Managing Email Quotas
Jan 24th, 2007 by jagostinelli
In a perfect world, we would all have an unlimited amount of space on the Wesleyan email server. We’re working on increasing the email quota. In the meantime, here are some helpful hints to keep your email account under quota:
About Email Quotas
When you exceed your email quota it means that the amount of email stored under your account ON THE WESLEYAN EMAIL SERVER (one of the central computers that stores and processes your email) has exceeded the limit that has been set for you. In order to bring your email account back under quota, you must remove some of the messages stored on the central email server where your account resides. If you use Webmail, please note that, in addition to your Inbox, data stored in any other folder on the email server also counts toward your quota.
While over quota you are still able to send email to any destination and receive Wesleyan email but any email sent to you from outside of Wesleyan will be rejected and the sender will receive a non-delivery report. As soon as your account is again below quota, full email functionality is restored.
Email Programs
People on campus utilize a variety of email programs to read and send mail. Each of these interacts with the mail server in a slightly different fashion. Some download all of your mail to your own computer and may or may not leave it on the mail server. Others read it directly from the central email server and do not remove it unless you specifically tell it to. To bring your account back under quota you need to deal only with that data that is stored on the central email server.
Bringing your Account Back Under Quota
Using WebMail
The best way to do this is to use Wesleyan’s web-based email program since it manipulates your email directly on the email server. It has recently been enhanced to include features to make quota management even easier.
To log into WebMail:
- Open your EPortfolio and click on WebMail under Tools and Links. Alumni can access WebMail from their WesNet account under the Alumni Resources menu. Otherwise, open a browser and type webmail.wesleyan.edu in the address bar. You will be asked to log in with your email username and password.
- The contents of your Inbox will be displayed and on the left you will see a listing of your email folders as they exist on the email server.
- Below the folder listings you will see a link labeled Folder Sizes. Click on this to see how much data resides in each folder and to determine where data needs to be deleted.
Deleting individual messages in WebMail:
To delete one or more messages, click on the box to the left of the message(s) to be deleted and then click on the Delete button located just above the headings. Please note that this does not permanently delete the item, but just moves it into your Trash folder (see below for instructions on dealing with the Trash folder). To remove all of the messages in a folder click on the Show All command, then click on Toggle All, then click the Delete button. These techniques can be used with your Inbox, Sent folder or with folders that you have created. There is a much quicker way to do this for the Spam and Trash folders (see below).
Sort By Size
If you need to determine if there are very large messages (or, more likely, messages with very large attachments) click on the small button to the right of the Size heading. It will change from a square to a triangle to indicate that your mail has now been sorted by size. You can click on it a second time if you wish to reverse the sort order. You can also click on the indicator next to any other heading to use that item as the sort order.
To remove messages from your Spam or Trash folders:
If you have any messages stored in your Spam or Trash folders you will see a (Purge) command next to them. Just click on (Purge) to permanently eliminate all messages in that folder. The (Purge) command is not displayed when the folder is empty. It may be a good idea to review the messages in your Trash folder before purging just to make sure that legitimate email has not been moved there. This is recommended if you have recently changed your spam settings and may not be certain of the results.
The Sent mail folder:
A copy of every message you have sent when using WebMail had been stored in your Sent folder. Many people don’t realize this and eventually it becomes very large and pushes you over quota. Click on this folder and delete any sent messages you do not need to keep.
Getting Help with Email Problems
Faculty and Staff should contact their Desktop Support Specialist and students should call the ITS Help Desk at x4000.
There are 4.93 mb in my “inbox,” 2.93 mb in my “sent,” and 0.00 mb in my spam, trash, and spam folders. Nonetheless my “total” is 13.58 mb. Where do the other 5.00 mb reside? If I want to get rid of that 5.00 mb, what do I do?
Please respond by email — I am out of the country and it is vital that I keep my email under quota
Under the old email system, any files you have in your “home directory” on the server count against your quota, even if they are not related to email. These files are often attachments downloaded with pine or, more often, remnants of an old spam filtering system long past its prime.