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As you probably know, there are many email services to choose from with most of them being free to use. Some of the more common email services include Gmail, Outlook.com and Yahoo. You can access these types of email accounts via your web browser. And there are many email clients you can use on your computer such as Outlook, Thunderbird, Outlook for Windows and Mailbird for example.
Now just because you use an online email account, doesn’t mean you can’t use it with an email application. In this article, we will be discussing the free eM Email app and giving you an overview of how to set it up and how it works.
eM Client App Setup
To begin, you will first need to download the eM Client software from their website here. When you first install eM Client, you will have some options for how you want to configure it. If you do the custom setup, you can configure things such as the color theme, where you want the preview pane, how you want to view conversations, if you want to use AI features and so on.
Then you will get to the email account setup where you will enter details about the email account you want to use with eM Client.
At the end of the setup process, you will be asked if you want to set up encryption for your email. If so, you will need to create and encryption keypair or import and existing one. The encryption options in eM Client are designed to protect the confidentiality and integrity of your email communications. By encrypting your emails, you can ensure that only the intended recipients can read them, safeguarding your sensitive information from unauthorized access.
If you aren’t too concerned about email security or other people intercepting the emails that you send, you can skip this feature.
You will then need to choose which services you will be using with eM Client such as mail, contacts, calendar etc. These options may vary depending on what type of email account you are setting up.
You will then most likely be taken to the account page for your email service provider so you can grant access to eM Client so it will be able to import your email and other settings into the app.
Once the approval process is complete, eM Client will start to load your emails into the app which can take some time depending on how many messages you have in your inbox.
Using the eM Client Email App
The eM Client email app has a lot of features and obviously we can’t go over all of them so we will be going over the main features as well as some of the more interesting ones.
As you can see in the image below, our emails have been loaded into the eM Client and since this is a Gmail account, it even adds the labels used in Gmail to each message. And when we click on More over on the left, it will show us the folders\labels that we have configured for this Gmail account. Since Gmail has the various categories such as primary, promotions and updates, these will all be placed in your inbox rather than separated out like you see on the Gmail website.
When you select a specific email, it will be shown in the reading pane which you can have on the bottom of the app or off to the side.
If you were to double click an email, it would open in its own window as shown below. You can also see the attachments if there are any in the message. At the top of the email, you have your typical options such as reply, reply all, forward, mark as read\unread and delete. The Archive option will take the email out of your inbox and archive it. Then you can find it in the All Mail section on the left. The Snooze option will remove an email from your inbox until the specified time has passed to give you a break from having to look at it.
You can also right click on an email and have many of the same options plus other options to choose from such as flag, tag, save and print.
To compose a new email, simply click on the New button at the upper left. You will have many other options such as creating a new event, meeting, contact, task and so on.
When you do compose a new email, you will have the typical options for adding attachments, formatting text, adding a signature and even using the AI feature to help you compose or rewrite your email for you.
If you click on the More button at the very right, you will be shown a large variety of additional options.
The eM Client also has local folders that can be used to save emails, events and contacts separately from your email account. Just keep in mind that these will only be accessible from the eM Client app and not from your account if you were to access it on its website.
If you click on the calendar button at the lower left corner of the app, you will see any calendars that you have configured before importing your account into the eM Client app. You will also have the option to use a local calendar outside of your email account.
When you click on a date to make an event, you will have two choices which are to make a standard event or an online meeting.
Once you make your choice, you can choose the other option once you are in the event configuration section. You can also choose which calendar you want to add this event or meeting to if you have more than one configured.
The Contacts section is very similar to other email apps where you can view your contacts, edit them and add new ones as needed.
One nice feature of the eM Client app is the ability to show all your email attachments in one place. All you need to do is click on the ellipsis (…) at the lower left corner and choose Attachments. You can then double click an attachment to open it or right click it and choose Open Source to have the email that contains that attachment opened.
The eM Client app has a decent search feature where you can do basic searches or more advanced searches as seen in the image below. The Create Search Folder option allows you to create virtual folders based on specific search criteria. Instead of manually organizing emails into physical folders, search folders automatically collect and display emails that match your defined search terms.
Once you configure your search options and click the Search button, you will then be shown the results of your search and can act on them accordingly.
If you want to fine tune how the eM Client email app works for you, then you can click on the three horizontal bars at the upper left corner and then click on Settings. As you can see in the image below, there are many options you can choose from so you may want to check some of these out.
If you want to remove your email account or add an additional one, you can do so by clicking the three horizontal bars once again and choosing Accounts.
As you can see, there is a lot to the eM Client email app so you can spend some serious time going through all the options and configurations. But overall, it’s a great email application if you are looking to use a local desktop email app rather than your web browser.
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