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E-m@il in Opera

A great way of communicating with people from all over the world is by using electronic mail, abbreviated "e-mail". There are so many things e-mail can be used to do that it just might go down in history as a more significant invention than the World Wide Web will be recognized as.

Opera 5 comes with a built-in, fully-featured, modular e-mail program which can be set up to work in a matter of minutes. Naturally, this does not encroach upon other e-mail clients' usage with Opera, and you'll still be able to use your e-mail client of choice with Opera. This document contains various information on how to get the very most out of your Opera e-mail experience. Enjoy!

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E-mail client

The very most of e-mail clients can be configured to work with Opera in one way or another, usually by going to "File/Preferences" and selecting "E-mail" and configuring this menu in Opera.

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The E-mail panel

The e-mail accounts in Opera are seen on the left-hand side of the Opera workspace, in the left-panel. In order to open the left-hand side panel, either go to "View/Hotlists", or use the hotkey F4. Click on the "E-mail" tab in order to see the current account and its folders.

Buttons in the e-mail pane
Check for e-mail on server Send queued e-mail Compose new e-mail Open context sensitive menu
Abort checking for e-mail

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Context sensitive e-mail pane menu

The context sensitive E-mail menu is accessed either through right-clicking on the E-mail part of the Hotlists pane in the left hand side of the Opera workspace, or by using the hotkey CTRL + M. The menu contains these items:

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Context sensitive menus in the e-mailer

Rather than cluttering the user interface with the number of options usually associated with an e-mail client, Opera opts to present you with the most used e-mail functions through the use of the context sensitive menus for the appropriate windows. The context sensitive menus is accessed either through right-clicking, or by using the hotkey CTRL + M on the e-mail windows, bringing them up.

When you access the context sensitive menu on the list of e-mails in either the Inbox, the Outbox, the Sent folder or the Trash, you'll find these options available:

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Setting up an e-mail account

In order to set up an e-mail account in Opera, you'll first have to set up an e-mail account with your Internet Service Provider or your System Administrator. You'll need to have your user name and password, as well as the name of the incoming mail server and the outgoing mail server in order to complete the setup. If you have this information at hand, please follow the below instructions:

That's all you have to do to set up your account to receive e-mail! The E-mail account properties box has a host of other useful and timesaving options that you can set. For further information, please see the E-mail account properties section of this document.

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Composing an e-mail

Perhaps the most important thing about e-mail is the ability to compose one - after all, what good is being able to receive e-mail if you are yourself unable to exert the same kind of communication? The answer must be "very little". In order to be able to compose e-mail in Opera, you'll first have to follow the instructions for setting up an e-mail account, detailed directly above.

  1. Go to the Opera menu bar, the "E-mail" drop-down menu and "Compose", or use the hotkey CTRL + E, to open a new e-mail window in the Opera workspace.
  2. In the "To:" field, write the e-mail address of the person you wish to send the e-mail to, or, if the person you wish to send e-mail to is already in your Contact list, drag the entry to the "To:" field, and in the "Subject:" field, enter the subject of the e-mail, such as "Hi from Norway!", "The party on Saturday", "Opera 5 is finally released", or something that totally suits the theme of the e-mail.
    • If you wish to add an attachment, you should do so by clicking on the "Include attachment in e-mail" button. You will then be presented with the operating system's standard browsing box, with which you can browse your way to the file you wish to attach. When you find the file, highlight it and press the "Open" button to attach the file to the e-mail.
  3. In the main white box, also know as the slightly misleading "body" of the e-mail, write the letter, and when you're done, press the "Send e-mail" button to either put the e-mail in the queue, or send it off straight away.

Tip! You can both read and write e-mails while off-line and go on-line just to send and receive e-mail, which is a great time- and cost-saver.

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E-mail folders

Folders are the place where messages are logically stored on your hard drive. Each account has its own folder hierarchy, and folders can be named depending on their use, but any account has five standard folders:

Standard folders cannot be deleted.

