Reading and replying

Open a conversation and the whole thread is there, oldest message first.

Images are not loaded until you ask. A message from a stranger often carries a tracking pixel, and loading it tells the sender you opened their mail. Load images does it for that message when you decide it is worth it.

Replying

Reply answers the sender. Reply all adds the To and Cc recipients of the message you are answering, not everyone who ever appeared in the thread, with your own addresses filtered out.

The reply goes out from the mailbox the conversation arrived at, which is what the recipient expects to see and what keeps the thread intact in their client. Recipients, subject and text are all editable before you send, and you can add or remove addresses.

Before it works

The mailbox has to be able to send:

• Gmail needs the permission for sending. A connection made before that existed asks you to reconnect once.
• IMAP mailboxes need outgoing server details. Until they are there, the composer says so and offers Set up sending.

Setting up sending is under Settings, Integrations.

Attaching a CV

Up to five CVs can ride along with a reply, picked from the ones you already have. They are rendered as PDFs at the moment you send.

The bytes are frozen at send time and kept with the sent message, so editing the CV afterwards does not change what the recipient received or what Steerd can show you that you sent. A new reply is a new render, so it carries the CV as it stands then.

What the confirmations mean

Most sends just say Reply sent. Three answers deserve reading:

• "Sent, but address was refused." The server took the message for everyone else and turned down that one recipient. There is no bounce coming; this notice is the only evidence, so fix the address and send that person their own copy.
• "The mail server stopped answering mid-send." The connection died at the one moment where the outcome is genuinely unknown. Steerd will not retry, because a retry that guesses wrong sends your client the same mail twice. Look in your Sent folder, then decide.
• "This reply is already on its way." You pressed Send twice. The second press is ignored on purpose.

When they answer

Their reply lands in the conversation the next time mail is fetched, which today means the next time somebody presses Check for new mail. Steerd does not yet watch your mailbox for you, so the honest advice is to check the inbox rather than wait to be told.