Using WebMail efficiently
Users complain of two problems connected with using WebMail when away from their office. Firstly they find that WebMail is slow, and secondly messages that they have read with WebMail are not available to them when they next use Eudora in the office. This note makes some suggestions about dealing with these problems.
More basic WebMail instructions are given on a handy card that you can get from the IT Service Desk. There is also a Frequently Asked Questions page.
Speeding up WebMail
Some suggestions for speeding up the use of WebMail are give at Speeding Up WebMail page.
WebMail and Eudora in tandem
If you have stored your messages in a WebMail folder they will not be downloaded to your desktop computer when you next check mail with Eudora. This might tempt you to leave all your messages in your INBOX, which will slow WebMail down. This might be all right if you are using WebMail in the evening and will be going back to Eudora the next day, but if you are away from Eudora for a long time you must either delete your messages or move them into a folder.
Using WebMail for an extended period
If you are away for a longish time, move those messages you want to keep into a folder called (for example) holidaymail. Then just before returning to work, move the messages out of holidaymail back into INBOX. You can move multiple messages by putting a tick beside them in the Mailbox View and then choosing the target folder and clicking Move. You can move messages back into the INBOX just as into any other folder.
Messages in INBOX are not available in Eudora
It sometimes happens that even if messages are in your WebMail INBOX they still are not visible in Eudora. This is usually caused by the presence of an old file called mbox in your home directory. If this happens to you, contact the IT Service Desk who will put it right.
Messages downloaded in Eudora are not available in WebMail
When you check your mail with Eudora the messages are downloaded from the mail server, and usually they are then deleted from the server. This means that they cannot be seen by WebMail. This doesn't always matter, because often you will only use WebMail occasionally to see if there are new messages, so you are not interested in seeing messages that have been dealt with in Eudora.
If you want to see your messages in WebMail as well as Eudora, you can use Eudora's 'Leave mail on Server' option. If you do this you must also tell Eudora to delete the messages from the server after not more than five days. Both the 'Leave mail on server' and the 'Delete after [so many] days' options are in the Incoming Mail section of the Eudora options (called 'settings' on the Mac).
WebMail and Internet Explorer
This comment will sound hollow to those few users who have found difficulties running WebMail: there is a mysterious fault on a very small number of Windows systems which makes Internet Explorer incapable of running WebMail. On these PCs you are told that your session has expired as soon as you log on. If this happens to you, the first thing to try is deleting the 'cookies' - choose Internet Options from the Tools menu in Internet Explorer, and click the Delete Cookies button. Restart Internet Explorer and try again. If the fault persists, we advise you to download an alternative browser, such as Mozilla Firefox (which many people in any case find preferable to Internet Explorer).
Lastly, a word of caution. Because of the wide variety of network configurations that you will meet at home and when travelling, IT Services cannot guarantee to be able to make things work everywhere.
