How to fix quota problems with Thunderbird (or Outlook or Eudora or whatever) with IMAP

This page explains how to use Thunderbird or another personal computer email program that's set up to use IMAP to fix quota problems. The instructions are in this page are specifically for Thunderbird, but you should do the same things with any personal computer email program set up to use IMAP.

Don't use IMAP? These instructions are also useful for you if you use POP. POP Inboxes can get messed up, particularly if you use POP's Leave Mail on Server option (which the ACCC does not recommend). If you have downloaded your Inbox and you still have email on the server, then you will have to have to use IMAP to fix the Inbox. You might want to use WebMail or pine, which use IMAP and which you don't have to set up. But also consider switching your personal computer email program(s) to use IMAP permanently; it's a good thing. (The ACCC recommends that everyone use IMAP. Want to know why? See Converting to IMAP below. And for a complete discussion of the two protocols, including the advantages and disadvantages of each, see IMAP: What's New in Electronic Mail, not that IMAP's is new anymore.)

This page explains how to set up Eudora to use IMAP, how to convert from POP to IMAP, and introduces a few of the quirks of using Eudora with IMAP.

However, if you only read email from one secure location, and have a reasonably fast Internet connection, and will never use WebMail to read your email when you are away from your one PC or Mac, then you can consider using POP, the older email protocol. Configuring Eudora for POP has instructions for configuring Eudora for POP.

Don't know whether you use IMAP? The Email Account Diagnostics Tool Web Page will tell you whether you used POP or IMAP most recently. But that doesn't answer the entire question, nor can we answer the entire question for you. But there's more information in the ACCC Web pages on how to fix email quota problems on your particular ACCC email server:

• Managing Your mailserv Email Account: Which email applies to your mailserv quota POP vs. IMAP.

For more information about using Thunderbird, Eudora, or other email programs, see the ACCC Email Web home page.

Note on mail folders and mailboxes: Some email programs and tools talk about "mail folders" and others talk about "email mailboxes" -- they are exactly the same thing. Thunderbird uses Folders, but folders are also the things that are used to hold groups of mailboxes, so we will use mailboxes mainly.

1. If you don't have antivirus software with real time file protection running, download and install Symantec AntiVirus and make sure it's running and that it's scanning all file types.
   
   
2. If you'd like to download copies of your IMAP mailboxes to your personal computer, including your Inbox, use the ACCC's email mailbox download and delete Web tool to download and delete entire mailboxes from the server; see Downloading or Deleting Entire Mailboxes with the ACCC Email Accounts Diagnostics Page.
   
   
3. Open Thunderbird.
   
   
4. Take care of the email in your Inbox:
   
   
   
   1. Click once on Inbox under the name of your ACCC account in the Thunderbird All Folders tab to open your Inbox message list. The default name in Thunderbird of your ACCC account will be your netid @uic.edu, so for Ada Byron, it is adabyron@uic.edu. (See in figure 1.)
      
      
   2. Because you are using IMAP, all the messages listed in the Inbox message index are on the server that your email account is on. 
      
      
   3. Click on the attachment icon in the message index headers -- in Thunderbird, it looks like a paperclip. (See figure 1.) The messages with attachments will be at the top of the index.
      
      
   4. For each message with an attachment:
      1. If and only if you know for sure that the person sending you the attachment meant to send it to you (and it's not obsessive to ask them) and if and only if you want to keep the attachment, open the email message, point your mouse cursor to the attachment's name, right-click (Option-click on the Mac) on the attachment name, and select whichever attachment save option from the right-click menu is best for that attachment. Don't double-click on the attachment name. You're much less likely to have virus/worm problems if you use the right-click menu.
         
         
      2. If you want to keep the text of the message on the server, forward the message to yourself without the attachment. (Select Message -> Forward or click the Forward icon, address the forwarded message to yourself, delete the attachment name(s) from the Attachments box, then click Send to send the message.)
      3. Delete all messages with attachments.
         
         
   5. Click on Size in the message index headers. Again, the largest messages will be at the top of the message index. (See figure 1.)
      