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E-mail account properties

The account properties dialog box contains all the information about the account you're in. It is accessed through righ-clicking on the left hand side e-mail-pane and selecting "Properties" from the right-click menu.

Account

In this part of the e-mail account properties dialog box, you'll first be presented with basic setting in the "Basics" part of the "Account" tab:

Account name
The name of the account, which you choose.

Full name
Your full name which will appear as the sender to those receiving e-mail from you.

E-mail address
Your e-mail address.

Organization
The organization you belong to, if applicable.

Reply-To
If used, the address in this field will give the recipients of your e-mail this address in their "To:" field when replying to your e-mails.

Servers

The next tab, "Servers", contains all the information that is necessary in order to receive e-mail from the e-mail server. In order to receive e-mail, you'll have to configure both the "Incoming" and the "Outgoing" parts of this menu.

Incoming

The server for incoming mail is often referred to as the "POP" or the "Post Office Protocol" server, though it is not always of this type. Your Internet Service Provider or your System Administrator provides the information you need to have when configuring this part of the menu. You'll need to know the following:

Server
The URL to the server.

Type
The type of server this server is. This is set to POP by default, because this is the most likely type of server.

Port
The port number for the server. If you don't know this, leave it at its default "110".

Login
The Login or User name. Often, this is what is placed in front of the "@" sign in your e-mail address.

Password
The password for the account. Note that this is shown as stars when being typed for security reasons.

Outgoing

Conversely, the server for outgoing mail is often referred to as the "SMTP" or "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol" server, though, as with the server for incoming mail, this is not always the type it needs to be. Again, the information you need to have when configuring this part of the menu is provided to you by your Internet Service Provider or your System Administrator. You'll need to know the following:

Server
The URL to the server.

Type
The type of server this server is. This is set to SMTP by default, because this is the most likely type of server.

Port
The port number for the server. If you don't know this, leave it at its default "25".

Incoming

Opera is configured to perform a number of standard e-mail tasks when connecting to the e-mail server and downloading the e-mail. This part of the menu contains the information on this automation and also the settings for the password for connecting to the server.

Automation

The settings here are performed automatically when Opera connects to the incoming e-mail server to receive e-mail. They can be toggled on and off here.

Check for new e-mail every # minutes xx
The "xx" refers to the interval of time you can set Opera to check the server on. This is set to 0 (zero) by default, but if used should be set to anything between 5 minutes and half an hour, i.e. 30 minutes.

Delete e-mail from server after received
Checking this box will remove the received e-mail from the incoming e-mail server so as to not allow duplicates on the server.

Mark e-mail as read after # seconds xx
This is set to "5" by default, but you can change it to whatever you wish. Many users prefer in between 8 and 10 seconds.

Password

The password for the e-mail account is the most important piece of information you send over the wire to the e-mail server. You can set Opera to handle the password settings in these ways:

Outgoing

When sending e-mail, it is customary that the e-mailer will perform a number of actions with the e-mail going out. This is the place in which you can select the actions.

Formatting
This is the location of options for formatting outgoing e-mails.

Wrap lines on column xx
Opera will word-wrap at the length of the sentence as you define it in the box. It is set to 60 by default.

Archiving
Archiving outgoing e-mail is set here.

Put a copy of sent e-mail in the Sent folder
If enabled, this option will retain a copy of the e-mail you're sending out in the Outbox.

Queuing
Naturally, the internal Opera e-mailer will let you decide how to have the program handle the e-mails that have been written in your preferred way.

Queue e-mail, rather than sending immediately
Most people, be they private users or commercial users, prefer not to send the e-mail as soon as it is finished, but keep it in the outbox until it's suitable to send the e-mail.

Send queued e-mail after checking e-mail
If checked, this option will make Opera check for and cumulatively collect e-mail from the incoming e-mail server before sending the e-mail through the outgoing e-mail server.

Signature
A signature in e-mail terms refers to the small piece of text you place at the bottom of the e-mail as a small salute, or to make the recipient aware of the sender, or just simply putting your name as closure. Opera handles signatures as external files.

