Composing and Sending Messages¶

This page documents the compose window — the window you use to write, attach files to, and send a new message, a reply, or a forward. It is also the window that opens when you edit a saved draft.

The dialog can be driven entirely with the mouse, but every important action also has a keyboard shortcut; see Keyboard shortcuts for the full list.

Window layout¶

The window is divided into three horizontal regions, top to bottom:

1. Header row — sender account, signing, delivery options, and the attachments toggle.
2. Body — the recipient fields, subject line, the message editor, and (when shown) the attachment list.
3. Footer — the Send, Save and Close, and Cancel buttons, plus a status line for errors and confirmations.

A large Send button also sits at the top-left of the body so it is reachable without scrolling to the bottom of a long message.

Selecting the sender¶

The From drop-down, at the left of the header under its From: label, lists the addresses you can send from. An address with a name shows as Name <address>: your own address with the Display Name of the Mailbox Manager's Account page, an additional address with the name it came with. An address with no name shows as <address>. Pick the one the message should be sent from. Send works once a real account is among them; a mailbox holding only a local account is for drafting.

Where your mailbox offers more than its own address, the list is grouped under a heading naming your account: first the account's own address, then its additional addresses and the sub-addresses you added in the Mailbox Manager, then the address of each department you have access to (The Departments pane). The heading is a label; the addresses under it are what you pick.

Composing in a department writes in that department's mailbox, so the list is that department's own: its address and its aliases.

Picking a department's address moves the composition into that department's mailbox: the draft and the sent copy are kept there, and the attachments you add are read and written there. A draft the window had already saved in the mailbox you moved away from is dropped, so the composition exists in one mailbox only. Picking your own address, or one of its aliases, moves it back the same way.

A department can be picked once its mailbox is open, which is what selecting it in the Departments pane does. Until then the drop-down stays on the address it was already on.

A new message starts out from your default sender, which you choose under Default Sender on the Addresses page of the Mailbox Manager. Until you choose one, a new message starts out from your own address.

A reply starts out from the address the message reached you at: one of its To and Cc addresses that the drop-down offers, your own addresses and aliases ahead of a department's. A reply to a message you sent yourself starts out from the address you sent it from. When none of the message's addresses is in the drop-down, the reply starts out from your default sender.

A reply leaves you out of its recipients by any of your addresses. A reply to a message you sent yourself goes to the people it went to; one you sent only to your own addresses goes back to them.

Signing¶

The Signature button, right of the From drop-down, signs the message as you send it, so its recipients can check that it comes from you and arrives as you wrote it. It is a split button: the arrow opens its menu.

Choice	Icon	Effect
Unsigned		The message goes out as it is.
Signed		Signs the message for Sobamail recipients.
S/MIME		Signs the message for Sobamail recipients and, with an S/MIME signature, for every other mail client.

The button shows the icon of the active choice, and its tooltip names it — Signature: Signed. While Signed or S/MIME is active the button stays pressed, and clicking it goes back to Unsigned; while the message is unsigned, clicking it opens the menu.

Your choice is kept for the sender address: a new message from that address starts out with it, and picking another address under From brings up the choice kept for that one. An address you have made no choice for starts out Unsigned.

Signing uses the Data auth certificate that names the sender address, and the message is signed when you press Send, for the date it carries. What that means for drafts, delayed sends and an expiring certificate, and how a recipient sees the signature, is on Signing Messages.

Recipients¶

Recipient fields live at the top of the body. Each field has a small drop-down on its left that sets its role:

• To
• Cc
• Bcc

Start typing a name or address and the contacts completer will suggest matches from your contacts: the Contacts app's people when it is installed, the address book otherwise.

The A button beside each field opens your contacts as well: the Contacts app in a tab of the main window when it is installed, otherwise the address book, where the addresses you pick become the message's recipients.

To add another recipient field, press Alt++ or use the add control at the end of the recipient list. Empty trailing fields are cleaned up automatically.

Subject and priority¶

The Subject line sits directly above the editor. The window title tracks the subject as you type so the message is easy to find in the taskbar.

A Priority selector (High / Normal) sits next to the subject. It is hidden by default and is shown only where priority is meaningful. High priority is flagged with the exclamation icon ().

Writing the message¶

The editor is a full rich-text (HTML) editor. Its formatting toolbar provides:

Group	Actions	Shortcut
History	Undo , Redo	Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y
Clipboard	Cut , Copy , Paste	Ctrl+X / Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V
Character	Bold , Italic , Underline	Ctrl+B / Ctrl+I / Ctrl+U
Alignment	Left , Center , Right , Justify	Ctrl+L / Ctrl+E / Ctrl+R / Ctrl+J
Color	Text color…	—

The same actions are available from the editor's right-click context menu.

A message with rich-text formatting is sent as HTML; an unformatted message is sent as plain text. The status line tells you when this happens — Message was converted to rich text format. It will be sent in HTML mode., or Message was downgraded to plain text format.

You can drag and drop or paste images straight into the body; they are embedded as inline images. Large inline images trigger the compression offer described below.

