Send Messages
This command only appears when you are viewing your outbox. Assumed you have unsent messages stored, the outbox shows up when you open Xnews. Now you can choose "Send Messages" to spread them to the world.

Edit Message
This command also only appears when you are viewing your outbox. When you decide to alter your message before sending you can edit it with this command

 Post to Newsgroup
This is what you normally choose to post a message. Same as the equivalent under "Group" except the fact that this one will only post to the currently opened group.

Follow-Up to Newsgroup
Opens the edit window to let you formulate an answer which will be posted in the newsgroup(s) which are defined by the previous poster. Note that if you are responding to a message which has set a "FollowUp-To: poster" this will make this command behave like a "Reply by Mail". Accessible only when you are viewing an article.
You can individualize the Attribution Line for Following up in "Special | Setup - Compose".

Reply by Mail
Opens the edit window to let you formulate an answer which will be sent as e-mail. The "To:" -field is active and filled with the content of the messages "Reply-To"-Header (if present) or the "From:"-header's e-mail address. Accessible only when you are viewing an article.
You can individualize the Attribution Line for replying by mail in "Special | Setup - Compose".

Follow-Up and Mail Reply
Combines the both above, see there. Accessible only when you are viewing an article.

Forward by Mail
Opens the edit window to let you formulate an e-mail. The posters message is quoted and enclosed in "-= BEGIN forwarded message =-" and "-= END forwarded message =-". The cursor is moved to the empty "To:" -field. Accessible only when you are viewing an article.
You can individualize the Attribution Line for Forwading in "Special | Setup - Compose".

Cancel Message
Sends a control message asking your server to delete your posted article from it's database. The success of Cancelling depends on the server since some of them don't allow cancelling.

Supersede
Sends a control message asking your server to delete your posted article from it's database and to replace it with the current article. This works only when that article is opened in the article viewer. Supersede opens the edit window to let you made your changes. Afterwards send it like a normal message.
Check if you newsserver supports cancelling; if it doesn't, superseding won't make any sense.

(De)Queue
To decode/save/transfer several articles at once you have to first put them in a queue. You do this with this toggle. When an article has been put in the queue it has got a queue number which you can see in the articles list, column "Q". Any actions on the queue will take place in order of these numbers (ascending).

Archive -> [Archive-Folder]
You can transfer articles manually to folders (see "Transfer" for this) or use this command. You can define a default folder where all articles should be transferred to when you use this command or click the archive button. You can set the name of that folder of your own in Xnews.ini under the [Misc] section: Archive=[folder name]. Alternatively you can set Archive=* to let Xnews create and name a folder for each group.
Drive this to perfection by overriding it in your groups.ini. Define sections like
    [security]
    archive=Security-Related
which will archive all groups with the string "security" in their names per default to your archive "Security-Related" when you hit the corresponding button or choose "Archive Security-Related". That folder will be created if it doesn't exist.

Q-Archive -> [Queue-Folder]
This works like the "Archive [Archive-Folder]" command (see above) with the only difference that you aren't transferring whole articles but only headers. The default Queue-name is "_Queue" (note the underscore which is not a necessary part but a good idea to seperate queue-folders from archive folders). You can adapt the name in Xnews.ini under the [Misc] section.

Decode
In order to save an attachment choose "Decode" (or press F4). You will be prompted for a directory to save to. Click ok and that's it. If you first put a couple of messages in the queue you can decode them in one turn.

Save As...
Save the article you are viewing as a file in Plain Text, Rich-Text-Format or HTML.

Fetch to Storage
Highlight a bunch of articles and choose "Fetch to Storage". What happens? Xnews leeches these articles to a temporary file (in other words: the articles are pre-loaded into the cache). That means, if you have a slow connection you can preselect the articles you want to read, fetch them to storage while you are having a coffee and read them later without a delay.
The only minus I found with that is that the temporary file will cease to exist when you leave the group (that's why it's called "temporary"). That means that one unwary ESC is enough to send all articles to nirvana and you have to start over again to get them from the slow server. To avoid that you can create a temp-folder and transfer the articles using "Transfer -->[Folder]" instead of fetching them to storage. After reading the articles just purge the folder.

Print
"Print" prints the opened article.

 Get Parent
Opens the parent-message (the one the opened posting is an answer to). If you notice that the whole thread draws your attention, try "Article | Reconstruct Thread" to rebuild the whole thread-tree.

Reconstruct Thread
If you are pointed to an article in the middle of a thread and want to see how the discussion developed until this message, Xnews can reconstruct the thread with this command out of given header information. Since this command operates with an XPAT search on references, "Reconstruct Thread" won't work if your ISPs server doesn't support XPAT.

Killfile this poster (*plonk*)
Dropping a poster to your Plonk File means that you don't want to see any more messages from this special user. You can limit the time period (in days) when this ban will expire.
<manual>The rationale is that it's usually pointless to have someone permanently in your plonk file. Either the bozo will go away by himself, or be driven off the newsgroup, or most likely, just change his name and/or email. So it's a good idea to specify an expiry period (remember, the more entries in the plonk file, the longer it takes the program to process it). If you really want the name to stay permanently, set expiry period to zero.</manual>.
For more exact definitions who and what to kill (=score down to -9999) use the Score File. That means instead of pressing 'k' to plonk the poster, press 's' (or whatever key you assigned this function to) to Article | Add to Score File.

Add to score file
Scoring means giving points to a message depending on several criteria. On basis of these points you can sort the messages in a group, flag them as important or totally blind them out. The Xnews scoring-system is mighty and can be set and tuned by editing the score.ini. If you want quick insertion use this "Add to score file" as a GUI for the score-file.
For further reference you'll find a section in the manual (16. Score File). Make sure to also read the file scoring.txt in your Xnews directory.