In this part of the menu, you can enter the path to the signature file manually in the box, or you can use the "Browse..." button to browse your way to it. Also note that you will have to check the box before attach signature to outgoing e-mail, in order for Opera to activate the option. If you do not already have a signature file, you could create one by clicking the "Edit" button, which will open a new text file for you to use.

Warnings

Actually, "warnings" are much better than their name implies, and very good to have, because they warn you when you are about to perform an action that may not be beneficial to you. If enabled, Opera will warn you on the below instances.

Deletion

The e-mailer will warn you before you delete these things:

Warn before deleting to Trash

By default, you'll be warned before deleting All e-mail, but you can also select this to apply Unread e-mail, Queued e-mail and E-mail with attachments, independent of or in together with the others.

Deleting items that are higher up in the hierarchy of the e-mail account will also give warning messages if set. Choose between:

  • Warn before deleting folders
  • Warn before emptying Trash
  • Warn before deleting account

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Folder properties

This dialog box contains a field in which you can enter the name of the e-mail folder. Press the "OK" button to confirm you choice of name.

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E-mail filters in Opera

Opera 5 contains an advanced facility for filtering and sorting e-mail, which is accessed through the "Filters..." option on the "E-mail" menu item on the menu bar. What follows is a brief explanation of the elements in this menu.

The panel on the left hand side in this menu contains the individual filters. In order to change the name of the default filter to what you want, use the text field directly below this panel to type in what you want the filter to be named. Move the mouse cursor to another field or press the "Tab" key in order to confirm the name change.

Match

The next field of note is "Match". This is the field in which the actual filtering is done. Like many other e-mail client filters, Opera's allow you to select how the filtering is to be performed. You can choose between the following:

Incoming
If this box is checked, the e-mail filtering will react to incoming e-mails.

Outgoing
If this box is checked, the e-mail filtering will react to outgoing e-mails.

Manual
If this box is checked, the e-mail filtering will not react automatically, but only when you initiate it yourself.

First rule

The following in this part of the menu is rather hard to explain, but in short it can be divided into three parts:

  1. Event-listener
    First up is the listener-event , or rather, the place in the e-mail that Opera is to check in order to have the e-mail be filtered.
    • To:
      The filter will react to the e-mail address(es) in the "To:" field of incoming e-mails.
    • From:
      The filter will react to the the e-mail address in the "From:" field of incoming e-mails.
    • Cc:
      The filter will react to the the e-mail address(Es) in the "Cc:" field of incoming e-mails.
    • Subject:
      The filter will react to text-strings located in the "Subject:" field of the incoming e-mails.
    • Reply-To:
      The filter will react to the the e-mail address in the "Reply-To:" field of incoming e-mails.
    • <Any header>
      The filter will react to text-strings located in any part of the "Header", i.e. the part of the e-mail that says where it's from, who it's from and to where and who it's going, amongst other things.
    • <Body>
      The filter will react to text-strings located in any part of the "Body", i.e. the part of the e-mail that contains the text message.
    • <Entire e-mail>
      The filter will react to text-strings located in any part of the e-mail
  2. Connection
    This drop-down menu is basically your selection about the connection between the event-listener and the text field. It can be summarized in this manner:
    • contains
      Setting this field to "contains" recognizes that the e-mail must contain the following
    • doesn't contain
      Setting this field to "doesn't contain" recognizes that the e-mail cannot contain the following
    • is
      If this field is set, the following is definite only for the previous option
    • is not
      If this field is set, the following is not definite for the previous option
    • starts with
      The previous option must start with the following
    • ends with
      The previous option must start with the following
  3. Text Field
    The third and last part is a text field in which to add the text-string that Opera will specifically search for in the fields you have defined above, the event listener or the connection.

Below this is another box which may be used to set up exceptions to the filter above. Please see the advanced filtering example below for more information on this option.

