As soon as you've finished entering the required information on the Agent Setup dialog box and have pressed OK, a confirmation box pops up asking whether you want to go online to retrieve all the available "newsgroups".

• If you don't require authorization to log into your news server, press Yes and Agent will get a list of all newsgroups available from your service provider. Since there are thousands of groups available on the Internet, this may take several minutes.

• If your news server requires authorization to log in, you must supply the appropriate authorization information. Note that most newservers don't require authorization. If you're not sure, please check with your Internet service provider. To set up authorization, press No on the above dialog and follow these instructions:

To define news server authorization:

Select Options®User and System Profile®User. On this tab, complete the following settings as instructed below.

1. Server requires authorization login - Check this box if your news server requires a special name and/or password for logging in. When checked, Agent will automatically supply your user name when requested by the news server.

2. User Name - Enter the user name required by your news server when logging in.

3. Remember Password between sessions - Check this box if your news server requires a special password for logging in and you want Agent to automatically enter the password for you. If you don't check this box, you'll need to enter your password each time you log in to your news server.

4. Password - Enter the password required by your news server for logging in. For security, your password appears in asterisks (*).

Now that you've set up news server authorization, select Online®Get New Groups to get the list of all newsgroups.

When Agent begins retrieving the complete list of groups for your server, you'll get your first glimpse of Agent's Main Browser window.

By default, this window is divided into three panes .     Each pane has a distinct function. The upper left pane shows the list of groups, the upper right pane shows the list of all messages in a selected group, and the bottom pane shows the body, or text, of a highlighted message. You can zoom into any of the three panes simply by clicking the cursor in the desired pane (giving that pane the focus) and hitting the "z" key.

Retrieving Message Headers in Newsgroups

The Online menu and your toolbar offer the following options for retrieving new message headers.

• Get New Headers in Subscribed Groups
  

• Get New Headers in Selected Groups     
  

• Get All Headers in Selected Groups        
  

• Sample Headers From Selected Groups

Choose the one that accomplishes what you want to do, described as follows: Get New Headers in Subscribed Groups retrieves new headers that have been added since you last retrieved headers in your subscribed groups.

Get New Headers in Selected Groups retrieves the new headers that have been added since you last retrieved headers in each of the selected groups.

Get All Headers in Selected Groups retrieves all headers from the selected groups, including headers that may have been purged in previous sessions.

Sample Headers From Selected Groups - Agent retrieves a limited number of the most recent headers in the selected groups. You can either retrieve a specified number of headers, or for a specified number of days.

Note: Because you retrieve the most recent headers when using the "sample headers" feature, immediately after you retrieve a sampling, no new headers will be retrieved by either Online®Get New Headers in Subscribed Groups or Online®Get New Headers in Selected Groups.

If you want to retrieve messages prior to those that you just sampled, either increase the sample size and sample headers again or use the option Online®Get All Headers in Selected Groups.

Retrieving Message Bodies

Agent provides several ways to retrieve the bodies of messages that are of interest to you. Two of these methods are available from the Online menu or from the toolbar.

• Get Selected Message Bodies

• Get Marked Message Bodies

Here’s how they work:

Get Selected Message Bodies retrieves the bodies for one or more messages you have selected in the Message List pane.

Get Marked Message Bodies retrieves the bodies of messages the you have marked for later retrieval. This is particularly useful when using Agent in offline mode. See Chapter 3 for an example of an offline session.

In addition, you can retrieve bodies for all new messages when retrieving headers. Use the Group®Properties®Retrieve tab and check the box, Retrieve bodies for all new messages.

Checking for Mail

Use the Options®Inbound Email®Checking Mail tab to set your preferences for checking email.

Receiving Email with POP Options: These options apply only to POP mail servers. They tell Agent when to check for email and what it should do with the messages it finds. The following table describes what each option does:

Choose this option... ...to have Agent do this. Automatically check for email every... Automatically check for new email periodically. Enter the number of minutes between checks. Note: Agent must be running in order to check for mail. Check only when online Check for new mail only if you are already online with your service provider.

Choose this option... ...to have Agent do this. Unload winsock (hang up) between checks or Leave winsock loaded between checks Many winsock drivers automatically hang up a modem when no programs are using any driver anymore. If your winsock has this feature, you can use these options to control whether Agent unloads the winsock driver between checks for email, thereby causing the driver to hang up the modem. Leave messages on server Note: This option is useful when you retrieve messages from the same email account with more than one computer. See p. 88 for a way to optimize Agent use at two sites. Keep messages on your mail server after retrieving them. Normally, Agent deletes messages from the server as they are retrieved. Note: Once a message has been retrieved and left on the server, Agent will not retrieve the message again. If you subsequently uncheck this box, Agent will delete all the old messages from the server the next time you check for new email. Until retrieved at both of my sites This option is grayed unless you select "Leave messages on server" above. Check this box if you are retrieving messages at two sites and want Agent to leave your messages on your server until they have been retrieved at both sites. If a message has already been retrieved, mark it read This option is to help people who receive email at two sites. When you check this box, if Agent retrieves an email message that the server indicates has already been retrieved (presumably at your other site), Agent will mark the message read. Skip messages longer than Maximum lines to sample Leave email messages unretrieved if they are longer than the maximum number of lines specified. When Agent encounters a message larger than the specified value, Agent will retrieve the number of lines of the message as specified. When this box is checked, Agent will leave the message on the server and won't retrieve it again. Uncheck this box to force Agent to retrieve the message the next time you check for new mail.

When New Email Arrives

Use the Options®Inbound Email®Alerts tab to tell Agent how to notify you when new email arrives.

Choose this option... ...to have Agent do this. Display message box Pop up a message when new mail is received. Play sound Play a sound when mail is received. If your PC is set up to play .wav files, you may specify the location of a WAV file to play. If you check Play sound but leave WAV file blank, Agent will play the Email Receive sound defined in the Sound module of your Windows Control Panel. Only if new messages were marked unread Check this box if you want Agent to beep or play the specified WAV file only if new retrieved messages are marked unread. Checking this box is useful if you've created message filters that automatically mark certain messages read when they are retrieved. In such cases, you may not want Agent to beep or play a WAV file to notify you that there is new mail.

When you receive email, the status bar will display the number of messages unread, marked read, and deleted. Agent will display the results of the most recent email retrieval, as well as the accumulated counts since you last read an unread email. Why would you want to know the accumulated counts? If you have Agent set to automatically retrieve email every minutes, you many not check your email for several retrieval cycles. Accumulated counts keep track of all email received since the last time you read your mail. The accumulated counts will be reset the first time you read an unread email message.
Whenever you receive unread email, the Agent program icon changes, indicating that you have received mail. However, Agent will not show this New-Email icon if no new email is unread, that is, if all email retrieved was marked read or deleted.