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Question 1.1 New / Old Look to Webmail
- There was a serious problem, in the version of webmail we were running, so we were forced to back out to this older version. Old users will recognise it as the previous webmail. New students will consider it 'new'.
- Please just leave the drop down server setting, as Mail and use it as normal.
Question 1.2 Never send your password in an email message!
- We have undergone several "phishing" attacks where hackers try to convince you to send them your password. Remember, you should NEVER send your password in an email message. The hackers will then steal your webmail account and send spam from it.
- Do not reply to the message.
- Move the message to the reportspam folder in Webmail (or any other IMAP email client you use to read email).
- If you have inadvertently replied along with your credentials, change your password immediately. If you cannot change your password, alert security@uic.edu as soon as possible.
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ACCC will never ask you to provide your password via email, over the phone, or in person.
Question 1.3
I can't login to webmail!
- Are you going to https://webmail.uic.edu and not some previous bookmark or URL?
- Are you sure you have a UIC email account?
- An email account is not the same as an email address, if you have email from yournetid@uic.edu delivered to somewhere other than the UIC servers, tigger, icarus or mailserv, you cannot use Webmail. Please use whatever means you'd normally use to read that delivery email address.
- Not sure where your netid@uic.edu email is going to? Want to change it? See
uic.edu mail alias: What email account do you want to use? for an explanation and a link to the ACCC Web utility that allows you
to change it.
- If you don't have an ACCC email account and want to open one:
- Go to: http://www.uic.edu/depts/accc/home/ACCTS.html
- Click on Accounts - Open an ACCC Account
- Then go to:
http://www.uic.edu/depts/accc/home/EMAIL.html
- Click on Email - Change netid@uic.edu email forwarding address
to redirect your netid@UIC.edu email address to your new account.
Note: Students can use either the icarus or mailserv systems, icarus is the student shell and Web server. Mailserv is dedicated purely to email and assigns more space per person, so you are better off using
mailserv for email.
- Still can't login? Need to change your pasword?
Question 1.4
I logged in and all my messages are gone!
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Don't panic. There's a few reasons this could be happening.
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If this is your first time using the new webmail login, and you previously had no problems, could be you have the wrong server set as your primary maildrop.
- Look at the top of the left hand pane in webmail, it tells you what server you are on, does it say icarus or tigger, and you usually log into mailserv?
- There is your problem, go to this utility and check if your maildrop is actually set to mailserv, if not change it.
- Then wait 30 minutes for your old Webmail session to timeout and try again.
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If you normally use Eudora, Outlook, Mail.app, Thunderbird or some other mail software on your computer, could be that you're email has actually been downloaded to that computer using POP, if this is the case, you won't be able to use Webmail unless you change that program to use IMAP and read your email from the server, read this article in the newsletter for more information.
Question 1.5
Is it OK to use WebMail and another email
program at the same time?
- That depends on what you mean by the same time.
- If you mean, Can I have WebMail and Eudora open at the same time? Then no,
please don't. It will cause various problems, the most common of which is
that your mailboxes will be read-only in one or the other programs.
On a related note, please be
sure to log out of your account when you are done using WebMail. (There is a
Sign Out link in the
upper right corner of the screen.)
- If you mean, Can I use WebMail to read my email when I'm
at home and, say, Eudora when I'm on campus? Then yes, you can.
- Since WebMail uses IMAP, if you're
going to use Eudora (or Netscape or Outlook)
with WebMail, you should have Eudora (or Netscape or Outlook)
set up to use IMAP rather than POP. This used to be a major problem, but it isn't as much of a problem as it used to be, because the ACCC has upgraded its POP servers. However, email that you've downloaded to your personal computer and deleted from the server won't be available online for you to read with Webmail.
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The ACCC recommends that
people use IMAP, for reasons such as the ability to see your email from multiple locations.
Eudora Email for Macs and Windows
has instructions on how to set up and use Eudora with IMAP.
While the specific instructions in the page won't be useful
if you want to
convert Netscape or Outlook to use IMAP,
it does have all the information that
you'll need to set them up to use IMAP.
