How to send a telex By Susan Tucker

A N E X C I T I N G fea ture for TechCentral users is the abili- ty to send telex messages to

any registered domestic or interna- tional telex device. Here's how to do it: When you create a Telex Direct Delivery message, you must include certain information in the address field, which is called the " T o " field. This information includes the recipi- ent's full name, area code, telex net- work address, and a string of charac- ters called "answerback."

1. Recipient's full name. It is im- portant to include the full name of the person to whom you are sending the telex. The name can be no longer than 20 characters and cannot con- tain any commas.

2. Area code. In the telex system, each area code corresponds to a specific country and not to the tele- phone area code of a city or state in the U.S. The code is two or three digits and is an essential part of the address. You may obtain a list of country codes by entering "Com- pose Countrycode" at the "Com- mand?" prompt.

3. Telex network address. The Tel- ex network address may be from three to nine numeric characters and must be preceded by the abbrevia- tion " T L X . " All hyphens and blanks are ignored. Please note: All addresses for Western Union mes- sages must begin with a zero.

4. Answerback. The answerback feature is a string of characters by which the telex device is identified.

Although the answerback is option- al, it is highly advisable that you include it. The answerback deter- mines whether your message is sent to the appropriate telex machine. The answerback response is preced- ed by the abbreviation " A N S . " You may obtain specific country codes, telex network addresses, and ans- werbacks from published telex di- rectories.

You can send the same message to any number of registered Telemail addresses, telex devices, or other direct-delivery devices. In sending telex messages, you have a variety of special-delivery options, although you cannot specify the following ones: pr ivate (PRI), regis tered (REG), or urgent (URG). You also can specify the return-receipt (REC) option for confirmation of delivery. Here's an example of the " T o " field for sending a message to a telex device:

TO: John Smith (AC:23, TLX:27354, ANS:TECH) (REC).

You can obtain s tep-by-s tep prompting for addressing a telex di- rect-delivery message by typing in COMPOSE TELEX.MESSAGE at the "Command?" prompt. For writ- ing the actual text of the message, there are certain restrictions:

• When you create a message, some telex devices are restricted to 64 characters per line.

• Telex messages are limited to 2,159 lines.

• You may not use the character combinations NNNNN (either up-

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per or lower case) or L L L L L (either upper or lower case).

• Certain characters are convert- ed when they are delivered to a telex device. Everything is capitalized, for example, and certain characters, such as ampersands, semicolons, plus and minus signs, and exclama- tion marks are replaced by different characters.

If your Telex message cannot be delivered for any reason, the system will inform you by generating a non- delivery notice. In most cases, the notice will indicate why the message was not delivered. Less frequently, you will be advised to contact Tele- mail Customer Service for an expla- nation.

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