Managing Your mailserv Email Account

Chances are you came to this page because you got a message from the ACCC saying that you either have or almost have too much email on the server on your mailserv email account. This Web page explains what these warning messages mean and how to reduce the amount of mail you have on the server so you won't have problems in the future.

Depending on how you do your email, fixing your email quota problem might be as simple as just logging in and downloading your new incoming messages. (See (2) Haven't checked your email in a while? Log in and take care of your new incoming email below.)

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. We use "mailboxes" on this Web page because that's what Eudora calls them. (Even though the ACCC Email Acc ount Diagnostics Web pages uses folder.)

On mailserv there is only one quota, which applies to the space take up by all your files -- your email Inbox where new incoming email is placed, your IMAP mailboxes -- the other mailboxes that you keep on mailserv -- and all other files you might have on mailserv.

The mailserv disk allotments are given in Email Space limits for ACCC Servers.

You will receive warning email messages as the total size of your Inbox, your IMAP mailboxes, and all the other files you have on mailserv approaches your mailserv quota. You must take these warning email messages seriously; the consequence for reaching your mailserv hard quota is that new incoming email messages addressed to your account will be "bounced" -- returned to their sender with an error message that says that your account is over quota. Resumption of the delivery of new incoming email is automatic, however, and occurs as soon as you go below your quota.

When might you go over your quotas?

• If you have just a few really large email messages -- ones with attachments that you either don't need or that you have already downloaded. Take care of these and you should be OK. (One average-sized attachment is about the same size as 10 average-sized email messages.)
• If you use POP* and haven't read your email in long while, or if you use Leave Mail on Server (don't -- the ACCC doesn't support LMOS) and don't have it set up to automatically delete the messages after a certain period of time.
• If you use IMAP* and you leave too much email in your Inbox or other mailboxes on the server.

*POP and IMAP are two different ways that email programs use to manage email that's on a remote server such as mailserv. If you use Eudora or another personal computer email program and you've never heard of POP or IMAP, then you probably use POP -- it's generally their default. If you use WebMail or pine, then you use IMAP. See Do you use POP or IMAP for more information.

The ACCC recommends that you use IMAP.

Why does it matter whether you do? Only email that is on the server -- mailserv, in this case -- applies to your mailserv quota. More specifically, total space taken by your Inbox and your other mailboxes on mailserv, applies to your mailserv quota.

Exactly which email is "on the server" depends on how you do email -- do you use POP or IMAP? POP and IMAP are two different ways that email programs use to manage email that's on a remote server such as icarus, mailserv, or tigger.

POP is the older of the two protocols. POP was designed to be used when you always read your email from one computer, using one email program, and you can use it if that is how you do email.

IMAP, on the other hand, was designed to be used when you want to read your email from multiple machines, using different programs if you want. If this is how you want to do email, then you should use IMAP. When you use IMAP, it doesn't matter how many machines or how many different programs or machines you use. The ACCC recommends that you use IMAP for its flexibility.

If you don't know whether you use POP or IMAP, the ACCC Email Account Diagnostics Web page will tell you what you used last.

Figure 1: Ada last used IMAP on both her icarus and mailserv accounts. See the Mail last accessed line below the table. (Though she can't check her mail on her icarus account except with pine and WebMail anymore; see Strong Security for Email at UIC: mail.uic.edu and SSL. That is why she used the Move to mailserv utility to forward her icarus email to mailserv.) This tool is described in Using the ACCC Email Diagnostics Tool.

Do you use pine on icarus or tigger to read your email? The Email Account Diagnostics Web page does not know when you use pine, but it is IMAP-compatible.

ACCC Email Acccount Diagnostics Web page will also allow you to unstick a stuck POP or IMAP session, if yours is stuck.

When it comes to your quota, you only have to consider the email messages and attachments that are on the server, in this case mailserv. All mailboxes on mailserv apply to the mailserv quota.

• Regardless of whether you use POP or IMAP, you have at least three mailboxes on the server:
  • Two mailbox that you use all the time:
    • Your Spam mailbox, where your automatic ACCC antispam filter puts your incoming messages that were identified as spam. You can manage the messages in your Spam mailbox from the spam notification email that you will receive regularly, so you do not have to worry about its being on the server if you use POP.
    • Your Inbox (Eudora ) or INBOX folder (WebMail or pine).
    • The space taken up by both of these mailboxes applies to your mailserv quota.
  • The third mailbox is your reportspam mailbox. The ACCC asks that you move the email messages that you *receive in your inbox* that are spam -- the ones that the ACCC spam filtering misses -- into your reportspam mailboxes. We have a program that will take the email from your reportspam mailbox every few hours and uses these messages to update our anti-spam filters. Nothing stays in your reportspam mailbox for very long, but it does apply to your mailserv quota while it is there.
    
