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ITSS home : Internet/Email account : Moved mail

Your Internet/Email Account

Working with moved mailboxes

On a nightly basis the UMD email system checks for overly large Inboxes and moves them to a new mailbox in the "Mail" directory of your account. This is done because it slows down our mail system to have it open and read through many very large inboxes. Moving these large inboxes is necessary to keep email for the UMD campus community flowing smoothly.

You have not lost any mail, it has just been moved to a new place. Any new mail you receive will be delivered into your regular "inbox" as it always has. Your moved mailbox will still affect your disk quota (students) or file storage charges (faculty/staff).

Finding your moved mailbox

To work with mailboxes that are saved in your mail server account your email program needs to use the IMAP protocol (such as Mulberry or IMP webmail) rather than POP. Most email programs that use POP can also be configured to use IMAP. The main difference is that POP can only download your Inbox and then generally deletes it from the server. IMAP can view both your Inbox and saved mailboxes that are on the server and doesn't delete your messages from the server until you delete them individually.

Your moved mailbox should show up in the window or column that lists your Inbox and other saved mailboxes, as shown in the examples below. You can work with the messages in your moved mailbox just as you can with the messages in your Inbox.

Mulberry
Mulberry moved mailbox		 IMP Webmail
IMP moved mailbox

If you don't see your moved mailbox or any other mailboxes listed then your email program may not be configured properly. Most email programs that use IMAP have an account setting called "IMAP Path", "IMAP folder", or "Server folder". This should be set to ~/Mail/

If your email program has been running overnight you might need to quit and restart the program to see your moved mailbox. Some email programs such as Eudora require you to refresh the mailbox list to see mailboxes the program didn't create.

Transfering your moved messages back to your inbox

A mailbox is usually moved because you received one or two messages with very large attachments. You'll want to delete these large messages after saving the attachment to your hard disk, If you don't, your inbox will get moved again the next night. You might also choose not to move the large messages back to your Inbox and leave those larger messages back in your moved mailbox.

  1. Open the moved mailbox
  2. Select all the messages (Edit : Select All)
  3. Drag the messages as a group to your Inbox
  4. Close the moved mailbox
  5. Confirm the messages are back in your Inbox
  6. Closing the moved mailbox should completely delete the messages in the mailbox now that they have been moved. To be sure, you may want to delete the moved mailbox.

You may find that the messages you moved back to your Inbox are out of chronological order if you're sorting your Inbox by the order they were added to your Inbox (In Mulberry, this is the far left "#" column). You may need to click on the "Date Sent:" column header to re-sort your mail by the actual date sent .

IMP Webmail Users

  1. Connect to the IMP Webmail page and log into your account. http://www.d.umn.edu/email/
  2. Click on the pull-down menu in the upper right that says "INBOX" and select your moved mailbox. The contents of the moved mailbox should appear in the window.

If you want to move messages back to your Inbox using IMP you may need to do so one screen at a time. To avoid this, click on the "Options" button in the middle of the icons at the top of the page (not the "Options" button on the far left). Then click on "Display Options" in the far right column. Increase the number next to "Messages per page in the mailbox view." so that it will display all of your messages (you can set it to an even larger number so that it will display even larger numbers of messages on the same screen).

  1. From the "Select:" pup-up menu in the upper left choose "All"
  2. From the "Messages to:" menu in the upper right choose "INBOX"
  3. Click on the "Move" button in the upper right to move the selected messages to your Inbox.
  4. IMPORTANT - The messages you just moved into your Inbox are still in your moved mailbox but marked for deletion. Remember to click on the "Purge Deleted" button in the upper right to completely erase them.
  5. You can then use the arrow buttons at the top middle to move to your next screen of messages and continue moving them back to your Inbox.
  6. Once you're confirmed that your messages are back in your Inbox you can delete your moved mailbox using the Folders button at the top of the IMP window.

POP email programs

If you use an email program using the POP (rather than IMAP) protocol you can't access moved mailboxes - only your Inbox. You can use Mulberry, IMP webmail, or other email program that uses IMAP to access your moved mailbox and copy the messages back to your INBOX.

If you need further assistance, contact the Information Technology Systems and Services Help Desk at (726) 8847, helpdesk@d.umn.edu

Rev: 05.06 sb

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