Composing Mail

Opening a Compose Window

Compose Panes

Press F6 to cycle between the address fields (To, Cc, Bcc), the subject, and the message body. You can also jump directly to a field:

Choosing Which Account Sends

Press Alt+M to reach the From list, then arrow to the account you want. Press Enter and QuickMail confirms your choice — “IdeaPlace used as From address”. You can also expand the list with Alt+Down Arrow, arrow to an account, and press Enter; the same confirmation follows.

Arrowing past accounts does not announce anything extra, since your screen reader is already reading each account name as you go. The confirmation comes when the choice settles — on Enter, when the expanded list closes on a different account, or when you leave the From field having changed it. It uses the Announce action results setting, so turning that off turns this off with it.

Enter in the From list never sends the message. Sending is Alt+S or Ctrl+Enter.

Address Autocomplete

Start typing a name or address in To, Cc, or Bcc. QuickMail searches your address book and recent contacts. Arrow down to choose a suggestion; press Enter or Tab to accept. Press Escape to dismiss without accepting.

Editing Modes

Every compose window offers three modes, switchable at any time with Ctrl+Shift+1/2/3 or the View menu:

Switching from a rich mode to Plain Text asks for confirmation because formatting would be lost.

Messages composed in Markdown or HTML are sent with both an HTML part and a plain text part.

Formatting (Markdown and HTML Modes)

Nested lists: In a list, press Tab to indent an item (creating a sub-list); press Shift+Tab to dedent.

Headings, Quotes and Normal Text

Every line of a message has a paragraph style: Normal text, Heading 1 to Heading 6, or Quote. A recipient’s screen reader can move by the headings and quotes you create.

• Headings. Press Ctrl+Alt+1 to Ctrl+Alt+6 to make the line you are on a heading of that level (in HTML mode, every line you have selected). Pressing the same key again makes them normal text again. When you press Enter at the end of a heading, the new line is normal text; pressing Enter in the middle of a heading splits it into two headings.
• Normal text. Press Ctrl+Alt+0 to turn headings or quoted lines back into ordinary paragraphs.
• Quote. Press Ctrl+Shift+9 (the same key Gmail uses) to quote the lines you are on or have selected. Press it again on quoted lines to take them out of the quote. Pressing Enter inside a quote continues the quote; pressing Enter on an empty quoted line ends it. Quotes can be inside other quotes, the way an earlier message is quoted in a reply chain; Ctrl+Shift+9 on a quote inside another quote takes away one level.
• In HTML mode, the Paragraph style box on the formatting toolbar shows the style at the cursor. Arrow to a style and press Enter to apply it, or choose one from the open list; either way you are returned to your text. Arrowing on its own changes nothing, and leaving the box or pressing Escape in the open list puts it back. The same styles are in Format → Paragraph Style, where the current one is checked.
• In Markdown mode, these commands write the Markdown for you: # to ###### for headings and > for quotes.

When you reply in HTML mode, the message you are replying to is quoted as a real quote with its own formatting — headings, lists, links and any earlier quotes — instead of lines that begin with >. The plain text part of the message still marks quoted lines with >.

Pictures in a Message

A picture can go in the body of a message in Markdown or HTML mode (Ctrl+Shift+I, paste, or drop), and every picture has to have a description or be marked decorative before it goes in. See Pictures for everything about putting pictures in, sending them, and how they are kept safe.

Checking Formatting (HTML Mode)

• Ctrl+T — announces a one-line summary: “Heading 2. Bold on, Italic off, Underline off.” Inside a quote it says so (“Quote”, or “Quote, level 2” inside a quote within a quote). In a link it adds the link’s address, and in inline code it adds “Code on”.
• Ctrl+Shift+T — opens a small window listing the same details one per row. Arrow through them; press Escape or Enter to close.

Preview (Markdown and HTML Modes)

Press F8 to open a rendered preview in a separate window. The preview is fully focusable, so you can browse the formatted output exactly as a recipient would. Links open in your default browser. Press Escape or Ctrl+W to close the preview.

Check Spelling (Full Dialog)

Press F7 (or choose Tools → Check Spelling) to review the whole message in the classic spelling dialog. The check covers the message body first, then the subject line, and finishes with a confirmation that reports how many words were changed.

For each word that is not in the dictionary, the Spelling window shows the word in the line where it appears, a list of suggestions, and a “Change to” box pre-filled with the top suggestion. A screen reader announces “Not in dictionary:” followed by the word, and focus lands on the suggestions list with the first suggestion selected so it is spoken automatically. Arrow through the list to hear other choices — the highlighted suggestion fills the Change to box — or type your own correction.

Words you add to the dictionary are stored in custom.lex in your QuickMail profile folder and apply everywhere spell checking runs, permanently. To remove a word, edit that file in a text editor while QuickMail is closed (one word per line). Ignore All lasts only for the current check.

The message stays visible and editable behind the Spelling window, with the current word selected, so you can always see the correction in place.

