Bitcoin Forum

So I know this question has probably been posted a million times, so I apologize in advance.  I received the email from bitcoin explaining that my funds were sent but when I pull up my bitcoin software, I get the blank program with my address and it says no transactions.  I emailed support to figure out what I'm doing wrong and the rep asked if I'd downloaded the blocks.  I didn't know I needed to do anything like this and even though I consider myself good with a computer this has me thrown for a loop.  I can pull up the email to view my transaction and it says I have the requested amount of bitcoin and it specifically says "address: received."  I'm so lost...again, I apologize for the "noobiness" of my post, but I'm in dire need of some help.  Can someone please explain to me what I'm supposed to do from here, and preferably in layman's terms?  I appreciate it!

Leave the client running. Down there in the status bar there should be a number slowly going up. These are the blocks being downloaded. By now it'll probably take a day or so of continuous running of the client for all of them to arrive. When they are all there, your transaction should be there too.

if you don't want to download the blocks, you can use a lightweight wallet. see http://ecdsa.org/electrum/

Here's a Bitcoin client screenshot:

https://mineco.in/images/bitcoin_example.png?1308221308

See on the bottom where it says 24613 blocks? You will have to wait until your Bitcoin says 152946 blocks or more; it downloads those transaction blocks over the network from others running Bitcoin, and needs to get them all before it shows your current balance.

If you can't wait, check this useful thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=51456.0) that is right below yours in the newbie forum.

P.S. you didn't receive an email from "bitcoin". Bitcoin has no company, no central organization, Bitcoin is all of us. You bought bitcoins from an exchange perhaps?

Why does noob double-post the same question, and then never log in again...?

For the same reason they admit the same question they are asking must have been asked a million times, but they can't be bothered to search for even one of those previous answers.