    
• If you use Eudora (or another personal computer email program) with POP or if you don't know whether you use POP or IMAP, which means you most likely use POP:
  • If you use POP, when you read your new incoming email, it is downloaded and deleted from the server and moved to your local In mailbox.
  • Email that is in your Eudora In mailbox -- at the top of the Mailboxes tab, or any other mailbox above <Dominant>, if you have that -- is on your personal computer and does not apply to your mailserv quota.
  • The above is not completely true if you use Leave Mail on Server (which we don't support and strongly recommend that you do not use). Then you will have email left in your Inbox after you download it to read it.
  • While email is in your Inbox, on the server, it applies to your mailserv quota.
  • Even if you use POP, you will also have email on the server in your Spam mailbox.
    
    
• If you use IMAP (with Eudora or another personal computer email program, or any time you use pine or WebMail):
  • If you use Eudora with IMAP, all of the mailboxes listed under <Dominant> in the Eudora Mailboxes tab are on the server, including your Inbox mailbox. The equivalent is true for all personal computer email programs when used with IMAP.
  • If you use WebMail or pine, which use IMAP, all email in any mailbox that you see when you are using WebMail or pine is on mailserv.
    
  • Downloading and deleting email:
    • If you use IMAP, the messages in your Inbox stay on the server until you delete them from your Inbox/INBOX on the server.
    • If you use IMAP, downloading a message from the Inbox or another mailbox to your personal computer to read it will not delete it from mailserv.
    • On the other hand, deleting an IMAP message from the Inbox/INBOX or an other mailbox on the server will also delete the copy from the Inbox or that other mailbox on your personal computer. Do not think that you can delete IMAP email on the server and keep your local copy of it.
    • To keep a local copy of a message that you want to delete from the server, you must move the IMAP message into a local, non-IMAP mailbox on your personal computer. (In Eudora, one that is above the <Dominant>.)
    • Email that is in your Eudora In mailbox -- at the top of the Mailboxes tab -- or in any other mailbox above <Dominant> is on your personal computer and does not apply to your quota.
  • All email in any email mailbox that is on the server applies to your mailserv quota.
    
    
• Also, regardless of whether you use POP or IMAP, the email you keep in all local mailboxes that live on your personal computer are not on the server.
  

In any case, don't worry, you shouldn't have any trouble keeping copies of all the messages you want to keep -- either on your personal computer or in your Inbox or other mailboxes on mailserv.

Be sure to check your quota again on your own after you download and delete to make sure you're really back under quota.

If you don't have antivirus software with real time file protection running, download and install Symantec AntiVirus now and make sure it's running and that it's scanning all file types before you download any email with attachments.

Remember that if your email account is not the one that you receive yournetid@uic.edu email at, then you must use either the Email Account Diagnostics Web page, pine, or WebMail to fix your quota problems.

The quota email message that you receive will include a link to the Email Account Diagnostics Web page that you can use to list your ten largest messages and what mailboxes they are in. Download these messages if you want to keep them (to your Eudora In mailbox or to another mailbox on your personal computer) and delete them from your mailboxes on mailserv and you should be OK.

Use whatever email program you generally use. If you don't know how, see these following instructions. Anyone can use WebMail, pine, or the Email Account Diagonistics Web page.

If you use Thunderbird (or whatever) with POP (mail.uic.edu account only):

How to fix Inbox email quota problems with Eudora (or Outlook or Thunderbird or whatever) with POP

If you use Thunderbird (or whatever) with IMAP (mail.uic.edu account only):

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

If you use WebMail:

How to fix mailserv quota problems with WebMail

If you use pine:

How to fix mailserv quota problems with pine

Be sure to check your quota again after you download and delete to make sure you're really back under quota.

If a message has an attachment:

If a message has an attachment, then if you know the person who sent you the attachment meant to send it to you (it's not at all obsessive to ask them) and only if you really want to keep the attachment, download the attachment(s) and then delete the message. Just downloading the attachment isn't good enough; that can still leave a copy of the attachment on the server.

Want to keep a copy of the email message that came with the attachment? Forward the message back to yourself without the attachment. There are instructions in the how-to pages above.

Can't find the messages that your warning message complained about? See What if the short answers don't work?

People often have quota problems when they are away from work or school and don't check their email for an extended period of time. In this case, just logging in and taking care of your new incoming email -- downloading it and deleting it from the server -- should be enough to bring you back under your disk quota. (Want step-by-step instructions for deleting messages? See the links in What if the short answers don't work?)

