Notes:

•

To send a PM, you must register (How?), activate your account (How?) and log in (How?).

•

Before sending a PM, be sure to read the forum policies, first (go there now).

To send a private message to a member:

1)

Do any of the following:

• Go to any message posted by the member. How?
• Find the member's username in the Memberlist. How?
• View the member's profile. How?

2)

Click the PM icon that appears in one of those 3 areas of the forum.

The icon will look something like  or

Tip: If you prefer, you can navigate to your PM Inbox by clicking the "x new messages" button at the top of any page (where "x" represents the number of new messages in your PM Inbox), and then click the new post icon, instead.

If you are replying to a PM, you can click the post reply icon on the page where the message you received is displayed (for more information, see Viewing & Replying to Private Messages).

 or       or

A message creation form appears. It is nearly identical to the one the you use to post a topic message. The only difference is that it does not contain a Subject description text box or Message icon option, and a Username text box is added for the PM recipient's username.

3)

Do one of the following:

If you clicked a member's PM icon or post reply as described above, the member's username appears in the Username text box, automatically. Skip to step 7.

If you used the new post icon to open the message form, continue with step 4.

4)

Do one of the following:

If you know the member's username, enter it in the Username text box and skip to step 7.

If you do not know the member's username, click the Find a username button to open the username search pop-up window and continue with step 5.

5)

Type part of the member's username and place an asterisk (*) before or after the text; then click the Search button.

Tip: You do not need to "match" the case of the letter in the actual username.

Examples: If you know the username starts with the letter c, then type either C* or c*. If you know it ends in the letter r, then type *r or *R.

The corresponding usernames appear in a drop-down list.

6)

From the drop-down list, select the username of the PM recipient; then click the Select button.

You return to the message form; the selected username appears in the Username text box.

7)

Enter a title for the message in the Subject text box.

8)

Type your message in the large text box inside the form. Press the Enter key twice to separate paragraphs.

Tip: To format your text, use the rectangular BBCode buttons and drop-down lists above the message text box (How?). For more information about BBCode, click here. To insert smilies, use the Emoticons inside the form (How?). For information on inserting quotes, see Quoting Other Posts or Offline Content.

9)

If you want to enable or disable BBCode or smilies for the current message, select or deselect the corresponding check box in the form.

Tip: An Options indicator inside the form lets you know whether or not BBCode and smilies are automatically turned on or off. These are preferences that you select in your profile (How?). You can override your default preferences during this step.

Note: If you do turn BBCode off, the PMs sent to you by other forum members who use BBCode to format words and phrases are likely appear odd. You might see the actual codes in their messages, rather than the formatting that those codes display. For example, instead of seeing bold text, you might see [b] and [/b] codes around the words that they are intending to display as bold.

10)

If you want to include or exclude a signature at the end of your message, select or deselect the Attach signature check box in the form.

Note: The Attach signature check box appears only if you have a signature defined in your profile. To add a signature to your profile, see Changing Profile Preferences. For more information, see Attaching a Signature.

11)

Click the Preview button to preview your message. Edit your text and formatting, as needed.

12)

Click the Submit button to send your PM.

13)

At this point, a page appears, offering you the choice to either go to the forum index or to view the list of messages in your Inbox. Click the link that corresponds to your preference.

Note: Your message is stored in your Outbox until the member opens it or saves it to the Savebox to read later. While it is in the Outbox, you can edit it (How?) or delete it (How?). (Please note that if a member receives notification of a new Private Message and you delete it before he or she picks it up, it might cause confusion because the member will be expecting to see a new message that does not actually appear.) After the recipient opens or saves your message, it is moved to your Sentbox, and its contents are no longer under your control.

_________________________

Related Topics:

About Private Messages
Editing Private Messages
Deleting Private Messages
About the Outbox
About Ads & Offensive Messages