Attachments¶

Showing the attachment panel¶

The Attachments toggle () in the header shows or hides the attachment panel beside the editor (Alt+T). Once the message has attachments, the toggle shows their number to the left of the paperclip, as the message list does for a message's attachments; the panel's heading counts them too. The toggle's tooltip gives the count — 1 Attachment, 3 Attachments — while the panel is hidden, and reads Hide Attachments while it is open. A new message starts out with the panel as you last left it, shown or hidden, and at the width you gave it. The panel opens by itself when a file is added and when you drag files onto the window; hidden while it holds attachments, the toggle blinks to draw attention.

Adding and removing files¶

Within the attachment panel:

Control	Icon	Action
Add attachment		Open a file picker to attach one or more files.
Remove attachment		Remove the selected file(s) from the list.
Paste	(context-dependent)	Attach the current clipboard contents (see below).

You can also:

• Drag and drop files onto the window from your file manager. Folders, files that cannot be read and links to web pages are not attached; a notice names them.
• Double-click a listed file to open it.
• Use the file list's right-click menu: Open, Open Containing Folder, Save As, Rename (F2), Remove, and the context-aware Paste entry. Save As writes the attachment wherever you choose, a draft's or a forwarded message's included. A renamed file is sent under its new name; an image shown in the message body cannot be renamed.
• Change the order of the files with Move Up and Move Down in the same menu (Alt+Up / Alt+Down), or by dragging a file within the list. The message carries its attachments in the order the list shows.

An image you attach from your computer is listed with a thumbnail, and hovering it shows a larger preview. An image shown in the message body is listed in italics, and its tooltip says so. While an image is being optimized, its size reads Optimizing....

The total attachment size is shown above the list. A single attachment can be very large; transfers happen in the background. The one hard limit is per file: a file over 1 GiB cannot be attached, whichever way it arrives — the file picker, a drop, a paste or a restored draft. The file is left out and a notice says so: The file 'name' is too big to attach: it is 1.2 GiB, the limit is 1 GiB. When the attachments come to more than the Outbound Limit on the Mailbox Manager's Mailbox Limits page, Send asks first whether to send the message anyway. Whether the whole message is acceptable to its recipient's server is a separate question, answered when it is sent — see the Outbox's Status column.

Pasting from the clipboard¶

The Paste button adapts to whatever the clipboard holds, and its icon and tooltip change to match:

Clipboard contents	Paste behavior
Image	Paste image as attachment
File path(s)	Paste file(s) as attachment ()
HTML	Paste HTML data as attachment
Plain text	Paste text as attachment
Nothing usable	Button is disabled

Image optimization¶

When the message contains inline or attached images that can be made smaller, the yellow notification bar offers to compress them before sending. Its Compress... button lists those images: Compress All compresses every one of them, and picking a single image lets you choose how to compress it. You can also right-click an image in the attachment list to optimize just that file. Optimization runs in the background and supports modern formats (WebP, AVIF) as well as JPEG/PNG. You can keep working while it runs; Send waits for any in-progress optimization to finish.

Delivery options¶

Follow Delivery¶

The Follow Delivery toggle (, Alt+O) controls whether the message's delivery is tracked after sending. It is on for every new message; clear it before sending when you would rather not track that one.

A tracked message reports its progress per recipient in the reader pane.

Timed (delayed) delivery¶

The Delay Delivery button () schedules the message to be sent later instead of immediately. It is a split button: click the arrow to open the menu, or click the body to clear an active delay.

The menu offers preset relative delays:

• No delay (default)
• 15 minutes
• 30 minutes
• 1 hour
• 2 hours
• 4 hours
• 8 hours
• 12 hours
• 24 hours

Only one preset can be active at a time. Choosing any delay other than No delay checks (highlights) the button so the active delay is visible at a glance.

For an exact send time, choose Select target time… at the bottom of the menu. This opens a date-and-time picker (with a calendar pop-up) where you set an absolute delivery moment.

Sending, saving, and closing¶

The footer (and the body's top-left button) provide:

Button	Icon	Action
Send		Generate and send (or schedule) the message.
Save and Close		Save the message to Drafts and close the window.
Cancel	—	Discard and close.

Pressing Ctrl+Enter (or Ctrl+Enter) sends the message. When sending to a real (non-local) account, a confirmation prompt — "Are you sure you would like to send this message?" — appears first.

Two things can interrupt a send:

• If image optimization is still running, you are told so and the send waits. Try again when it finishes.
• If the message has attachments while the attachment panel is hidden, the panel is opened and you are asked to confirm — This message has N attachments. Would you like to continue? — so you always see what is going out with the message.

Cancel confirms before discarding — The contents of this message will be discarded.

Saving a draft¶

Save as Draft (Ctrl+S) writes the message as it stands to Drafts and leaves the window open; Save and Close does the same and closes it. Re-saving replaces the previous draft rather than piling up copies.

Open a draft again from the Drafts folder and it returns to this window, ready to finish — see Opening a message.

Keyboard shortcuts¶

Icon reference¶

Selected mappings used by this dialog.

Function	Icon
Window icon
Send
Save / Save and Close
Add attachment
Remove attachment
Attachments toggle
Paste file(s)
Signature: Unsigned / Signed / S/MIME
Follow Delivery
Delay Delivery
High priority flag
Bold / Italic / Underline
Align left/center/right/justify
Undo / Redo
Cut / Copy / Paste