Computers & Networked Information Computer Science 1604

Sending Text or Files

Electronic communications packages like Eudora simplify the process of sharing data and programs. There are many public domain data bases and programs available which can be freely shared, but others are copyrighted or subject to terms of license agreements. Just because it is easy to share electronic media does not mean that it is legal to do so. Ethical considerations and the copyright laws of the United States apply to electronic media. Information you wish to share can take various forms with which you should be familiar.

Text files contain nothing but characters which can be entered from a standard keyboard; applications such as TeachText create files of this type. Files created by word processing applications such as Microsoft Word contain text and formatting information. The text of either may be included in an Eudora mail message; formatting information is lost.

Including text from a file in a mail message

To send mail to Jan Smith containing text from the file named README.first in the Eudora folder, complete the following steps:

  1. Open Eudora.
  2. From the Message menu, choose New Message.
  3. Type the e-mail address of the recipient in the "To:" field.
  4. Press TAB to move to the "Subject:" field and type a subject.
  5. Press TAB until the cursor is in the body of the message.
  6. If you wish, type any additional text you would like to include; this is optional.
  7. Open the file README.first by following the steps below:
    1. Open the hard disk icon
    2. Open the Added Software folder
    3. Open the Networking folder
    4. Open the Eudora folder
    5. Open the file README.first
    6. Respond OK when asked to open with TeachText.
  8. Use the mouse to highlight the text you wish to include in your mail message, e.g. press the mouse at the beginning of a paragraph, drag to the end of the paragraph, and release.
  9. From the Edit menu, select Copy.
  10. Activate Eudora by selecting it from the Applications menu (upper right of the screen). Be sure the I-beam is in the message area.
  11. From the Eudora Edit menu, select Paste. The highlighted text will be copied into the body of your mail message.
  12. Click Send. The mail message, including the copied text will be sent.

Reading the Message

  1. Check and open your mail as usual. You will see the mail message as composed by the sender.
  2. Close the mail message window when you are finished reading the message.

Prepared by Virginia Tech Information Systems