Back in the early days of Atlas Quest, it was hosted on a shared server that often ended up being identified as a source of spam. Consequently, e-mail was extraordinarily unreliable. To combat this problem, AQ mail was developed so people could be certain that when a message was sent to another member, you could be sure it would not end up in a spam folder or never delivered at all.

Today, Atlas Quest has a unique IP address and runs on it's own little server, so e-mail is considerably more reliable. However, it is still useful since not everyone signs up with a real e-mail address, and even those that do often change addresses but forget to update their account information here. You'll also find an astounding lack of spam since most spammers are not inclined to take the time to create an account on Atlas Quest to send spam, and if they do, they're quickly banned and the spam removed from the AQ mail system.

So AQ mail is here to stay. However, some people still prefer to receive and reply to e-mail off of Atlas Quest. To support those people and to preserve the privacy of their real e-mail addresses, Atlas Quest uses a pseudo-address in the form of trailname@atlasquest.net. (Please note that the address ends in dot NET.) To learn more about how this works, check out the information at http://www.atlasquest.net. It contains everything you need to know to use your special AQ e-mail address that you should know before you start using it.

It's mostly a function of how the software was developed. When you send AQ mail, a single copy is stored in the database that the recipient could read. Originally, there was no option available for viewing sent mail, but that was a feature many members asked for. And thus, the sent folder was created. The quickest and most efficient method of implementing this feature was to allow you to 'peek' into everyone else's mailbox for messages that you sent. As far as AQ is concerned, there really is no such thing as a sent folder! Internally, messages are stored in the inbox folder, the archive folder, the trash folder, or a deleted folder—and that's it. The deleted folder cannot be accessed, but it is not relevant to this particular question, so I'll set discussion of it aside for now. The messages in your sent folder were actually retrieved by Atlas Quest out of other members' inbox, archive, trash, and deleted folders. Internally, there is no such thing as a sent folder.

And that is why you cannot archive a sent message—it does not actually exist as such. That is also the reason you cannot delete a sent message—it would be deleting mail out of another member's mailbox and, like the post office, once a piece of mail is sent, it is the recipient who has complete control of the letter.

But remember—you can archive any message you receive. The easy way to archive a 'sent' message is to send a copy to yourself then archive it. While filling out the form to send an AQ mail, include your trailname as a recipient making sure to separate your trailname with the other recipient with a semicolon. The message will show up in your inbox and, since you are the recipient, you will have the power to archive the message. Or rather, archive your own copy of it. If you were to check your sent folder, you'll notice two completely independent copies of the message were sent out—one to the original recipient and a second copy to you. You can only archive the copy that was sent to you.

Now for the curious among you, why does Atlas Quest keep track of a deleted folder you will never see? The masses demanded a method to 'delete' a message rather than just move it to their trash folder. Since the sent folder actually looks in all the other members' mailbox for messages from you, it would not show messages you sent if they were truly and totally deleted from Atlas Quest, so the deleted folder was created as place holder for old mail to die. Kind of like a mail pouch on its way to the incinerator—it's been marked for deletion, but has not yet been permanently destroyed. The sent folder will only show messages you sent within the last week, so Atlas Quest will permanently delete messages older than that from the deleted folder.

In a nutshell, that Sent folder is a cleverly created virtual folder. It does not really exist on Atlas Quest, and therefore you cannot archive or delete messages from it. For archiving purposes, however, you are more than welcome to send a copy of a message to yourself and archive that instead.

In your Mailbox's folders (Inbox, Sent, Archives, Trash) you will see little envelopes to the left of the messages. These envelopes represent different things and can quickly tell you about the status of a message. In your sent folder, these envelopes indicate the status of the message in the recipient's inbox.

A new, unread message

An old, read message

A message you have replied to

A message you have forwarded

NOTE: If a Person has their preferences set to forward their mail directly to their personal email account, the message you sent them will immediately be marked as read!

You probably set your E-mail Preferences to have AQ mail forwarded directly to your e-mail address. When you have AQ mail forwarded directly to your e-mail address, Atlas Quest assumes that is where you will read the message and therefore marks all mail on Atlas Quest as old. If you "archive" AQ mail, it'll forward AQ mail to your email address and not mark messages as old.

If you have not received AQ mail in the inbox for your e-mail address, check your spam folder. Sometimes legitimate mail can end up there. Setting up a filter so all e-mail from atlasquest.com or atlasquest.net will go into your inbox can fix that problem. Some well-meaning but overzealous spam blockers might intercept and delete the e-mails from Atlas Quest completely.

If you need to update your e-mail address, you can do so from the Account Info page, found under the My Page menubar option.

When all else fails, turn off mail forwarding in your preferences. Atlas Quest will no longer try to forward mail to you, but at least it will no longer mark new AQ mail as being old until after you read it online.

It’s mostly a matter of how the software was developed. The sent folder doesn’t actually exist as such, but rather is a virtual folder created by looking through everyone’s mail for anything sent by you then collected into a display to show you the results. Allowing an individual to delete an AQ mail they sent would effectively delete it out of the recipient’s mailbox! That’s probably not what most people intend to do when they want to delete their sent mail.

Likewise, you can’t delete messages in your Trash folder because they might still be showing up in another person’s Sent folder. So no matter what, AQ mail will not be deleted from the AQ system for a minimum of several weeks.

Not to worry, though. Messages sent more than a couple of weeks ago (or up to 5 weeks for Premium Members), they’ll automatically be removed from your Sent folder. (Or more specifically, not included in those results anymore.) Whether or not the message is actually deleted from the AQ system depends on what the recipient does with the message.