Exceptions

Second rule

The second rule, or rather the "exception rule", is set up in the exact same manner as the first rule. Please view the instructions above.

Action

This sets the action taken by Opera when an e-mail fits into the filter set above. The selection of actions that can be taken is this:

Move to folder
Type in the path or use the "..."-button to browse your way to the folder you wish the e-mail to be placed in.

Play sound
Type in the path to the sound you wish Opera to play when you receive an e-mail that fits with the above criteria, or use the "..."-button to browse your way through to it.

Mark as read
If this is checked, the e-mail filtered out will be marked as read.

As said, it can be hard to grasp the above simply by just reading it, so it is highly recommended that you see the filtering example or advanced filtering example below in order to make the most of filtering your Opera e-mail client.

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A simple filtering example

In this example, we will set up a filter that does the following two things:

  1. Filter work e-mails from Mr. Smith into a separate e-mail folder
  2. Play a sound when e-mails from Mr. Smith arrives

Go to the filter menu at "E-mail/Filters..." in the Opera menu bar and solve problem in the following manner:

  1. Click the "New" button to set up a new filter and type in the name of the filter in the box directly above this button, e.g. "Mr. Smith"

  2. This filter needs to be automatic on incoming e-mails, therefore it is necessary to check the "Incoming" box. Go to the first drop down box in the "Match" part of the menu.

  3. Here, select "From:" as the event-listener. Set the second drop down menu to "contains", because the "From:" field in the e-mail needs to contain Mr. Smith's e-mail address. Now, we type in the e-mail address of Mr. Smith in the text field after the second drop down box: mrsmith@work.com

  4. In the "Action" part of the menu, check the "Move to folder" box and use the "..."-button to browse your way to the folder you wish the e-mail to be placed in. In this example, we want Mr. Smith's e-mail to be placed in the folder that is called "Mr. Smith".

    (Tip! You may create a new e-mail folder at any time from this menu by clicking the "New folder" button. Note that if you do not select another folder than the top folder, i.e. the one with the account name, the folder will be placed in at the top level. Highlight other folders in order to create new folders there, and press the "New folder" button to bring up the Folder properties dialog box.)

  5. Also check the "Play sound" box and use the "..."-box to browse your way to the sound file you wish Opera to play when e-mails from Mr. Smith arrives, e.g. C:\Sounds\newmail.wav

Now, press the OK button on this menu to save your selection, and you're done!

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An advanced filtering example

This is a more advanced example than the one above, and we will set up a filter that does the following:

  1. Filter personal e-mails from Mr. Smith into a separate e-mail folder, unless the e-mail is about fishing
  2. Redirects the personal e-mails from Mr. Smith to Mrs. Smith
  3. Plays a sound when e-mails from Mr. Smith arrives
  4. Marks the e-mail as read

In order to accomplish this task, we go to the filter menu at "E-mail/Filters..." on the Opera menu bar.

  1. The first thing to do is click the "New" button to set up a new filter and type in the name of the filter in the box directly above this button, e.g. "Mr. Smith Personal"

  2. Now, make sure you check the "Incoming" box, because this filter should be automatic for incoming e-mails. Go to the first drop down box in the "Match" part of the menu.

  3. Here, select "From:" as the event-listener. Set the second drop down menu to "contains", because the "From:" field in the e-mail needs to contain Mr. Smith's e-mail address. Now, we type in the e-mail address of Mr. Smith in the text field after the second drop down box: mrsmith@home.com

  4. Directly below this, set the exception to be "unless", and move on to the next line. Select "<Entire e-mail>" as the event-listener and "contains" as the connection. Type fish in the text field. This will make the filter pick up and filter out e-mails that are from Mr. Smith's home e-mail address unless the word "fish" can be found anywhere in the e-mail.

  5. In the "Action" part of the menu, click the "Mark as read", to mark the e-mail as read when it is filtered. Check the "Move to folder" box and use the "..."-button to browse your way to the folder you wish the e-mail to be placed in. In this example, we want Mr. Smith's e-mail to be placed in the folder that is called "Mr. Smith home".

