The Bat!
While there is no denying the fact that Microsoft’s Outlook is the best e-mail client and works like a charm with Exchange server. The Bat! has its own features that are hard to match and makes for a superb e-mail client, especially if you don’t want the complete PIM functions offered by Outlook. Here are some tips for the Bat! .
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Creating OpenPGP Key
If you prefer your messages to be encrypted and electronically signed, you need to setup a personal OpenPGP key. Bat! allows you to do so without any fuss.
1. From the main menu, select Tools > OpenPGP and then click on OpenPGP key Manager.
2. In the Key manager dialog box, select Keys and then New Key. Click Next.
3. Enter your name and e-mail address and click on Next.
4. Your key should be at least 1024 bits.
5. Next select the key pair expiration date—default is one year. If you plan to change it quite often, you may do so by selecting the date from the drop down box and then click Next.
6. Enter a Passphrase that should be a mix of alphabets and numeric characters for maximum strength. Click Next and then Finish.
Adding A Contact To Your Favourites
Though we all mail many people, to some we send a lot of email. The Bat! can be made to differentiate between a normal user and that favourite user who you mail a lot. Here’s how you do it.
1. Go to Tools > Address book.
2. In the Address book, make sure the Checkbox in the favourite column is checked.
3. The Favourites column is shrunk and hence is displayed as F.
Exclude Folder From The Bat!’s Mail Ticker
Unread messages, live stock quotes, etc are displayed in Bat! as MailTicker. However, if some folders are not excluded, even spam messages will run across your screen as tickers.
To exclude certain folders, such as Spam, you need to follow the steps given below:
1. Right-click on the folders you don’t want to include in the MailTicker and select Properties.
2. In the Properties page, under General see Options.
3. In the first checkbox, Show unread message on MailTicker should be unchecked.
4. Click OK to save the changes.
Forward A Message As An Attachment
The Bat! allows forwarding any e-mail in two ways—inline and as an attachment. The second method retains the original formatting intact and hence proves better when sharing the e-mail.
1. Open the message you want to forward. From the main menu, select Alternative Forward.
2. Put in the address of recipient, subject and edit the message. Apart from attaching the message, Bat! also includes as the message inline with the body. Delete it if you want.
3. Press the Send button to send
your message.
Quickly Showing Messages From One Sender
If you want to display a message from just one sender in the mailbox, there is no need to use the search function.
1. Hold down the [Alt] key while clicking on the name of the sender of your interest in the form Column.
2. To return back to displaying all messages, from the main menu click View display and then select All messages
How To Make The MailTicker Font Bigger
The MailTicker display arrival of new mail on a small ticker that runs at the bottom of your screen. By default, the font size is small. If you want to increase the font size, follow the steps given below.
1. From the main menu, select Options and then click on Preferences.
2. Under Messages click on MailTicker to change its properties.
3. Under Font, click on Change.. button and select the font you like.
4. You can also change other properties of the mail ticker from this page.
Automatically Deleting Duplicate Messages
At times, POP severs can act funny and can send two copies of the same mail. To remove duplicates of the same mail, The Bat! has a ready-made feature:
1. Click on the Inbox, or on the folder where you have multiple messages, and then from the main menu select Folder.
2. Under Folder, select Remove duplicates and that should do it all.
Message Parking
Message parking allows you to flag important messages so that they can’t be accidentally deleted. In the message viewing pane, you will come across a column marked P. Click on it to mark the message as parked.
Remind Yourself About An E-mail Later
If you get a lot of e-mails that you want to reply to at some later time, more often than not, you’ll forget. You can use The Bat! to remind you of such mails.
1. Right-click on the message you want to be reminded about. From the context menu, select Specials.
2. Under Specials, select Remind later and select Tomorrow or a suitable time frame.
3. In the Advance box that opens, select the appropriate condition that you want The Bat! to follow. For example, select Not replied, which will open the message again if you forget to reply within 24 hours.
