BT Mail Release Notes

Keep your accounts together: Add as many accounts as you need and read their incoming messages in one unified inbox.

Write and respond: Compose messages in plain text or Markdown, reply, reply to everyone, and forward messages. Choose recipients from Contacts or recent addresses.

Stay organized: Sort and filter messages, group related replies into conversations, and select multiple messages to manage them together.

Find what you need: Search a folder or an account and save searches to use again.

Work with attachments: Attach files to outgoing messages, open received text attachments directly, or save attachments for use in another application.

Make it your own: Set separate signatures and reply preferences for each account.

Pick up where you left off: Save drafts to finish later. Messages you send while disconnected wait in Outbox and are sent automatically when BT Mail reconnects to that account.

Manage invitations and sending: Accept calendar invitations into your local calendar and enable an optional Undo send window to give yourself time to cancel a message.

Gmail and Google Workspace accounts use Google authorization. Outlook.com, Hotmail, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft-hosted work or organization accounts use Microsoft authorization. Leave the password field blank when adding these accounts.

Other supported accounts use secure IMAP and SMTP connections and may require a password. BT Mail normally finds the server settings automatically, but you may need to obtain them from your provider.

Your mailbox remains on your email provider’s server. Recently opened messages may be available to read offline, but BT Mail does not download your entire mailbox.

Open BT Mail

Open Options, Applications, Web.

Choose BT Mail, shortcut M.

Press M-Chord or F10 to open the BT Mail menu. Press Z-Chord to leave the current screen.

Open the BT Mail menu and choose Accounts, then Add account.

Enter your email address, password where required, the sender name recipients will see, and an account name such as Home or Work. Leave the password blank for accounts that use Google or Microsoft authorization.

Use Tab, Dots 4–5-Chord, to move between fields.

At the final prompt, press Enter to find your provider’s settings.

When the settings are found, choose Continue to test the receiving and sending connections and save the account. Complete any authorization prompts presented.

If the settings cannot be found, choose Configure manually and enter the secure IMAP and SMTP settings supplied by your provider. If either connection test fails, BT Mail reports the problem without saving the account.

Repeat these steps to add more accounts.

Press Enter on a message to read it using familiar file-viewer commands.

From a message list, press M-Chord with Dot 7 on a message to open actions such as reply, reply all, forward, mark, flag, move, or delete.

While reading a message, you can use the action letters listed at the end:

R: Reply

A: Reply to everyone

S: Reply directly to the sender

F: Forward

L: Change the flag

These are letters pressed without Space, not chords. Only actions available for the message are offered.

While reading, M-Chord or F10 opens the Message actions menu. Press Tab to move from that menu to the editor menus.

Choose New message from the BT Mail menu. You can write in plain text or Markdown, select recipients from Contacts or recent addresses, and attach files. Save an unfinished message as a draft to continue later.

To use an existing file as the body of an email, choose New Message From File.

Each account can have its own signature and reply preferences. If a connection is unavailable when you send, the message goes to Outbox and is sent automatically when BT Mail successfully reconnects to that account.

Enable the optional Undo send window in Settings to add a short delay before sending. Press Z-Chord during the countdown to cancel sending and keep the message as a draft.

Sort or filter a message list, or group related messages into conversations. These choices apply to the current list. In Settings, you can choose the default sort order and whether new lists start grouped into conversations.

Press F-Chord or Control F from a message list to search mail. You can search a folder or an account and save searches for later use.

Press Space or X to select or unselect a message.

Press Control A to select all messages in the list.

Press U to clear the selection.

Selecting a collapsed conversation selects every message in that conversation. Moving or deleting the selection therefore affects the whole conversation.

Press Backspace or Dot 7-Chord to return from a conversation to its message list. From a message list, the same command leaves the list and clears the selection.

Deleting a message moves it to the account’s trash folder, where one is available. Deleting from the trash, or from an account without a trash folder, is permanent and always asks for confirmation.

Working with attachments and invitations

Open text attachments directly in BT Mail, or save attachments to use in another application.

You can also respond to calendar invitations. Accepting an invitation adds it to your local calendar.

You can choose whether email links open in BT Mail or Thunderbird:

Open Options, Settings, Default Email Client, shortcut E.

Choose BT Mail.

The initial setting is Thunderbird. If your chosen application has no account configured, it opens account setup.

Open BT Mail Accounts Help for complete account setup instructions. From a mail screen, press H-Chord to open help for that part of the application.