If you have trouble typing messages on your cell phone or simply don't want to pay for text messaging, there is a simple and free alternative: you can send a text message to any cell phone on most carriers, including O2, from your personal e-mail. O2 provides every customer with an e-mail address that is linked to their text-messaging system. Your e-mail address will always be your entire phone number followed by "@mmail.co.uk". If you send an e-mail to this address, it will appear on your cell phone as a text message. If you send a text message from your cell phone to an actual e-mail address, the recipient will see this address in their inbox and can respond to it. This allows you to type on a real keyboard rather than a tiny cell phone keypad--and, best of all, it costs nothing.

  • If you have trouble typing messages on your cell phone or simply don't want to pay for text messaging, there is a simple and free alternative: you can send a text message to any cell phone on most carriers, including O2, from your personal e-mail.

Open your e-mail and compose a new message.

Enter "xxxxxxxxx@mmail.co.uk" in the "To:" field. Replace the "x's" with the full telephone number that you would like to receive the message. Do not include any spaces, dashes or parentheses--only enter the digits.

  • Enter "xxxxxxxxx@mmail.co.uk" in the "To:" field.
  • Replace the "x's" with the full telephone number that you would like to receive the message.

Enter a subject if you would like to include one.

Enter your message in the body of the email. This will be the body of the text message. When you are finished, click "Send" to send your message.

TIP

If the user replies to the text message, their reply will be delivered to your e-mail address. Reply just as you would reply to an e-mail. Keep in mind that there is typically a limit to the number of characters that can be sent in each message. Longer messages will be delivered, but they will be broken up into multiple text messages. The limit will be anywhere from 140-160 characters, including spaces.