4. Click OK.
Sending Mail To A Favourite Contact
Once contacts are added to your Favourites, you can e-mail them instantly. There are two methods for this.
1. The button for Create a new message has a small downwards pointing arrow—click it.
2. Clicking on the arrow will list all your favourite contacts. Select the one you want to send an e-mail to.
3. You can also press [Ctrl] + [N] to create a new e-mail message. In the To: field, just right-click to list all your favourite contacts and then select the appropriate one.
4. This also works with the Cc: and Bcc: fields.
Add Customer Header Lines To E-mails
There are many applications that uses custom e-mail headers as standardise way of exchanging information. The Bat! allows you to create custom header files, which you may use to test such applications, or just show off your skills. All e-mails you send already have standard headers such as Subject, To, Cc, Bcc, etc. In order to create a custom you have to precede it with “X-” to make sure it doesn’t conflict with any standard headers.
To add custom header lines to e-mails in The Bat!
1. Go to Options > Preferences. This will open the preferences dialog box.
2. Next, go to Messages > Message Headers. Click Add to add a Header field.
3. Type the desired header name under both RFC Name and the Display this header filed as fields.
4. For example let’s put X-Thinkdigit as our custom header.
5. Make sure Allow to edit this field in the Message Editor is checked.
6. Click OK, twice. Since The Bat! doesn’t allow you to specify standard values for extra headers, you have to make sure you enter a value when you send the mail.
7. When you create a new message, select View from the menu. Click the desired custom header you just created to make sure it is ticked.
8. Now enter the value in the header’s field. You can find the field, just below the To: and Cc: field. Scroll the header area if you don’t see the Custom field.
Adding Page Numbers When Printing An E-mail
To print an e-mail with page numbers, do the following.
1. Select Message from the menu and then click on Page Setup.
2. Tick the checkbox that says Print page numbers and if you want to customise location and alignment you can do so by clicking the radio buttons. Click OK to complete the action.
Add Recipients Quickly Using The Address Picker
Repeatedly typing e-mail addresses can lead to errors (person with same first name) hence selecting the right recipients with a few clicks is recommended. Here’s where the Address Picker comes handy.
1. When creating a new message, in the To:, Cc: or Bcc: field, hit Enter. This will automatically open the address book.
2. Select the right contacts and use the the arrow keys to add them to either the To:, Cc: or Bcc fields.
3. Click OK.
Avoid Downloading Overly Large Messages
Once in a while, we get e-mail with a large attachment that takes forever to download. The Bat! Saves a lot of trouble by making only the header available for messages that exceed a certain size. Here’s how you configure this feature.
1. Select Account from the menu and then select Properties.
2. In the subsequent window that opens select Mail Management.
3. Then under Message Management, make sure Receive header only if message size is greater than is selected.
4. In the adjoining space, key in the size limit. 1 MB or 1024 KB is a good size to start with. Click OK.
Backup Mail, Contact And Other Details In The Bat!
Data backup is important and The Bat! allows you to backup your e-mails, contacts and other data in a very simple manner.
1. From the menu, go to Tools > Backup.
2. Make sure the checkboxes next to the type of data you like to include in the backup is selected.
3. In the Backup Method, leave the selection as Standard.
4. Use the Browse button to select the place on your hard drive to save your backup file.
5. Click OK, select the accounts you want to include in your backup and click OK.
6. If you plan to protect the file, then select Protect the archive with a Password checkbox and enter a suitable password in the given field.
7. Click OK to complete the action.
Change The Account Used When Sending E-mails
You might have more than one accounts being handled by Bat! When sending e-mails Bat! automatically takes the active account. For some reason, if you want a different account to be used, you can configure Bat! to do so.
1. Press [Ctrl] + [N] to open a new message window. In the message edit window select options and then click on Active accounts.
2. Select the account you want to be used for sending the e-mail. If you haven’t typed anything, the change will also reflect in the template used, that is, e-mail signature, etc.