Question 1.6 Cleaning up from Thread View -- what does Fix INBOX do?
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There is an option in Webmail called Thread View; You may have noticed at the top of the WebMail index list, in the grey box under the drop down folder selection that normally reads INBOX.
- Thread View performs a very powerful function.
Thread sorting is where messages with the same Subject line are grouped together forming a thread. Normally the original message, and all subsequent replies form a thread.
- However occasionally someone clicks it by accident and thinks they have suddenly lost all their messages.
- Even less frequently, someone with an extrememly large mailbox clicks it, then logs out. Next time they attempt to login, the server times out trying to sort all their messages into a thread.
- In these rare cases, the user has no way to switch off the thread view, as the right pane does not display, only the left pane is present. So in order to help these users, we have added Fix INBOX -- an Unthread option to the left pane that only works on the INBOX, and it returns it to the default sort state.
Question 1.7
I sent an message with WebMail, but got an error message about
not being able to save it in my sent-mail mailbox. Was it sent?
What happened?
- Yes, your message was sent.
But it wasn't saved in your sent-mail mailbox.
- Your disk quota is full.
- If your email account is on tigger or icarus,
your "personal disk space" is separate from your Inbox email quota and can fill up separately.
The other mailboxes you keep on the server -- including your WebMail
deleted and sent-mail mailboxes -- apply to your
disk quota.
- If your email account is on mailserv, your
disk space quota and email quota are the same, but going over quota will still have the same effect.
- Check your quotas with Email Quota Tool, which reports both email and disk quotas.
- If you are over disk quota, try purging the messages in your deleted folder. (The deleted folder is
automatically emptied when you logout and when you login, but on tigger and icarus you can fill up your disk space
while deleting email. This wouldn't happen on mailserv.)
- If that doesn't do it, try again with your sent-mail folder, which can
get very large after a while.
- If your email account is on tigger or icarus, you should also check your other stored files,
including your personal Web pages, because they contribute to your personal disk space also.
- There is more information and instructions on how to
tell WebMail not to move deleted email messages into
the deleted folder -- which will allow you to delete messages
even if you are over quota -- in these Web pages:
Question 1.8
I tried to send a message with WebMail, but got an error message: "Transaction
Failed." Was it sent? What happened?
- No, it was not sent.
- There is increasing problem with spammers stealing passwords and then using UIC Webmail
accounts to send spam. The message you are trying to send has two charateristics of that spam:
- Being sent from off the UIC campus.
- Being addressed to 200 or more people.
- We apologize for the inconvenience, and we
recognize that there may be legitimate reasons for you to send this message.
- There are several alternatives that you can consider.
- You could send your bulk messages while you are on the UIC campus; spammers don't normally come to
campus to do their dirty work.
- You could use VPN software while you are off-campus to be virtually on-campus. For more information,
see ACCC Virtual Private Network.
- You could split up messages sent from off-campus into batches with than 200 recipients.
- You can consider using a Listserv list or another kind of mass
communication for your messages. For more information, go to
http://www.accc.uic.edu and
click on the violet EMAIL button. You may also find our Announce
system valuable; see the "UIC Announce" on the same
page.
If you have questions, send a note to us at consult@uic.edu.
Question 1.9
Beware of the DELETE button!
- In the production version of the new SquirrelMail Webmail, we are going
back to something that works almost like deletion worked in the
old Webmail: When you delete something, it goes into your deleted
mailbox.
- You can undelete messages using the copy of the message
in the deleted
mailbox, but only during the Webmail session that you deleted the message in.
- By default, Webmail deletes all messages in your deleted mailbox when you
log out.
- If you set your Trash Folder to [Do not use Trash], then any messages that you delete
will be completely deleted when you delete them. There will be no chance to undelete them.
- This is also the case when you are over your disk quota.
If you are over your disk
quota, you don't have disk space to save
a copy of your deleted message in your deleted folder, so WebMail will delete it
without saving a copy
and without telling you it has not done so.
- WebMail will automatically begin saving copies of your deleted email
again as soon as there is disk space for it.
