This is new in 2006 and is a response to the 10000 spams being sent to the server every day.
First of all, this is not a full blown email client. It is not designed to hold all of your messages forever. Please get used to deleting messages.
Click on the race in the races list to the right of the main screen, or select their ship. Then click on the FarMail menu, and send menu item. Type in your message and send it.
The email sender contains a very simply profanity filter - easy to get around, but if you do that you are missing the point. This game is for people with a mature outlook, not offensive people, so if you want to swear in comms please play a different game. If you are reported as sending offensive messages then you may be kicked from the game.
Also note that the server does record all messages in the database for a period of time.
When you hit the send button the message is queued for sending. If you click on the FarMail menu and then the folder menu item you will see the message in the outgoing folder. Only when you send in your orders is the message actually sent.
If you send on-line the message is removed from the outgoing folder at this time. If you send in your orders a different way then the message remains in the outgoing folder until the next turn report confirms the send.
When you get your next turn report, the folder window will open automatically and the in-box will contain the message you sent last turn and new incoming messages. This is unlike normal email! The server will send all emails you have sent or received for the last few days with every turn report. The email client will compare these to the set it has stored on the disk and remove duplicates. New messages will appear in the inbox, old messages will be in the archive folder or the deleted folder.
This is done so that if you change PC's, any recent comms will appear in the new PC's inbox.
Any emails not received this turn will be in the archive folder. i.e. even if you have not read them they will be moved from the inbox to the archive folder. You should try to delete emails from this folder and keep it relatively small - if your email client ends up with 400 or more messages stored in it you will get an annoying warning message.
You can multi select messages in the inbox and archive folder and right click to delete them. Deleted messages are moved to the deleted folder. If the messages are older then 3 days old they are automatically purged from the deleted folder. You can right click on emails in the deleted folder to restore them to the archive.
Select a message, and right click to reply to it. Just like new messages, it will not be sent until your orders are sent.
The comms between players is text only.
The subject and message body both have size restrictions - your messages cannot
be too long.
It is never sensible to share private information with anyone on the internet. If you have long term allies, and have built up trust then it may be OK to share emails. Alternatively, create a free email address (gmail, hotmail, yahoo etc) and share that - you can benefit from email comms with images etc, but if the email account needs to be closed it is easily done.