Inline Spell Check

Changed keys: inline navigation was previously F7 / Shift+F7. F7 now opens the Check Spelling dialog, matching the binding word processors have used for decades. If you had customized these shortcuts, your bindings are unchanged; to restore the old behavior, reassign them in the keyboard customizations dialog.

Inline navigation wraps around the message so it always finds misspellings wherever the cursor starts.

When a screen reader is active, QuickMail announces each misspelling along with up to three suggestions. By default, each suggestion is numbered — for example: “Misspelling: teh. 1: the, 2: then, 3: them.” Press Alt+1, Alt+2, or Alt+3 to replace the misspelled word with that numbered suggestion without leaving the compose area.

Control announcement behavior in File → Settings → General → Screen Reader Announcements:

• Announce spelling suggestions — turn off to hear only the misspelled word without suggestions.
• Spelling Suggestions Verbosity — choose Numbers with suggestions (default) to hear “1: the, 2: then” so Alt+1/2/3 maps directly to what is spoken, or Just suggestions to hear “the, then, them” without numbers.

Attachments

Attach files with Ctrl+Shift+A in the compose window, by pasting files from the clipboard (Ctrl+V), or by dragging and dropping them onto the window. A screen reader announces how many files were attached.

Press Alt+A to move focus to the list of files already attached — the same key that reaches the attachment list of a message you are reading. Arrow through the list and press Delete to remove the selected file. If the message has nothing attached yet, QuickMail announces “No attachments.”

Message Templates

Save a message you write often — a standard reply, a form response — as a reusable template.

• Save as Template (command palette) saves the current subject and body as a new template, titled from the subject line (or “Untitled” if the subject is empty).
• Insert Template… (command palette) opens a search-and-select picker: type to filter by title, arrow to a template, and press Insert or Enter to add its subject (if the Subject field is empty) and body into the message you are composing.

Templates can include {sender}, {date}, and {time} placeholders, which are replaced with your display name and today’s date and time when the template is inserted. Templates are plain text; in HTML mode, only the text is inserted.

Checking Addresses

Press Ctrl+K in the To, Cc, or Bcc field (anywhere outside the message body, where Ctrl+K inserts a link, as in Outlook) to check every address in those fields. QuickMail looks up any bare name against your address book — if exactly one contact matches, it fills in that contact’s address automatically. Addresses that are not valid and cannot be resolved are flagged as invalid. A screen reader announces how many addresses were resolved and how many are invalid.

Sending

Auto-Save Drafts

QuickMail saves your compose as a draft automatically every 2 minutes (on by default). A quiet status line in the compose window shows “Auto-saved 3:42 PM” after each save — no announcement interrupts your writing. When the server cannot be reached, the status line reads “Kept on this computer 3:42 PM” instead and that is announced once; see Working Offline: Drafts and the Outbox. If a save fails entirely, it is announced once. You can check the last auto-save time from the command palette: Ctrl+Shift+P → Announce Last Auto-Save.

Control auto-save in Settings → General → Composing: turn it off, change the interval (30 seconds to 10 minutes), and set the default compose mode for new messages.

Working Offline: Drafts and the Outbox

A dropped connection no longer traps your message in the compose window. QuickMail always tries your account first and falls back to this computer only when the server does not answer:

• Save Draft (Ctrl+S) and auto-save keep the draft on this computer when the server cannot be reached. You hear “Draft saved on this computer. It will upload when you’re online.” The draft goes to your account’s Drafts folder the next time QuickMail connects.
• Send (Alt+S) queues the message when the server cannot be reached. You hear “Message queued. It will be sent when you’re online.”, the window closes, and the message leaves the moment a connection returns. A server that answers and refuses the message — a bad address, a rejected login — still fails in the window, where you can fix it.
• Closing a window with unsaved changes and choosing Save keeps the draft on this computer if the server is unreachable, and the window closes. It stays open only when the draft could be saved nowhere at all.

Everything waiting lives in the Outbox, the last entry in the All Mail group of the folder tree. The folder’s count is spoken as “waiting” rather than “unread”. Each row shows the account it will leave from, and its subject starts with its state: “Waiting to send”, “Waiting to upload draft”, “Sending…”, or “Failed” followed by the reason.

The Outbox drains on its own when QuickMail connects at startup, when the connection returns, when a shared mailbox connects again, and on each background sync. A message from a shared mailbox whose account is signed out is not marked Failed: once the Outbox has tried it, its row says “Waiting for its account to be signed in”, and it goes out once that account is signed in again. A drain is announced once as a whole, for example “Outbox: 2 messages sent, 1 draft uploaded.” A message the server refused stays in the Outbox marked “Failed” with the reason, until you reopen and fix it, or remove it. The Outbox is not available in --online mode, which runs without the local store.

Forwarding with Attachments

When forwarding a message that has attachments, QuickMail opens an Include Attachments dialog before downloading. All attachments are checked by default. Arrow between files and press Space to toggle individual ones. Press Tab to reach Forward (include checked files) or Cancel.