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Below is a selection of tips and frequently
asked questions on Webmail for Central Staff email accounts.
Frequently Asked Questions
I can't log in - it tells me I need to
'enable cookies'
Webmail uses the central IDCheck system to verify who you are and this needs
to set 'cookies' in your web browser. How you enable cookies will depend on
the browser you're using. In Internet Explorer go to Tools > Internet
Options and click on the Privacy tab. In Mozilla Firefox,
go to Tools > Options > Privacy and click on the Cookies
tab.
If you have enabled cookies but you still get the 'enable cookies' message.
Make sure that you are going to the correct webmail address of http://webmail.qmul.ac.uk/
and are not using a browser Favourite or Bookmark to an old webmail address
or to the IDcheck page itself.
I've logged in but can only see the
top menu bar.
First, make sure that you are going to the correct webmail address, http://webmail.qmul.ac.uk/,
and are not using a browser Bookmark or Favourite. Also, if you click on the
Reload or Refresh browser options at any time this may happen. Try logging out
and logging back in again.
Where am I when I log in?
When you log in successfully to Webmail you are in your IMAP Inbox folder and
by default you will probably see your most recent "unseen" messages
on the last page:
If your messages extend over multiple pages a navigation bar appears above
and below the list of messages, with a place to enter a page number and arrows
to allow you to move 1 page at a time, or to jump to the beginning and end of
the list. The outermost arrows, jump to the beginning and the end of the message
list whilst the innermost arrows move backward or forward one page at a time.
In addition, Webmail lets you search for addresses and phrases in messages
in a folder from the Search menu.
Using these tools, it normally takes as much time to jump to the beginning or
the end of a folder as it does to scroll one page. Where possible, in Webmail
or other web-based applications, you should use native navigation controls,
rather than the browser's Back button. When you use these controls, Webmail
maintains contact with the server and remembers where you are in your session.
If you use the browser's Back button what you see depends upon your cache as
well as your connection.
You can modify how messages are displayed using Options > Mailbox
and Folder Display Options:
You might like to make the page size large (anything up to 999 messages) so
that you can easily scroll to what you want to see.
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Why are all my emails out of order?
Messages in Webmail can be sorted according to a number of criteria, including
message number, date, alphabetical on sender, alphabetical on subject and size
simply by clicking on the column heading. In addition, each of these sorting
criteria can be set to be ascending or descending by clicking on the triangle
icon in the column heading.
It is easy to accidentally click on one of the column headings and therefore
suddenly find your email in a confusing, non-chronological order. It may even
seem as if you have lost email messages, because the newer email was shuffled
in with older email in the newly-sorted list. Keep an eye on how your email
is sorted. If you happen to find all of your emails scrambled or in some non-chronological
order, simply click on the '#' at the top of that column to resort your email
to message number order, or on the Date heading.
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I used another email
program and now messages are missing from my Inbox?
A likely cause of this is if Eudora, Outlook and similar email clients have
been set up as 'POP' clients. POP clients usually download all your email messages
to the local computer. Once this happens, the messages are no longer on the
central mail server and therefore Webmail cannot access them. You should set
other email clients up as 'IMAP' clients so that you can avoid this problem
and work with the same folders as you do with Webmail. If you prefer the POP
protocol when working with other email applications, you should set them to
"leave mail on server" so that Webmail would still be able to see
the messages.
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Why are deleted messages still
there?
When you 'delete' messages, they are marked to be deleted later. When you then
select Purge Deleted from Show Deleted | Purge Deleted
on the upper or lower right of the Webmail screen the messages are purged from
the server. Many IMAP clients use this two step approach as a safety measure,
because once you have deleted messages from the server, they usually cannot
be recovered. Not purging deleted email is one way that an inbox can become
very large. A good way to keep track of what you are doing is to turn on Show
Deleted. Deleted messages will then appear with a line drawn through
them until they are purged.
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How
do I get Webmail to display a list of folders?
You can switch to a list of your mail folders by clicking on the
Folders button at any time. But if you want to have a folder
list on screen at the same time as the message list:
- Go to Options and select Global Options
from the 'Edit options for:' drop down menu.
- Select Display Options.
- Check the box for 'Show the Horde menu on the left?'
- Click Save Options
- Return to Inbox
The folder list and some other options appear in a Sidebar on the left of the
screen:
Clicking the + box beside Mail will expand the folder list
and include Filters, Search and New Message options:
You can hide the folder list by clicking on the Collapse Sidebar
icon  at
the top right of the folder list pane.