Question 1.10
I need to use Webmail with an ACCC email account other than my main ACCC email account.
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Webmail no longer supports viewing any account other than your main UIC account. Please use another IMAP client such as Eudora or Outlook for viewing secondary accounts.
Question 1.11
Addressbook problems?
- Where is my old addressbook?
If you had an addressbook on the old Webmail, we transferred
it to the new Webmail.
- Can I transfer my Webmail addressbook to and from other
email programs?
See our
Addressbook Conversion Tool.
- I can't compose messages to people in my addressbook.
Make sure that you use the ADDRESSES button just below the SUBJECT, do
NOT use the ADDRESSES link at the top of the page in this case.
- The problem with the wandering Use Addresses button when
you have long lists in your addressbook has been fixed in the production version.
Question 1.12 Problems getting timed out.
- Timeout Issues / Webmail is Slow / Webmail Freezes on Login
- Your INBOX may be too large
With the new enlarged quotas available for email, especially on mailserv, some people are letting their INBOX get a little out of hand. Each mail folder, including your INBOX, is stored as a single file on the server. Each time the server has to read a message, or delete a message, or read the subjects of the messages, the entire file has to be loaded into memory and scanned.
Messages with large attachments are usually the root cause of the problem. Either delete messages with large attachments after you have downloaded the attachment, or create separate folders to store these large messages in.
Sort your INBOX by size to see if there are any large messages that you can delete, and click Folder Size to see
whether you have any other large mailboxes.
You will be amazed at the difference in speed you will see if you trim down your mailboxes.
You can have thousands of messages in your INBOX, without trouble, but add
one message with a large attachment and suddenly your email system crawls.
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Our general rule of thumb is, keep each mail folder under 25MB.
If your INBOX is under 25MB and you are still having problems, open a problem ticket by sending an email to systems@uic.edu.
Question 1.13
I typed a long message, and I accidentally closed the window without sending it. Am I sunk?
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No, your message was saved to be sent by you later.
Simply login again and click on COMPOSE. Webmail will then ask
you if you want to continue the interrupted message.
Caveat 1) Since the message is saved in a cookie, the size is
limited by how large a cookie the browser will hold, which may
vary from browser to browser. In Netscape, for example, it only
holds about 2000 characters.
Caveat 2) Since the message is saved in a cookie, this
will only work if you login again FROM THE SAME COMPUTER you
used to type in the message in the first place.
Caveat 3) The cookie also has a time limit of an hour,
after which it expires and will be removed.
- Thus you need to retrieve your
message as soon as possible from the same computer. If you want
to save it to send later, use the SAVE DRAFT button.
Question 1.14 People say they aren't getting the attachments I sent them with Webmail. Help!
- Eudora for Windows does have a problem receiving some of the attachments
sent by Squirrel Webmail, but this is not really a Squirrel Webmail problem.
- It is a Eudora for Windows problem,
because all the other
email programs we tried, including Eudora for Macs, handled them without
difficulty. In Eudora for Windows' defense, the browser probably set a
inappropriate MIME type, but how bad could it be if the other
email programs, including Eudora for Macs, could handle it?
- In Eudora for Windows, these messages sometimes look like they have attachments; they always
are way bigger than they should be if they didn't have an attachment.
- The solution for this problem is for the recipient to open these messages in Webmail.
- Note this isn't just a Webmail problem; this appears to be a general Web email problem. Someone
reported a similar problem with a gmail message.
Question 1.15 Internet Explorer 7 Does Not Work Correctly with UIC Webmail
- Any version of Internet Explorer 7 prior to beta version 3 does not work reliably with WebMail. There have been reports of various problems with Internet Explorer 7 using UIC Webmail, mainly related to users logging in and being told they need to login again.
- This appears to be fixed in Internet Explorer Beta 3.
- The ACCC recommends that you do not use Internet Explorer in general; use Firefox instead.
Need Additional Help?
Consider our Troubleshooting Guide.
If you need additional assistance,
please call the Client Services Office
at (312) 413-0003.
You can file a problem report
or email us at consult@uic.edu. |
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