Hints on how to avoid having too much new incoming email:

Are you going on vacation? We can keep mailserv quota problems at bay while you're gone (and for a few days beyond) if you plan ahead. Send the dates you'll be gone to systems@uic.edu. We ask, however, that you suspend your subscriptions to email discussion lists before you leave. (You probably will not want to read all the old mail in an active email discussion list when you come back anyway.) That's easy to do for UIC Listserv lists; use the UIC Listserv Subscriber Utility Web page.

Or you can set up an ACCC Mail Tools email filter that deletes incoming email from your email discussion lists -- that way it'll never make it into your Inbox. While you're at it, you can set up a filter that automatically sends copies of important email to a colleague so they can take care of it while you're on vacation and perhaps other filters that move selected messages into other mailboxes on mailserv.

You might also want to turn on our automated vacation reply message. It's easy to set up -- you can even have it turn off automatically -- and it won't embarrass you by sending "I'm on vacation messages" to email lists or other sources of automated email. And it doesn't require you to leave your personal computer email program running while you're on vacation. (Even if your personal computer email program does vacation messages, they aren't of any use unless it's running and you're logged in. I'm sure that sending a bunch of vacation messages when you login on the day you come back is not what you intended.)

Be sure to check your quota again after you download and delete to make sure you're really back under quota.

If you don't have just a few really large messages or lots of new incoming email that you can delete from mailserv, then perhaps the easiest way to solve your quota problems is to download complete copies of email mailboxes -- including your Inbox -- to your personal computer or to a diskette, and then delete all or most of the messages in those mailboxes from the server. You can use the ACCC's Email Diagnostics Web page to download and delete entire mailboxes from the server; see the Using the ACCC Email Diagnostics Tool to Check Quotas, Download, and Delete for instructions. (For step-by-step instructions for deleting individual messages, see the links in What if the short answers don't work?)

This option should be particularly useful for you if you use IMAP. It's tempting when you use IMAP to leave all your old email in various mailboxes on the server, but you should really only keep newer email on the server -- email that you need to see from everywhere you do email. You should download older mail and mail that you don't need immediately anymore and delete it from the server. If your mailboxes have gotten really big, downloading them all at once will be much faster and easier than moving them message by message.

Be sure to download any attachments that are in the mailbox that you want to keep before you delete the mailbox or the messages the attachments came with.

How to use a downloaded mailbox:

See Downloading and Deleting Mailboxes. It explains how to add the downloaded mailbox to your email program's local folders.

So, how do you read your email? Do you use POP or IMAP or both? If you don't know, see Do you use POP or IMAP?; it explains how to tell. It's important to know because it determines what you need to do to get yourself back under quota.

How can you fix your mailserv quota problem?

Do you use only POP, on only one computer and don't use Leave Mail on Server?

Then the only way you should get into quota problems is if you let too much new incoming email accumulate in your Inbox. Open Eudora (or whatever personal computer email program you normally use), login, and check your email. Then everything should be downloaded and your quota problem will be solved. For more information, see How to fix icarus, mailserv, or tigger email quota problems with Eudora (or Outlook or Thunderbird or whatever) with POP.

• If you still have quota problems after POPing down your new incoming email, then you must use IMAP to fix them. See the next item.

Do you use POP with Leave Mail on Server?

Then you should switch to use IMAP or IMAP-compatible programs, and you must use an IMAP program to fix your quota problems.

• If you want to continue to use Eudora (or the other personal computer email program you're currently using) and still read email from other places, with other programs, your best bet is to convert to using IMAP. See How to fix mailserv quota problems with Eudora (or Outlook or Thunderbird or whatever) with IMAP; it has links to step-by-step instructions on how to convert to IMAP and hints on how to get started using it.
• If you want to continue using Eudora with POP, you can. But you should stop using LMOS. We used to also say to stop using WebMail, but we have a new POP daemon that is compatible with IMAP. But you must use an IMAP email program now to fix your Inbox problems. Since you don't want to convert Eudora to using IMAP, your best bet is to use WebMail or pine. (Yes, you can use pine on icarus or tigger to read and manage email on mailserv.)
  • How to fix mailserv quota problems with WebMail
  • How to fix mailserv quota problems with pine

Do you only use IMAP or IMAP-compatible email programs? That is, do you use Eudora or other personal computer email programs always with IMAP, or do you use WebMail or pine, or do you use any combination of these?

Then see the instructions for whichever email program you're most comfortable using:

• How to fix mailserv quota problems with Eudora (or Outlook or Thunderbird or whatever) with IMAP
• How to fix mailserv quota problems with WebMail
• How to fix mailserv quota problems with pine (Yes, you can use pine on icarus or tigger to read and manage email on mailserv.)