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I can't see some of my
folders in Webmail.
This may be for one of two reasons. Firstly, folders stored on local disks
or home directories on departmental networks using other email programs such
as Eudora, Outlook, and Thunderbird will not be accessible in Webmail. Only
folders stored in IMAP space on the central mail server are available. These
other email programs that have both local and IMAP folder storage can be used
to move messages from local folders to IMAP folders.
If the missing folders are definitely server-based folders, it may be that
you need to 'subscribe' to them in Webmail in order to see them. To do that:
- Go to Options > Server and Folder Information
and look at the setting for 'Use IMAP folder subscriptions?'
If you want to just see all of your folders and not use subscription, uncheck
this option and you will always be able to see all of your folders.
If you want to choose which folders you see in Webmail, check the Use
IMAP folder subscriptions? option then:
- Click on the Folders button
- Select the Show Unsubscribed link
- Select the folders to which you want to subscribe
- Choose Subscribe from the Choose Action
drop down menu.
- Click Save Options
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How do I add an address to my address
book?
You will need to go to Options > Address Books
and select 'My Address Book' in the section titled: 'Choose
the address book to use when adding addresses'
Once this has been set, an Address book icon  will
appear alongside sender addresses when you are reading a message and clicking
on the icon will add the sender's address to your address book.
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How do I format the
text of a message? I want to use bold and italics.
It is not considered good practice to use formatted text in email as it can
be client-dependent, meaning that the person you are sending to may not be able
to read it. It also results in a larger message size so takes up more space.
However, you can use formatted text by choosing to compose messages in 'HTML'
(web page) format.
- Click on the Switch to HTML composition link in the compose
window.
This will produce a formatting bar similar to that found in word-processors:
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Where is my sent mail saved?
For most people, the information already set up for saving sent messages in
Webmail will be fine and should be left alone. In some cases you may want to
see where email you send is saved, or change that folder, for example, if you
use another email client to read your messages you will want to make sure that
it saves sent mail in the same folder as Webmail does. You can see or change
where email you send with Webmail is stored by going to Options >
Personal Information.
At the bottom of the screen is an option to choose your sent mail folder:
It's usually best just to work with the default mailbox name of sent-mail.
When sending attachments, the person
I send them to is presented with IDCheck page.
This is due to having the 'Link Attachments?' option
set toYes when you attach a document. If you do this,
either on purpose or inadvertently, then a copy of the file will not actually
be sent with the message but will be stored on the mail server and a link
to that file will appear in the message instead. When the recipient clicks
on the link, an attempt is made to contact the server and they will then
need to go through a normal login, via the IDcheck page, before they can
access the file.
To avoid this happening make sure the 'Link Attachments?'
option is set to No
Linked attachments are an efficient way of sending to multiple users as it
avoids sending a copy with each message but obviously it can only be used for
sending to recipients with a college username.
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Attachments are in a compressed (zip) format
when I try to read them.
The most prominent option for viewing attachments is one that
says 'Download All Attachments (in ZIP file)' and that is what
you have clicked on. The attachments are listed just above this, so to open
or download them in their normal format, click on the download icon with the
red downward arrow to the right of the attachment name.
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My sent mail folder is not saving
the attachments with the mail.
Check in Options > Message
Composition. Near the bottom of the screen there is a setting
for what to do with attachment data when saving sent-mail.
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How do I change
my password?
You can't do this in Webmail; you need to go to the One-stop
links page and choose 'Change central staff account password.'
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How do I set or
change my Out-of-office reply?
There are two ways to do this:
1. In Webmail, go to Options > Server-based mail and spam filters
and click on 'Create filtering rules to organise incoming mail...'
This will take you to the Smartsieve utility where you can set up filters and
out-of-office (vacation) messages.
2. You can also access Smartsieve's filter and vacation message options outside
of Webmail using our One-stop
links page.
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Tips
Save Drafts Frequently.
When you connect to a mail server using a web-based program, you do not have
a direct connection as you do with Thunderbird or Pegasus. Your session may
rely on a large number of machines (hundreds if you are on a remote network)
maintaining a connected state. If any of these have a problem, your connection
can fail without you realising it.
