webmail/IMAP questions

[krysia]

I've just migrated to IDNet and am trying to get used to a webmail interface very different from what I'm used to, and I haven't found any 'help' facility in webmail to answer them.  I hope the IDNetters can.

First, what's the difference between the 'Sent' and the 'Sent Items' folders?  From what I can see, messages written from webmail go to 'Sent', whereas those written from OE go to 'Sent Items'.  Is there any reason for this, and is it possible to use just the 'Sent Items' folder, so all sent messages are stored in the same place by default?  (I know messages can be manually moved from one to the other.)

Second, when I click 'Folders' on the 'Personal Settings' button in webmail, I don't understand the markings:  under the 'Subscribed' column for the first 5 (Inbox, Drafts, Sent, Junk, and Deleted Items), there's simply a dot, but for 'Sent Items' there's a ticked box, as well as options to rename it and to delete it. 

Third, I've set up Outlook Express to be an IMAP account and downloaded the available folders into it; however, that gave me only 3 (Inbox, Sent Items, and Drafts), whereas webmail also has Junk, Deleted Items, and Sent.  The first time I checked my webmail, I was surprised to find bona fide messages from, among others, Avast and the IDNet support team in the Junk folder.  Since real mail is winding up in Junk, it would be useful to have the folder in OE.

Finally, I bought a domain name so I'll never have to change e-mail address again, and messages from that are being forwarded to my IDNet account.  I've set up OE to show my domain e-mail address in messages rather than my IDNet one and wondered if there's a way to do this when writing messages from webmail too.  I thought I had found the solution in the  'Identities' section of 'Preferences', where I typed in my domain e-mail address in the 'Reply to' column, assuming that this return address would be shown on the e-mail, but it isn't – just the IDNet one is, so I'm not sure what the 'Reply to' column does.

Many thanks for any answers you can give to all these questions.

[Rik]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

I've just migrated to IDNet and am trying to get used to a webmail interface very different from what I'm used to, and I haven't found any 'help' facility in webmail to answer them.  I hope the IDNetters can.

TBH, I'm going to be about as useful to you as an umbrella in a gale. I never use webmail and I use POP rather than IMAP. If no-one else can help, I would suggest giving support a call and they'll walk you through the webmail interface. I do know that it's rather 'bald' compared to the old idnetfreemail version.

Third, I've set up Outlook Express to be an IMAP account and downloaded the available folders into it; however, that gave me only 3 (Inbox, Sent Items, and Drafts), whereas webmail also has Junk, Deleted Items, and Sent.  The first time I checked my webmail, I was surprised to find bona fide messages from, among others, Avast and the IDNet support team in the Junk folder.  Since real mail is winding up in Junk, it would be useful to have the folder in OE.

It would be worth notifying IDNet of any mail being sent to junk incorrectly, as they are constantly updating the spam filter. That it catches their own communications is very odd.

[Noreen]

Hi Chris, I can't help you at all but welcome to the forum from another ex-f2s member.  Have a welcome karma from me.

Noreen

[krysia]

I did e-mail Andrew in Support on Monday telling him his message to me wound up in junkmail and asking some of these questions, but haven't had a reply.  Since I'd previously had replies within 15-20 minutes, I thought maybe this was the kind of query that wouldn't get answered.

[Rik]

It will get answered, but might take a little longer than normal.

[MoHux]

......... Since I'd previously had replies within 15-20 minutes, I thought maybe this was the kind of query that wouldn't get answered.

Did you look in the 'junk' folder? 

Hi Kris, welcome to the forum. 

Mo

[Simon]

Hi Chris, and welcome again!

Not having ever used webmail much, and like Rik, using POP3 instead of IMAP, I'm quite intrigued to know what the advantage is of using Webmail to send messages, instead of Outlook Express, or any other mail client.  Indeed, why use both at all?

[Lance]

I often use webmail, but only when I'm at work. I would have no other way of accessing my emails otherwise until I get home. At home, I use Outlook 2007

[krysia]

Yes, if you're not at home and want to send a message to someone, you need to use webmail.  But it would be a good idea to check it in any case, given what I found in my junk folder!

[Simon]

Of course, very good point.

[somanyholes]

Hey

Another good reason for webmail is to keep the junk/viruses/malware and unwanted stuff on someone else's box, there is much less chance of you pc becoming infected in this way, it also saves on bandwidth

[Noreen]

krysia, have you had your questions answered yet?

[Simon]

I think it would be useful to have some sort of setup guide for IMAP somewhere on the forums, perhaps in the FAQs, Rik?  I struggled for an hour last night trying to get mine set up, and still can't get it working with Thunderbird on my Vista machine, but have managed to get it up and running on Mozilla Mail with XP.

I think it's very relevant, given that new users of IDNet may not realise that their emails are being spam filtered.

