Make sure you delete the messages in the Sent Items folder and in the Deleted Items folder on a regular basis.  


Last revised: Thursday, July 11, 2002
by Maria Rynn
Comments to: mrynn@nvcc.edu