Check All Accounts For New Mail Quickly
If you are accustomed to Microsoft Outlook, you will involuntarily press [F9] to check for new messages. But in Bat!, that shortcut doesnt work. Use [Alt] + [F2] combination instead. You can also configure The Bat! for automatic periodic checking for arrival of new e-mails. You can do so on a per account basis, which comes handy when one account has high e-mail traffic but the other might require occasional checking.
1. In the folder list, that is, where you see the Inbox, Outbox, Sent mail,etc list on the left hand side of the screen, select the account name.
2. Then select Accounts from the menu
and click on properties.
3. In the Properties page, go to Options tab and under Mailbox Checking make sure the checkbox for Periodical checking each is selected.
4. In the field for minutes, give appropriate value. If the traffic is high, set it to check every 5 minutes. Click OK to complete and save the change.
Collect All Attachments In A Separate Directory
You can save all attachments received on a particular account to a separate directory on your hard drive where you can access them directly.
1. In the folder list select the account name you want to apply this feature.
2. Go to Accounts> properties.
3. Next, select the File and Directories> Properties page, under see the Attachments section.
4. Under Keep attachment Files select Separately in a special directory option.
5. Use the Browse button to define the directory of choice and click OK.
6. Repeat steps one to six for all other accounts.
Compose New Message With Bat! In System Tray
The Bat! can be minimised to be in the system tray and yet have some of the critical features available handy. You can compose a new message without displaying the main Bat! interface.
When Bat! is in the system tray, right-click on the Bat icon and then select New Message. This will open the compose new message page.
Compress Folders
In Bat! when you delete a message, it is simply marked and not displayed. This particular feature is done to speed up the interface as deleting a message takes longer time than just masking. However, over time a lot of space is wasted, especially if you get a lot of spam. This is how it is done;
1. Select any folder you want to compress, for example, Inbox, Sent, Outbox, Trash, etc.
2. From the Folder menu select compress. This will scan the current mailbox for any deleted mail but are still present unseen and deletes them permanently.
Connect And Disconnect Automatically
Not everyone is online 24 hours receiving mail, especially when you are charged by usage time. Connecting to the Internet automatically to retrieve mail and disconnecting when the messages are downloaded is one useful feature provided by Bat! to configure this feature follow the steps given below.
1. From the menu, select Options and then click on Network & Administration.
2. Select Dial-up networking connection and in the dropdown box select the dial-up connection you want the Bat! to use.
3. Tick the checkbox Auto-disconnect after mail transmission and click OK.
Creating A Message Filter From An E-mail
The Bat! has probably the most versatile and powerful messaging filter of all clients and it can be used to automate most mundane tasks. This tip will allow you to create a filter from an e-mail.
1. Click and select the message you want to use as the template for creating the filter.
2. From the menu, select Specials and then click on Create filter.
3. Specify a name for the filter, and then use the criteria on which the message has to be detected, that is, sender, subject and recipient.
4. Select when you want the filter to be applied, that is, Incoming mail, outgoing mail, etc.
5. Select the folder where you want the message to be moved. Click OK to complete the change.
Perform Folder Maintenance
Folder maintenance refers to routine cleaning and fixing of mail folders which needs to be done to ensure Bat! runs smoothly. Bat! has its Folder Maintenance Centre built-in, which can perform some pre-defined checks and tasks.
1. Form the main menu, go to Folder>Maintenance centre, which opens a page with options.
2. On the page that opens all mail folders from various accounts are listed, select the one on which you have to perform the maintenance task.
3. In the Actions to perform, tick all the four checkboxes and click on start. Once done click on Close.
Reply Without Quoting The Original Message
Sometimes you need to reply to a message without quoting the original message. We often select and delete the message, but Bat! offers a simple solution for this.
1. Select the message you want to reply without quoting the original message by opening it in its window.
2. Select Specials from the menu and click on Reply Without Quotation and that should do it.