Getting Started With Plum Mail

1. Starting a new conversation

New conversations need a topic and participants. To start a new conversation, visit your inbox and start typing your topic into the finder bar (e.g. "Hello World").

An option will appear underneath the finder bar which says:

Start a new conversation with topic: Hello World

To add a participant simply type their email address into the invite box on the right hand side of the conversation.

You can add as many participants as you like.

2. Quote in reply

Quoting in reply gives your conversations structure. When you want to respond directly to something someone says in a conversation quote it in your reply. To do this:

  1. Highlight any text in the message sent to you.
  2. Select the quote icon that appears.
  3. The text will automatically appear at the bottom of your reply with a preceeding chevron like this:

> blockquote

Text preceeded by a chevron appears like this when you send or preview your message:

blockquote

3. Pin useful information

If you're forever trawling through emails to find snippets of information, pins are for you. Use pins to highlight important information for shared reference. To do this:

  1. Highlight any text in a message sent to you.
  2. Select the pin icon that appears.
  3. The text will be pinned to the right hand side underneath the heading 'Pins'.
  4. To delete a pin, click the delete icon.
  5. To locate the original source of a pin, click on the pin text to open the message from which the pin was pinned.

4. Ask a highlighted question

Do you ever ask a question that gets ignored? Highlighted questions make your call to action really obvious.

Highlighted questions are highlighted at the top of the reply box. They appear in the original message as per the example below and all answers are summarised in the toggle list:

How is your first experience of Plum Mail going?
Example answer

Questions are written using the following Markdown syntax:

[](#?)

i.e.

[How is your first experience of Plum Mail going?](#?)

5. Use Markdown formatting

Markdown is a lightweight formatter designed to be extremely quick and easy to use. This is done using keyboard shortcuts.

For example, to create a heading use the # symbol like this: # example heading

Click here for a full list of Plum Mail's markdown formatting options.

Here are some basics to get started with:

Headings

Preceed your heading with either 1, 2 or 3 hashes:

# Heading 1

## Heading 2

## Heading 3

Insert a link using square brackets for the link text and round brackets for the URL:

[link text](https://example.com)

Add emphasis using asterisks or underscores. One for italic, two for bold:

*italic*

**bold**

_**bold and italic**_

Add bullet point lists with dashes:

- item 1

- item 2

- item 3

Quote text using chevrons:

> quoted text

Insert an image using the same syntax as a link but with an exclamation mark:

Insert a page break or underline using three dashes:

---

For tables, indented lists, images as links and more advanced markdown features check out the full markdown guide.

6. Conclude a conversation

Conclusions conclude a conversation so no more messages can be sent. This is very useful for preventing other users from piggy-backing a month old thread with a new topic.

To conclude a message, select the 'Conclude' checkbox before you press 'Send'.

Concluded messages appear in your archive with the word 'concluded' after the topic.

7. Set notification settings

Set notification settings for each conversation to control what appears in your 'new messages' view.

7. Finder bar and inbox

The finder bar is very powerful. You can search for conversations either by topic or participant.

The finder bar is also the fastest way to start a new conversation if you already have a topic in mind.

To view all of your messages at once, click on 'Archive' in the top right hand corner.

If you have new messages, the words 'new messages' will appear next to the word archive in the top right hand corner.

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