Posting a News Message

Part of the fun of newsgroups is that you can participate in an ongoing discussion, respond privately to a message’s author, or start a new thread yourself by posting your own message on a topic of interest to you. If you post a message to a newsgroup and then change your mind, you can cancel the message. Keep in mind that if someone has already downloaded the message, canceling the message will not remove it from that person’s computer.

Post a News Message

Click the newsgroup in the folder list to which you want to post a message.

Click the New Post button on the toolbar.

Type a subject for your message.

Type your message.

Select a post type option.

Click the Send button on the toolbar.

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Cancel a Message

Select the newsgroup to which you posted the message in the Folders list.

Select the message you want to cancel. You will need to wait until the newsgroup posts the message.

Click the Message menu, click Cancel Message, and then click OK.

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Did You Know? You need to think before you post. Respond to personal questions posted to a newsgroup directly to the author, not to the entire newsgroup. Remember to click the Reply button.

Reply to a Message

Click the message to which you want to reply.

Select the appropriate command.

• Click the Reply Group button on the toolbar to post your response to the newsgroup.
  
  
• Click the Reply button on the toolbar to send the message’s author a private e-mail message.
  
  
• Click the Forward button to send an e-mail message to some other recipient.
  
  

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Type your message, and if you want, delete parts of the original message that are unrelated to your reply.

Click the Send button on the toolbar.

Did You Know? You should name your messages carefully. When you compose a message, choose a subject that accurately reflects the content of your message so that people can decide whether they want to read it. When you reply to a message, don’t change the subject line so that the conversation will remain threaded.

For Your Information: Deleting Old News Messages Newsgroup messages are stored on your hard drive, so you should delete unneeded messages to free disk space. Windows Mail gives several clean-up options to help you optimize your hard drive space. You can delete entire messages (titles and bodies), compress messages, remove just the message bodies (leaving the title headers), or reset the information stored for selected messages, which allows you to refresh messages (download again). To clean up files on your local hard drive, select a news server in the Folders list, click the Tools menu, click Options, click the Advanced tab, and then click Maintenance. You can select any of the clean-up options to delete or compress news messages at a specified time, or you can click Clean Up Now, and then click the button for the clean-up option you want to perform.