Finding E-mail Addresses

If you've received a message from someone in the past, it contains the person's address. Many e-mail programs, like Outlook and Yahoo! Mail, automatically record the sender's address in your address book. If it's not there, locate the address by opening the old message, then double-clicking on the name in the FROM: field. This should open a box that displays information about the sender.

If you're looking for the address of a journalist, politician or corporate executive, try using a search engine. For help, refer to the "Searching the Web" article. Your search may turn up articles written by the journalist that contain her e-mail address. Many politicians now have websites with contact information and many companies list key executives along with their e-mail addresses.

Once you understand how e-mail addresses are constructed, you may be able to figure out someone's address. Believe-it-or-not, guessing frequently works. If you know where a person works you can usually figure out the domain name, for instance, learnthenet.com. But what about the recipient's mailbox?

Suppose you want to contact Mary Jones. Her address may take one of these forms:

• Her first name (mary@learnthenet.com)
• Her last name (jones@learnthenet.com)
• Her initials (mj@learnthenet.com)
• Her first initial and last name (mjones@learnthenet.com)
• Her first and last name separated by a dot (mary.jones@learnthenet.com)
• Her first and last name separated by an underscore (mary_jones@learnthenet.com).

Try one of these. The worst that can happen is that the message comes back to you. Send it again using an alternate form. With any luck, it will arrive in her Inbox.

Last update: Jan 15, 2010