While you are reading mail, working with your address book, or composing mail,
you can lose your connection for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do
with the Webmail program or College servers. In Webmail, while you are using
the Compose window, you are interacting with your local computer and not with
the Webmail server. If your connection fails while you are composing, you won't
necessarily know and your message will be lost when you attempt to send it,
check its spelling, or open other windows. Each time you click Save
Draft another copy of your message in progress is saved to your Drafts
folder. If you lose a connection only the copy which is open will be lost. Any
others are saved. If you save frequently, you'll be able to use an earlier version
of your draft in an emergency.
One further precaution that may be useful in between saves is
to Select All and Copy. This is very quick
and easy to do using the keyboard. In the middle of typing anything, simply
press control-A (Select All) and then control-C (Copy). This will
instantly select the entire text of your message and copy it to your system's
clipboard. Afterward, be sure to click once where you left off typing, to bring
the cursor back to the text and de-select your entire message so you don't accidentally
overwrite anything. If the connection goes down or you lose your email message
you were working on, simply press control-V (Paste) to paste the copy
of the message back into a compose window. NOTE: On Macs, the keys are command-A
(a.k.a. 'apple'-A), command-C (a.k.a. 'apple'-C), and command-V
(a.k.a. 'apple'-V).
After you save a draft, you must open the Drafts folder
and click on the message you want to continue editing or to send.
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Webmail folders are server based.
Folders stored on local disks with other email programs such as Eudora, Outlook
and Pegasus will not be accessible in Webmail. Only folders stored in IMAP space
on the central mail server are available to Webmail. These other email programs
that have both local and IMAP folder storage can be used to move messages from
local folders to IMAP folders and vice-versa.
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Folder
Name Conventions
How you name a new folder (mailbox) can affect how you use it
and whether you can see it. Folders should not contain embedded spaces
(which can be misread), or special characters such as "/ ( ) < >
! % & * ~ ^ * ?", or single or double quotes. Webmail folders follow
UNIX naming conventions which are different from those for Windows and the Mac
OS. Misnamed folders may not store messages where you can find them easily.
If you want to be able to store or recover
messages reliably, use single level folders with simple names all in lower or
upper case using hyphens "-" or underscores as separators, as in "disbursements_08-23-2005"
or "hybrid-vigor-casenotes". Simple is better and more reliable.
Note that changes to folders made within
the Folder Navigator window may not be displayed until you have logged out of
webmail and then logged in again, even though the changes were made on the server.
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Sorting Tips
Sorting in webmail only acts on the page you have open in front of you. It
can also be affected by the size of a folder. Larger folders may take a long
time to sort. You need to be careful to place your mouse pointer so that it
changes into a hand, not just click on the name or an arrow. Some of the names
of columns have changed, although by inspection it's easy to understand why
and what they refer to.
To see the results of sorting better, make the number of messages per page
larger in Options > Mailbox and Folder Display Options,
at least 100 messages per page instead of 20.
Keep folders small, especially the Inbox,
to improve sorting and overall performance
The focus of the pointer is important. If it doesn't change to a hand and you
click, chances are nothing will happen or something unexpected will happen.
In the sent-mail folder, instead of "to:" appearing in front of the
address a message was sent to, the name of the column is "To:" and
the addresses appear by themselves. This actually makes sense, as you send email
to an address. It's not unusual for cosmetic changes to appear
in different versions of a product, and webmail is a vended product (Webmailv4
from horde.org) just as Eudora and Thunderbird are. Webmail was not created
nor programmed by College.
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Selecting and Moving Messages
Because it is so easy to sort, select, or search through large folders,
Webmail is powerful tool for managing email, particularly if you are unfamiliar
or unable to use other email clients. Some of the things you can do include:
Use the drop down Select menu or individual check boxes to select messages:
After selecting messages, use the Mark as drop down menu
to flag the messages in a particular way or the Move | Copy
menu to select a folder to move or copy them to:
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Attachments
Webmail can attach files to email and is a MIME compliant program. That means
that it follows the Internet MIME Standard for encoding and decoding files.
If you receive attachments you have to think about where to put them. If you
are using your own computer - downloading to a local disk or other media is
trivial.
Sending:
You can attach files while composing new email by clicking the Browse
button at the bottom of the composition screen.
This function allows you to browse the local disks to select the file(s) to
attach. As you Attach files, their name and size are displayed.
You must deliberately click the Attach button
and be sure that you can see your file(s) displayed with their sizes below your
message before sending otherwise you may not have actually included the files.
When messages are attached, the Composition window changes to show a checkmark
and message that a file has been attached at the top of the window, a prompt
to save the attachment with the message in your sent-mail folder and a place
to type a short description of the attachment.