      
   6. Delete any messages that you don't need any more, starting with the largest.
      
      
   7. Move the messages that you want to keep to a local mailbox -- local mailboxes live on your personal computer and are listed below Local Folders in the All Folders tab (see figure 2). You can have as much email in local mailboxes as you have disk space on your personal computer to hold it without it affecting your mailserv quota.
      1. To create additional local mailboxes, in the All Folders tab, right-click (Option-click on the Mac) on Local Folders (at the bottom), select New Folder..., type a name for the mailbox in the box provided, and click OK.
         
      2. Then you can drag-and-drop messages from your Inbox or another IMAP mailboxes into these local mailboxes to decrease your quota on the server. (Or you can upload from the local folders to the server, but that won't help your quota any.)
         
         
   8. Actually delete the messages you've deleted. Until you take this step, the messages that you deleted will still be on the server, and will still apply to your server quota. How will you delete the messages? It depends on the deletion method you selected on the Server Settings option panel when you set Thunderbird up. To find out what that is: click on the account name (adabyron@uic.edu for Ada) -> click View settings for this account -> then click Server Settings on the left.
      
      
      
      • If you selected Mark it as deleted from the When I delete a message dropdown list, select File -> Compact Folders in Thunderbird to delete the messages you've deleted, all at once, from all mailboxes; it doesn't matter what mailbox you have open.
        
        
      • If you kept the default Move it to the trash folder, then you have already moved the messages out of your Inbox and other folders, but they were moved to your Trash mailbox on the server, so you haven't actually solved your quota problems yet. In Thunderbird, in the All Folders tab, right-click (Option-click on the Mac) on the name of the Trash folder in your ACCC account, and select Empty Trash from the right-click menu.
        
        
      • There is a third When I delete a message dropdown list option, Remove it immediately. I don't suggest using it, because it doesn't give you the chance to undelete anything you deleted by accident. If you do use it, the first delete is all you need to delete a message from the server.
        
        
        
5. Repeat step 4 for all your IMAP mailboxes -- those listed under the name of of your ACCC account in the All Folders tab (see figure 2). See How to remove messages from your other IMAP mailboxes for some additional information,.
   • If your ACCC email account is on mailserv, pruning your other IMAP mailboxes will help you manage your mailserv quota.
   • If your ACCC email account is on icarus or tigger, pruning your other IMAP mailboxes will help you manage your disk quota.
     
     
6. Be sure to check your quota again when you're finished to make sure you're really back under your quota.

Even if you normally use POP, you will have a spam folder on the server, and you may have other mailboxes on the server if you have used WebMail.

• On mailserv, the space taken up by all messages in all your IMAP mailboxes on the server -- those mailboxes listed under yournetid@uic.edu in the All Folders tab (see figure 2) -- apply to your single mailserv quota. So to get and keep yourself under your mailserv quota, it is important to repeat the steps in How to remove messages from your Inbox for all your IMAP mailboxes.
  
  
• On tigger and icarus, the space taken up by the messages in all your IMAP mailboxes on the server other than the Inbox -- those mailboxes listed under Inbox under yournetid@uic.edu in the All Folders tab (see figure 2) -- apply to your disk space quota. This is different from your Inbox quota, but it is also a quota you need to keep below. So it it is also important to repeat the steps in How to remove messages from your Inbox for all your IMAP mailboxes for an icarus or tigger account.

First, make sure you have the correct, current mailbox list:

1. Right-click (Option-click on Macs) the name of the your ACCC account in the All Folders tab, adabyron@uic.edu for Ada Byron, and select Subscribe... from the right-click menu. This opens a list of your email files on the server.
2. If you have a folder containing mailboxes, it will have an arrow head pointing to it on the left side of the list. Click on the arrowhead to point it down to expand the folder.
   
3. Make sure there is a check on the left after everything that is a mailbox.
4. Click Subscribe if you've checked any new mailboxes. Click OK.

If you do your ACCC email on multiple personal computers, particularly if you use POP with Leave Mail on Server, you should convert all your email programs -- Thunderbird, Eudora, or Outlook or whatever -- on every machine you use to read your email, to use IMAP. (WebMail and pine already use IMAP.) IMAP is designed for the situation where you read your email from multiple locations. You keep your email for you on a central server, that we back up for you, and is always available, regardless of where you are. Pretty nice, yes?

Converting from POP to IMAP:

• There doesn't appear to be any way to convert an existing Thunderbird account from POP to IMAP. You have to delete the account and recreate it as an IMAP account. Creating a Thunderbird account is easy; see the Thunderbird Users Guide.
  