[Rik]

I only write an FAQ if I'm able to do so from a position of experience and/or knowledge. As I don't use IMAP, the best I could do would be to sketch the setup procedure, which wouldn't help a lot. If anyone would like to volunteer to write an IMAP sticky, I'd welcome it.

[krysia]

Hello again.  Quick answers to a couple of recent posts - no, I haven't yet had answers to my questions, but I'm assuming that's because the issue of what's winding up in the junk folder needs some investigation.  I'd welcome interim answers to some of the other questions, though!

Re setting up an IMAP account, I've only ever done it in Outlook Express, but it's pretty easy to do there - really a matter of making sure that when you set up the account you click that your incoming mail server is an IMAP rather than a pop3 one - also, you need to write 'imap.idnet.com' rather than 'pop3.idnet.com' for the incoming server.  Then when you go into the account, OE asks if you want it to download and synchronise available folders, and you click 'yes'.  That SHOULD download all folders from the web, but as I found, it didn't. 

[Rik]

Curiously, Krysia, I set up an IMAP account in both Outlook and OE yesterday. I found I got all the folders (In, Sent, Drafts, Junk, Junk Email & Trash) in both, but I couldn't work out how to stop synchronising the In box in Outlook, but I could in OE. (No, I don't know the difference between Junk & Junk Email )

I plan to do some more experimenting when I get a moment.

[Lance]

Junk email is the standard Outlook folder, which as far as I could work out, can't be removed from the folder list in Outlook. Junk is the folder as set up by IDNet for the spam.

Like you Rik, I couldn't work out how to stop Outlook syncing the inbox

[Rik]

Ah, that makes sense, thanks Lance.

The peculiar thing I find with the IMAP account is that, despite being the last account checked, it always grabs the incoming mail, even though the POP account has already been checked. I need a tutorial. In OE, it's easy to get it to work as we're trying to - weird.

[Simon]

In Mozilla Mail, which is basically the same as Thunderbird, you right click the main IMAP folder in the folder pane, then select Subscribe, where you can then select / de-select the folders you want to download.  Would have thought it to be much the same in Outlook or OE.  I also had to go into Properties on the Junk folder, and tick the box to make it check for new messages.  I seem to have it all figured out in Mozilla, but I still can't get it to work on Thunderbird on my Vista laptop.

[Rik]

Best have a word with Andrew in support, then, Simon. It doesn't look like we're going to crack this here.

[Simon]

It's OK, I've done it.  Don't know what I did wrong last night, but it's now working on both machines.

[Rik]

Good news. Now write a sticky, quick.

[Simon]

I think it was more luck than judgment! 

[krysia]

It shouldn't matter if the junk folder synchronises in an IMAP account, as the messages in it won't download onto your computer unless you've marked the folder for off-line viewing (but I've forgotten how to do that, even though I did it recently!).

[Ann]

Oh dear.  I am one new user who didn't know that IDnet did spam filtering.  I use Eudora for popmail but just went into the web interface and found one message in spam.. it was an email that I had written myself using mail2web and my IDnet address.  I had copied in myself and wondered why I had never received that mail.  Is there any way to turn the spam feature off?  I'd much rather have everything in Eudora where I can actually see it.

[Lance]

Ann,

Have a look at this post here - only have a few weeks wait from the looks at it.

[Ann]

Thanks, I saw that afterwards.  I hope that when they say determine the strength.. they mean we can turn it right off.  Can't wait.

[Simon]

Yes, I also hope there will be an option to turn it off.  Surely this would be possible with a bit of tinkering...?

[Gary]

Oh dear.  I am one new user who didn't know that IDnet did spam filtering.  I use Eudora for popmail but just went into the web interface and found one message in spam.. it was an email that I had written myself using mail2web and my IDnet address.  I had copied in myself and wondered why I had never received that mail.  Is there any way to turn the spam feature off?  I'd much rather have everything in Eudora where I can actually see it.

At present there is not a way to turn off spam filtering, but there is the imap workaround that was posted so you can download the headers from your junk mail folder 

[Gary]

"Quoted from Simon" The spam filter operates at the SMTP level and so is global across the whole idnet.com domain - i.e. it can't be disabled for an individual mailbox.

What I do is to have two "Accounts" setup in Outlook Express: one is setup in POP3 mode to empty my Inbox folder on the server and the other is setup in IMAP mode but is only subscribed to the Junk folder and only downloads the Headers of the mails that are in there. This way you can continue to receive your usual, filtered POP3 mail in the normal way and at the same time you can peek into the Junk folder (from within OE) to scan the stuff that's in there without having to log into the Webmail interface.

Cheers
Simon

[Rik]

Thanks, I saw that afterwards.  I hope that when they say determine the strength.. they mean we can turn it right off.  Can't wait.

There's no way to turn the spam filter off right now, Ann, but changes are in the pipeline.