    (Tip! You may create a new e-mail folder at any time from this menu by clicking the "New folder" button. Note that if you do not select another folder than the top folder, i.e. the one with the account name, the folder will be placed in at the top level. Highlight other folders in order to create new folders there, and press the "New folder" button to bring up the Folder properties dialog box.)

    Also check the "Play sound" box and use the "..."-box to browse your way to the sound file you wish Opera to play when e-mails from Mr. Smith arrives, e.g. C:\Sounds\newmail.wav

  6. The last step is to check the "Redirect" box and type in the e-mail address for Mrs. Smith in the box next to it, e.g. mrssmith@home.com. This will automatically create a redirect of the e-mail and send it off to Mrs. Smith, either straight away, or queue it for later send.

Now, press the OK button on this menu to save your selection, and you're done!

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Finding e-mail in Opera

Located on the "E-mail" menu is the "Find..." command, which, once pressed, will take you to the Opera's internal e-mail client's "Find e-mail" menu.

The dialog is constructed in the following way:

Folders to search
On the left hand side, you have a listing of the folders you can search in the current e-mail account. The default folders are always listed, alternatively with sub-folders which can be opened for the search.

Find
To the immediate right of the "Folders to search" part of the dialog, you have the search box itself. This is where you enter what you wish to search for.

Options
You can search with the following options enabled at will:

  • Match whole word only
    Will only find the search word if it is a self-contained word. E.g. searching for story will not find history, because the "story" part is not a self-contained word.
  • Match case
    The case of the word that is to be found must match the case you have entered it in. Using this option, e-mail is not the same as E-Mail, and thus not found.
  • Search sub-folders
    Sub-folders are excluded from the default setting, but may be enabled for search if you wish to do so, by checking this box.

Buttons
There are two buttons, "Find" and "Pause", which will initiate and pause the search for the e-mail(s) containing the search word respectively.

If the search is successful, you will see the e-mails that contain the word or phrase you were searching for in the fields below the searching options. In this field, you may highlight an e-mail message to have it be displayed in the bottom most field in this screen.

You may sort e-mails in the normal way in this field, by priority "!", attachments "@", who it's from, what date it was received, its size, its subject and the folder in which it resides.

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Importing e-mail from Eudora to Opera

If you are using Qualcomm's Eudora and wish to use an account in the Opera e-mailer, you may do so without having to "lose" all the e-mail in your Eudora, as Opera is fully able to import e-mail from Eudora to its own internal e-mail client.

In order to import e-mail from an external e-mail application into Opera, please go to "E-mail/Import..." on your menu bar. Here, you'll see this:

Program path
The program path part of the menu will detail where you have got your Eudora installed, if applicable. The field will contain references to the Eudora copy and the individual accounts, for you to select from. Highlight any one of the ones listed - if you only have one account in Eudora, you'll only be presented with one selection, mind you - and directly below the field, you'll see the path to the Eudora directory.

If the path displayed is not correct, you may use the "..."-button to bring up the operating system's standard browsing window, with which you can browse your way to the correct directory.

Account
In this section of the menu, Opera can either be set to use one of its existing e-mail accounts, or you can create a new account on your system which will be filled with the e-mail from the existing Eudora account.

  • Create new
    If you select to create a new account, you may select to import the following things from the highlighted Eudora account into Opera:
    • Import account settings
      If checked, the new e-mail account in Opera will import the account settings as far as they are compatible.
    • Import e-mail
      This option will import the e-mail from the Eudora account into the new Opera account.
    • Import Contacts
      Your existing Eudora contacts may be imported into Opera's new account if you enable this option.
  • Existing
    If you select to use an existing account, you may select to import the following things from the highlighted Eudora account into Opera:
    • Import e-mail
      This option will import the e-mail from the Eudora account into the existing Opera account.
    • Import Contacts
      Your existing Eudora contacts may be imported into the existing Opera account if you enable this option.