• If they move it to their trash folder, it’ll be deleted permanently after it no longer shows up in the sender’s Sent folder.
• If they move it to an archive folder, it’ll be saved permanently—or at least until the message is moved out of the archive folder.
• If the message lingers in their inbox, it’ll be saved temporarily for up to a year (for Premium Members) before it will be deleted automatically. Move messages to an archive folder if they should be saved permanently.

But in any case, the messages will be purged from the AQ system automatically when it’s possible. Definitely do move messages into your Trash folder, though, to speed up the process.

Ryan announced in Msg: 186298 that he has added a new feature to strip off annoying content from the end of an email message that is generated outside of AQ and sent through the AQ mail system. His paraphrased description follows:
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Those of you who use the AQ mail forwarding to your real e-mail address or write your AQ mails from your favorite e-mail client can benefit from this feature.

Especially if you use a free e-mail service such as Yahoo or Hotmail. They have a bad habit of adding annoying little signatures to the end of every message you send promoting their services or whatever. You can't stop it.

Until now.

If you end your e-mail with "#end" (without the quotes) on a line by itself, everything that comes after it will be ignored and NOT included as the AQ mail message.

You can also use it instead of deleting a quoted reply that's automatically added to the end of your messages (if you want). Just type #end at the end of your message, and the rest of the e-mail will not be included in the forwarded message after going through the AQ system.

There could be several reasons. First, you must be e-mail verified before Atlas Quest will send you notifications of new AQ mail or forward AQ mail to your e-mail address. You can find out if you're e-mail verified from your E-mail Preferences. If you are not verified, there will be an error message displayed with a link that allows you to get verified. If you do not see an error message, you are already e-mail verified.

If you still are not receiving e-mail from Atlas Quest, be sure to check your spam folders and the settings on your filters. It's possible that the mail is being foiled by those sources.

If you used to receive e-mail from Atlas Quest but it stops suddenly, check that you did not accidentally mark a message from Atlas Quest as spam. Once you've marked one message as spam, even accidentally, your e-mail client will probably stop all future messages from Atlas Quest from reaching your inbox and possibly deleting the message completely rather than putting it in your spam folder.

If none of those apply to you, it might be an issue where your ISP or firewall blocks e-mail from Atlas Quest. It is a known issue that the ATT family (@bellsouth.net, @ameritech.net, @sbcglobal.net, @att.net, snet.net, @worldnet.att.net, etc.) rejects all Atlas Quest mail as spam. They do not even deliver it to the spam folder, they just delete it. There is nothing that can be done since it is a system setting on their network.

E-mail, as a whole, is incredibly unreliable. As long as you're e-mail verified, Atlas Quest will send out e-mail, but once it leaves the Atlas Quest servers, it is out of our hands. You'll need to investigate the problem on your end to solve it. If all else fails, you may have to use a completely different e-mail address. Due to the unreliable nature of e-mail, however, it is recommended that you read all AQ mail on Atlas Quest where you can be certain you won't miss anything.

There is no requirement that you register an e-mail address with Atlas Quest. It's recommended in case you forget your password since having a new one emailed to you is the only way you can reset a forgotten password and the site will restrict certain features without a valid e-mail address.

Atlas Quest does not send you any unsolicited e-mails. You can change your E-mail Preferences to insure no digests or AQ mail is sent to your e-mail address. The only two other times Atlas Quest will try to send you an e-mail is if you forget your password and need to acquire a new one through the Lost Password Center or if you have an unverified e-mail address need an e-mail sent to yourself to Verify Your E-mail Address.

On rare occasions, if someone is trying to contact you about a problem with one of your boxes and you do not appear to check your AQ mail on a regular basis, an administrator may try to forward the message about the problem to your registered e-mail address.

To send AQ mail to everyone in your mailing list, type the @ symbol followed by the name of the list. For example, if you created a mailing list for "My Friends" and need to send a message to all of them, write AQ mail like you normally would, except send it to "@My Friends" (without the quotes).

Set up your Notification & Email Preferences. Under the section titled E-mail Preferences, there's an option for how to track your AQ mail.

You can have Atlas Quest:

• Send you a notification whenever you receive a new AQ mail. This will only send one notification even if you get multiple messages. You won't receive subsequent notifications until you have no more new messages in your inbox.
• Forward AQ mail: This will forward AQ mail to your registered email address and mark the AQ mail message as old.
• Archive AQ mail: This will forward AQ mail to your registered email address but leave the message on Atlas Quest marked as new and unread.
• None of the above: Which is the default and doesn't send you email at all about your AQ mail.

For any of the email options to work, you must register an email address and verify that it exists. You can set your email address on the Account Info page and when you do, we'll send you an email to verify that the address really works and belongs to you.

If you type a link all by itself, it should automatically turn clickable with no additional effort.

If you want the link to be labeled with something other than the URL, check the Wiki Markup or HTML Markup help pages. Most people, by default, have their preferences set up to use the wiki formatting so try that (at first) if you aren't sure.

You'll also find many other tips for formatting your messages on those help pages including how to make text bold, italic, underlined, ^and _more.

Wiki Markup: https://www.atlasquest.com/help/wiki.html
HTML Markup: https://www.atlasquest.com/help/html.html
Markup Preferences: https://www.atlasquest.com/mypage/prefs/misc.html (the last option)

You can't. You can link to images, however, including images that have been added to the AQ Photo Gallery.

AQ mail is not email. There is no "cc:" option, but there's nothing to prevent one from adding additional people to the "from" field with each trailname separated by a comma (or semicolon).