Setting mail preferences

You can customize a variety of mail settings through your preferences, such as setting how unread mail is to display, setting sort order, creating a personal signature and other settings.

Table 1. Mail preferences
Task Description
Use abbreviated dates. The Mail views show abbreviated, simplified dates as follows:
  • If the date falls on the current day, then the date column will only show the time, for example: "4:50 PM"
  • Yesterday's date will show Yesterday plus the time
  • If the date falls on a prior day within the past year, then the month and day will be shown with the time, for example: May 12 3:50 PM
  • If the date falls on a day in a previous year, then the traditional date/time is show, for example 5/12/2011 3:15 PM
  • If, for some reason, there is a future date in the Mail view, due to OS settings, it will be displayed the same way as the May 12 3:50 PM example shown previously
Abbreviated dates are on by default. To override this behavior, in Preferences > Basics, uncheck Use abbreviated dates.
Change your auto-save preference. By default, the contents of email messages that you create or edit are saved automatically at regular intervals. Preferences > Basics and de-select Automatically save mail.
Select how you want unread mail to display in your mail views. Unread mail can be displayed as either bold black text or plain red text. Click Preferences > Mail > Display.
Change the sort order of mail messages, ascending or descending. Click Preferences > Mail > Display.
Create a personal signature that you add to the end of outgoing mail messages automatically or on a per message basis. If you have set up a signature to use with the IBM® Notes® client, you can use that for IBM iNotes® as well. You must be in the Notes client to make any changes to your Notes signature.
Note: This type of signature is not a digital signature, which is used for security.
  1. Click Preferences > Mail > Signature
  2. Create plain and rich text signatures as desired.
  3. Check Append a signature to the bottom of your outgoing mail messages to add a signature to all messages.
  4. Select the type of signature to use automatically. If you add your signature automatically, you can still format or delete it before you send the message.
  5. (Optional) Include a Web link in your signature.
  6. (Optional) To include an e-mail address, type your e-mail address using the format for e-mail addresses, johnd@acme.com. The e-mail address text becomes a link when you add the signature.
  7. Click Save & Close
Display attention indicators in mail views that indicate whether you were the only recipient of a message, or one of many. This preference applies to mail sent to you using a Notes style of address, but you can also specify other types of addresses for which you want to display them.
Note: If you previously set this feature in the Notes client, the indicators also display in iNotes. However, depending on how your administrator set up your account, you may not be able to set or modify this setting from Notes user preferences.
  1. Click Preferences > Mail > Attention Indicator
  2. Select when you want to display indicators.
  3. (Optional) Specify any other addresses, such as your Internet address or groups you are in, for which you want these indicators to display.
Mark documents as read when you view them in the preview pane. Click Preferences > Mail > Display and select Mark documents read when opened in preview pane.
By default, people who send messages to you from Notes or iNotes can recall messages from you. Set a preference to prevent others from recalling a message that is sent to you. Click Preferences > Mail > General. Under View and Folder Management, remove the check mark from the option Allow others to recall mail sent to you.
Enable the image security preference to prevent remote images, that is, images that are referenced externally rather than embedded, from showing automatically when you are reading mail. This preference prevents showing potentially sensitive information in a public setting, such as a kiosk. Click Preferences > Mail > Display and select To ensure privacy, do not show remote images without my permission.
Enable scrolling of the message header with the message body. Click Preferences > Mail > Display and select Scroll message header with body.