The ESmail system has two modes:

1) Merged mailboxes (the default). In this case, messages received by and sent from all of your personalities will be shown in one inbox, one sent mail box and one archive mail box. This is convenient, because you have just one inbox to check to see all your messages. The disadvantage is, that you may be a little confused which personality a message was sent to or from.

1) User personality

This is the personality that is connected to your user (login) account. Everybody has this one, whether you are an author or not. If you have more than one personality, you can recognize this one in the sender selection box, because it shows (user) behind the personality name.

The selection list shows all recipients that are in your addressbook. If you want to send an ESmail to someone, who is not in your addressbook (yet), you can do this in various ways:

1) If you have already received an ESmail from this person, you can simply reply to the message that you received from this person.

2) If you want to send an ESmail to an author, you can go to the author's profile or one of their stories; there are links there to send an ESmail to the author.

3) If you want to send an ESmail to a user, you can go to this user's public profile; there is a link there to send ESmail. The exception are users, who have set their profile to 'invisible'.

1) When reading an ESmail from someone, who is not yet in your addressbook, a link ('add to addressbook') will show next to the sender's name. Click the link to add the user.

2) When creating an ESmail to someone, who is not yet in your addressbook, there is a checkbox with the text 'add to addressbook' next to the recipient's name. Check the box and the user will be added as soon as you send the message.

3) When checking someone's public user profile, you will see a link that says 'add this user to your ESmail address book'.

In order to use this, surround the text you want to apply an effect to with the HTML tags, as is shown above. So for example, right before the word you want to be printed bold, you add <b>, and just behind the word you add </b>.

You can be aided by the system, by clicking one of the words 'bold', 'italics' or 'underline' just above the textarea where you enter the message text. An opening and closing tag will then be automatically added and you can type your text between those tags.
By far the easiest way, though, is to highlight/select the text you want to make bold, italics or underlined and then click on of the words 'bold', 'italics' or 'underlined'. The correct tags will then be placed around your selected text.

The smileys also have their own special codes in the text. For example, one of the smileys is called 'smile' and the code used within the text to insert that smiley in the message is: :smile:. You can easily add the right code within the text, by putting the cursor at the location where you want to enter the smiley, and then clicking the smiley you want to add. The system will then add the correct code to the text.

Please note, that the file will actually be sent (uploaded) to the site after you have written the message and clicked the 'send message' button. Because of this, you may have to have some patience after clicking 'send message'. Depending on the size of the file you are attaching and the speed of your connection, it may take several minutes (!) for the site to respond after clicking.

In order to add someone to your 'blocked list', click the 'block mail from this sender' link. You will see this link next to the sender's name, when reading a message you received from this person.