Attachment Notes:
- Be sure you make the windows of your browser big enough so that you can
see all the buttons when you are composing. If you cannot see the buttons
at the bottom of the Compose window after you have maximized
it, click the Attachments button to move the focus to the
bottom half of that window.
- It is good practice to tell people names and types of files you are sending
explicitly, in the body of your message or in the description field for the
attachment.
- Whether or not your recipient can read the attachment has very little to
do with the Email program you use. It is more important that you save files
in a format that they can read with application software that they have, before
attaching the files. Do not assume that a person with Word 97 can read a document
you created in Word 2000.
Receiving:
Messages with attachments have a paperclip icon alongside them in the message
list.
Receiving and reading attachments successfully depends on how the attachment
has been sent and whether you have a compatible application on your PC to
open it.
When you open a message you will see attachment information in the header
with each attachment listed as a Part of the message, and you may also see
image attachments in the body of a message.
All attachments will have a download link with a red arrow alongside them
which, when clicked, will trigger the download function of your browser.
It is better and more reliable to download a file and then launch it from
within its application, than to try to open it directly but be careful if
you save an attachment on a public machine such as a library kiosk or Internet
cafe though. remember to delete the file before you leave or it will be left
on the public machine for the next person to read.
Some email with attachments can contain viruses or worms that can perform
a variety of malicious acts, ranging from rewriting parts of your hard drive
to sending mass email. Yale and other institutions try to protect you from
known viruses, but new ones can get through; often disguised within very innocent
or important seeming email. Because of these challenges; you must be careful
about opening messages or attachments unless you are very sure of their origin.
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Composing with addresses
from a Directory or Address book
If you want to add more than one address to a message you are composing you
can use either the Address Book button, or the Expand Names button.
To use Expand Names first be sure that you have selected both your
address book and the College LDAP Directory as Address books under Options
> Other Options > Address Books and have the 'Expand names' option
checked:
After you save this setting, you can type part of a name or address in the
To:, CC:, or BCC: fields
and click Expand Names to display a list of possible addresses from which
you can choose. This is particularly helpful when working with large address
books and also puts the complete College LDAP directory at your finger tips
while composing. Separate
multiple addresses via commas ",", not semicolons ";"
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Replies: quoting the Original Message
When you reply to email with Webmail you can include the original text of the
message. Sometimes this is a good thing because it preserves the context of
a discussion. However, if a message has been forwarded or answered many times,
it can grow quite large.
You control whether or not a reply displays the original message and summary
of headers in Options > Message Composition where you can
also control whether or not to save any attachments with sent mail.
Remember that it is good practice in email to keep messages short and to the
point.
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Interface and Options
There are many factors that affect how Webmail looks when used on different
browsers on different platforms: monitor resolution and tuning; browser settings
and capabilities; and user's eyesight, taste and judgment are among the most
obvious. If you don't like the way Webmail looks, here are some places to check
and change appearance options:
- Options > Other Options > Mailbox and Folder Display Options
- Options > Message Options > Message Viewing
- Options > Edit Options for: Global Options > Display options
In your web browser you should be able to:
- Resize the browser window
- Modify the font or colour settings
- Use a different browser - you may find that a different browser displays
the pages better.
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Limitations: Webmail is not a substitute
for other personal email applications
Webmail is a convenient program to use when you need to access your email away
from your desk when you cannot set up and configure full-featured email clients
such as Thunderbird, Eudora or Pegasus, but you need to consider that:
- Web-based email may be slower than using a conventional email program. It
helps to keep your inbox small as the inbox is indexed first as it loads and
the index is updated frequently. This is a major contributor to slow performance.
- It may not always work, largely due to factors beyond our control. All web-based
email clients require reliable and fast connections to web servers to allow
you to connect and sustain a connection while you work with email. This is
not always available from the busiest commercial ISPs all the time, or from
all parts of the world. Also, for a variety of reasons, host countries may
restrict access to the Internet or certain domains. Restrictions and connectivity
may vary from region to region.
- You will not have access to your usual address books and groups, unless
you have created them or imported them into the Webmail address book
- If you are in a public place, the web browser might cache some of the messages
and images locally, especially if you open attachments.
- You have to remember when composing messages that until you save
web-based email in an IMAP folder it doesn't 'live' anywhere. If you interrupt
your session or use a Back button you can lose whatever you are working
on. Keep messages brief or save to the drafts folder frequently.
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