  
• For complete, step-by-step instructions on how to convert Eudora to using IMAP, see The Eudora User's Guide.
  
  
• The ACCC has info on how to set up lots of email programs to use ACCC email accounts in these pages: Using mail.uic.edu for Incoming email and Using mail.uic.edu for Outgoing email. One thing that is left out from these pages setting the IMAP prefix or IMAP server directory, which you will want to do. If you can't find the place to enter this for your email program, send email to consult@uic.edu; we might be able to help you with it.
  The ACCC tells people to use: /mail
  and that does work for Thunderbird, but the old-fashioned: ~/mail/
  works much better for Thunderbird.

After you convert to IMAP, follow the instructions above, How to remove messages from your Inbox, to clean up your Inbox and other IMAP mailboxes.

While IMAP has other features that you might want to look into that require you to leave important messages on the server (see IMAP: What's New in Electronic Mail), you can choose to use your email program with IMAP in almost exactly the same way as you use it with POP.

But using IMAP is different.

There's a difference in how you delete messages.

Deleting Email is likely to be a two step process -- making the file for deletion and deleting it. Oftentimes, marking it means moving it to a Trash mailbox, which is often on the server. Sometimes it's marking the file as deleted and leaving it in the directory it was in. The second step is either deleting the files in the Trash directory, or purging the files marked for deletion. Until you take the second step, you haven't actually deleted the message from the server.

So do not forget to empty your Trash mailbox if you use one, or to delete your deleted messages if that's what you do.

• In most email programs, right-click on the name of the Trash mailbox; there will be an option to Empty the Trash in the right-click menu.
• Deleting messages marked for deletion varies depending on what email program you are using. In Thunderbird, selecting File > Compact Folders will delete the messages that are marked for deletion, in all your IMAP mailboxes.

There's a difference in how you use your Inbox.

This difference you probably won't notice, and could cause you quota problems. When you convert to using IMAP you have to get into the habit of moving email messages that you want to keep indefinitely into local mailboxes and then deleting them from your Inbox.

When you use Thunderbird or another personal computer email program with POP, all your new incoming email is downloaded to your personal computer and put in a local mailbox that lives on your personal computer, your Inbox mailbox, and it is deleted immediately from the server. (Unless you use Leave Mail on Server, that is, which we strongly discourage.) Thus the only email that's in your Inbox on the server -- or that's on the server at all -- at any particular time should be whatever new incoming email you've received since the last time you downloaded your email. The important part is that the mail in your Inbox mailbox on your personal computer doesn't take up space in your server email quotas. So when you use POP you can let your Inbox mailbox -- which is on your own personal computer -- get as big as you can stand and never have any server quota problems, because none of the mail in it is on the server.

When you use Thunderbird or anther personal computer email program with IMAP, however, the mail in your Inbox mailbox or any other mailbox listed under your ACCC account mailbox stays on the server, taking up your ACCC quota(s), even after you read it. And it will stay on the server, taking up space in your quota, until you delete it, at which point it is also deleted from your Inbox mailbox on your personal computer.

• So you can't let your Inbox or any other mailboxes on the server get too big when you're using IMAP.
• And you need to copy any email that's in a mailbox on the server to a local mailbox before you delete it on the server if you want to keep a copy if it.

Using IMAP like you used POP

Normally when you use IMAP, your email stays on the server until you move it off or delete it. That's very un-POP-like. But you can make your email program with IMAP work functionally the same as it did with POP, if you want to. Just make a filter to move the new incoming messages that come into your Inbox out of the Inbox on the server and into a mailbox that you create in your Local Folders account.

Here is how to do it in Thunderbird:

1. Create a folder under Local Folders to hold the incoming messages. Don't call it Inbox like I did; if you do, Thunderbird won't let you rename it or delete it. I think UIC Inbox would be better.
2. Highlight the Inbox on your ACCC email account in the All Folders tab.
3. Tools -> Message Filters
4. New...
5. Click the Match all messages radio button at the top.
   
   
6. At the bottom, select Move Message to for the action, and select the Local Folder mailbox that you created from the list of folders.
7. Give the filter a name, and click OK.
8. You might want to run the new filter on the adabyron@uic.edu Inbox to download the messages that are in it now.
   
9. If your Inbox is empty when you look at it using IMAP, then it really is empty.