If you select to use an existing account, Opera will automatically import e-mail into your active Opera e-mail account, i.e. the account that's listed under "File/Preferences", "E-mail" in the "Use Opera account" field, whereas if you select to create a new account, Opera will make one for you, naming it "Eudora Import" by default, although you can naturally change the name as well as everything else by editing its properties.

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External e-mail clients

These are the external e-mail clients that need specific command line parameters in order to be able to work properly with Opera. Click on the name to be taken to the instructions on that particular e-mail client.

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Agent

The [URL] section of the ".ini" file mostly sets how Agent will handle URLs in itself. Actually the settings made under "Options/General Preferences/URL Types" are not stored in the ".ini" file, but in another file named "urltype.dat", like this:

Type: http
Name: Hypertext Transfer Protocol
enable: 1
UseHttp: 1
RemovePrefix: 1
Mode: 1
App: C:\OPERA\OPERA.EXE C:\OPERA\cityweb.ini
UseDde: 1
DdeMethod: 1
DdeApp: Opera
DdeTopic: WWW_OpenURL
DdeMsg: "%1"

See Agent's help file for an explanation of entries in the ".ini" file.

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Microsoft Internet Mail

Go to Opera's "File/Preferences", "E-mail" and add this line to the "Use external client" field:

C:\WIN95\EXPLORER.EXE /root,C:\WIN95\Internet Mail.{89292102-4755-11cf-9DC2-00AA006C2B84}

Use your own directory settings.

You can also try this one (Assuming you have Windows 95 installed in C:\WINDOWS):

C:\WINDOWS\Rundll32.exe url.dll,MailToProtocolHandler

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Netscape Messenger

If you use Netscape Messenger as your e-mail client, you must enter a special command line tags after the ".exe" files. This tags is:

mailto:%

The correct path should then look something like this:

C:\Program Files\Netscape\Communicator\Program\netscape.exe mailto:%

This will insert the e-mail address into the "To" field in your "Compose message" function in Netscape Messenger. Alternatively, you may also add the parameter -mail to the equation, which will not only bring up an e-mail compose window, but the entire Netscape Messenger client.

Tip! If you do not know the path to your Netscape Messenger, check the "Properties" of the path to Netscape Messenger on your "Start" menu.

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Outlook Express

If you use Outlook Express as your e-mail client, you must enter a special command line tags after the ".exe" files. This tags is:

/mailurl:mailto:%

The correct path should then look something like this:

C:\Program Files\Outlook Express\msimn.exe /mailurl:mailto:%

This will insert the e-mail address into the "To" field in your "Compose message" function in Outlook Express. Note that you must modify the path if it's not the path you've got on your system.

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Outlook 97/Outlook 98/Outlook 2000

If you use Outlook 97, Outlook 98 or Outlook 2000 as your e-mail client, you must enter a special command line tags after the ".exe" files. This tags is:

/c ipm.note /m

The correct path should then look something like this:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Outlook.exe /c ipm.note /m

This will insert the e-mail address into the "To" field in your "Compose message" function in Outlook 97/Outlook 98. Note that you must modify the path if it's not the path you've got on your system.

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Pegasus Mail

If you use Pegasus as your e-mail client, you must enter a special command line parameter after the ".exe" files. These parameters should be:

-T %t -S %s

The correct path should then look something like this:

C:\Program Files\PMAIL\winpm-32.exe -T %t -S %s

Note! In order to prevent Pegasus crashing when Opera initiates the e-mail client while it's already running, you must enable the setting "Replace missing parameter with a space".

This will insert the e-mail address into the "To" field in a new e-mail in your Pegasus, as well as the subject line (if any). Note that you must modify the path if it's not the path you've got on your system.

Disclaimer: We cannot guarantee that the instructions in these documents will work on every computer and every platform. Please inform us if you have problems with Opera, but please, first check our online support section, as this section is updated on a regular basis with information about the Opera Browser.

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