editing posts: inserting e-mail address or hyper-link, italics and bold

I just re-loaded WordPress last night, after I could not recover from an accidental file deletion. This pertinent only because I remember being able to, while composing and editing posts, to work in the visual window to add italics and embolden text. Now I can’t get the visual window to give me anything.

As well, I’d like to add an e-mail address in a page, and I can’t find a way to do that and I don’t know how to code it myself.

any hints?

thanks.

md