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MailPage (VERSION 1.00) Copyright (c) 1997 Ziff-Davis Publishing
Company
By John McSorley
First Published in PC Magazine May 27, 1997
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About  MailPage...

MailPage monitors your MAPI-compliant Inbox and notifies you via
pager of unread mail or faxes. When new messages are received,
it transmits the sender's name and the subject of the message.
MailPage works with both numeric and alpha pagers. For numeric
pagers, the sender and subject information is encoded.

Requirements:
MailPage is a 32-bit program that runs under Windows 95 and
Windows NT 3.51 and higher. It requires a MAPI-based mail 
system such as Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft Mail, a 
Hayes-compatible modem, and a pager with the associated service 
and telephone numbers. It also requires the Visual Basic 4 
runtime libraries, which you can download separately.

USAGE:

To install MailPage, unzip Mailpa.zip and Vb4lib.zip into a 
temporary directory. If your system doesn't already contain 
them, install the Visual Basic 4.0 runtime libraries by 
running the setup.exe program in vb4lib.zip, and then 
install the MailPage files by running the setup.exe program 
in mailpa.zip. When the installation is complete you can 
delete the setup files and launch MailPage. The program 
lists your unread mail messages in the main window, and 
displays three indicators on the status bar: 

     1)  Online/Offline (whether you are currently 
         connected to your mail system)
     2)  Inactive/Active (whether paging is enabled)
     3)  Unread message counter

To configure MailPage for operation, choose Properties 
from the File menu. This will bring up a tabbed dialog 
box. The first Tab lets you set Pager parameters. In the 
Pager control group at the top of the page, indicate 
whether you have an alpha- or numeric-style pager, and 
what communications port the modem is attached to 
(for example, COM1). This is also where you select 
which Pager Object to use. The one included with MailPage 
is called Paging.Pager, and unless you're a programmer 
it's the only one you'll ever need.

If you select the numeric pager option, the Numeric 
Pager Settings control group will appear in the lower 
portion of the page. An edit box lets you enter the 
telephone dial string for your pager service'for 
example:

        1-313-555-1111,,,,

The commas tell a Hayes-compatible modem to wait a 
few seconds before proceeding with rest of the dialing. 
If your pager service has a PIN number, you might enter 
a string like this:

     1-800-555-1111,,,,123456#,,,,

This dials the telephone number, pauses, enters the 
PIN number (123456) followed by a pound sign, and pauses 
again. In the case of MailPage, what follows will be the 
digits that represent the message to be sent to the pager.

The From List and Subjects list are used to help MailPage 
encode a numeric message to send to your pager. The From 
list can contain the last names of up to 99 senders that 
you wish to recognize in the numeric message. The subject 
list can contain up to 99 words that you wish to 
recognize in the numeric message as part of the subject. 
These words should be entered in order of importance, 
with the most important at the top. This is because 
MailPage scans the subject of the message and sends the 
first match it finds. You can use drag and drop to 
reorder your list if necessary. Click the "Print Lists" 
button to print out the From List and Subjects list so 
you can take it with you to decode pages sent to you by 
MailPage.

Messages sent by MailPage to a numeric-style pager have 
the following format:

                     999-NNN-XXYY

The "999" in place of an area code distinguishes email 
or fax pages from standard telephone number pages. The 
number transmitted in place of the exchange (NNN) is 
the number of unread messages in your Inbox. The XX 
portion of the number is a code for a person on your 
From List. This is set to 00 if the sender does not 
match a name on the list you set up previously. The 
YY portion of the number is a code for the Subject 
word match, using the list you set up. This is also 
set to 00 if there is not a match.

If you select an alpha-style pager, the bottom portion 
of the Pager Settings page will contain an Alpha Pager 
Settings control group. The message sent to an 
alpha-style pager by MailPage has a simple format:

     From : Subject

MailPage will send the first 15 characters of the 
sender's last name, and up to 65 characters of the 
mail message's subject. I limited the total to 80 
characters because some pagers cannot handle more 
than this, but these limits should be sufficient to 
recognize a mail message in most cases.

The second Tab in the Properties dialog box is for 
Mail Settings. Here you choose the Mail Object (the 
mail monitoring server). MailPage includes just one 
mail object called MPMAPIServ.MPMAPI that supports 
MAPI compliant email programs such as Microsoft 
Exchange and Microsoft Mail. These programs ignore 
the Login Name and Password, but the settings may 
be necessary for some other email programs. 
MailPage's open architecture allows programmers to 
write other Mail Objects for use with other mail 
systems, such as cc:Mail which uses the VIM mail 
protocol. But if you're not a programmer, you'll 
never need to change this.

The checkbox at the bottom of this group of 
controls lets you choose whether to have 
MailPage ignore unread mail messages at startup. 
If you check this option, MailPage will not page 
you for messages left unread in your Inbox when 
you started MailPage.

The third Tab in the Properties dialog box lets 
you control Operating Times--when MailPage will 
page you. This feature lets you prevent MailPage 
from paging you in the middle of the night, for 
example. The day is divided into one hour time 
slots. To change a time slot from Active to 
Inactive, highlight the cell in the grid that 
you wish to change, and then click the Active 
or Inactive button. You can select more than 
one time slot at a time, using either the mouse 
or the keyboard. For keyboard operation, use 
the arrow keys and the shift key to highlight 
a block in the grid, and then use the 
accelerator keys for the Active and Inactive 
buttons.

After setting the MailPage Properties, you can 
check your settings by selecting Test|Pager 
from the main menu. If you are using a numeric 
pager, MailPage will try to send you the 
message "999-000-1122"; if you are using an 
alpha pager, it will try to send you the 
message "TEST". If these test pages do not 
come through properly, return to the 
Properties dialog box and make sure the 
communication port, telephone number, and 
other settings are correct.

Now that you have configured and tested 
MailPage, you are ready to begin using it. 
When you leave the office for the day, leave 
your computer and modem powered on and start 
MailPage. That's all there is to it. 
MailPage will then monitor your Inbox and page 
you when you receive new email messages. 
If you are using a modem to receive email 
rather than a network, be sure to configure 
your system to hang up after retrieving your 
email so the modem can be used to page you.

Support for MailPage:
Support for the free utilities offered by 
PC Magazine can be obtained electronically 
in the discussion area of PC Magazine's 
Web site. Go to the 
URL http://www.pcmag.com/discuss.htm/ and 
select the Utilities area. You can also 
access the Utilities discussion area from 
the utility's download page. The authors of 
current utilities generally monitor the 
discussion area every day. You may find an 
answer to your question simply by reading 
the messages previously posted. If the 
author is not available and you have a 
question that the sysops can't answer, 
the editor of the Utilities column, who 
also checks the area each day, will 
contact the author for you.

John McSorley is a senior programmer for 
the information technology group at a major 
computer company. 
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