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Using email

• Email programs ('clients')
  • Outlook
  • Webmail
  • Thunderbird
  • Pine
• Using mailboxes or folders
• Handling attachments
• Is an attachment really necessary?
• Errors and warning messages
• Limits on message size, etc
• Email domains
• Why IMAP and not POP?

Email programs ('clients')

Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is the email and calendaring program used by most staff and research postgraduates.

More information about the staff/researcher email and calendaring system

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Webmail with Roundcube

Roundcube is Sussex's web interface to email for undergraduates and taught postgraduates, primarily provided for reading your email from off-campus at a location where you only have access to a web browser.

Roundcube is used by the email link in both Sussex Direct and Study Direct.

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Thunderbird

Thunderbird is a product of the Mozilla organisation and is a stablemate of the popular Firefox web browser. It is increasingly popular as an email client, being powerful and easy to use. See our detailed guide to installing and configuring Thunderbird for use with the Sussex email system.

Thunderbird Portable, which can be run from a USB memory stick is also available, and you may find this preferable to using webmail. More details about Thunderbird Portable can be found in the ITS Services Online Help Desk at FAQ 1450.

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Pine

Pine is a plain-text mailer on the central Unix server. Some people prefer to use it to read their email, as it can be quicker and simpler to use for those with experience of the Unix system. It is operated by typing command letters instead of the conventional 'point-and-click' interface such as used by typical Windows applications.

To use Pine, you must first connect to the central Unix system using a suitable secure Telnet client such as PuTTY, which is available at Sussex.

Find out more about PuTTY, including how to download, install and configure it.

After starting PuTTY and connecting to the Unix server, login with your username and password. You should then type pine (then press [Enter]).

Guidance on using Pine.

When you have finished with Pine and closed it, enter the command exit, which will log you out and close your PuTTY session.

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Using mailboxes or folders

Mailboxes (folders) are very useful as they allow you to organise your messages and store them permanently without taking up limited INBOX space. There are two types of mailbox:

Local

Directly accessible from the PC. This facility is not available to people using IT Services Cluster PCs, but anyone using a PC in their office could store mailboxes on their local hard disk (usually drive C:). An advantage of this option is that local mailboxes are directly accessible from any PC application. A disadvantage of this option is that local mailboxes will not be accessible from any other computer.

Remote

Stored on IT Services' central file server. This has the advantage that security copies are made of your mailboxes, so if the disk holding the information fails the information will normally be restored. Another advantage is that the mailboxes are accessible when you are away from your usual PC.

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Handling attachments

One useful email facility is the ability to send files as well as plain text. The files can contain graphics, spreadsheets, video clips as well as formatted documents.

The disadvantage of attachments is that they can be very large. This means that although the maximum capacity of your mailstore might appear to be very generous (see Limits on message size below) it can easily become full if you do not take regular measures to remove unwanted email.

IT Services recommend that you do not open any attachments from within your mail program. This is because of the danger of the attachment having a virus. We recommend that you save the attachment as a file and then check the file with virus protection software in the same way as you should check all files you receive.

Once you have saved the attachment, we recommend that you delete the message from your mailstore, as attachments can consume large amounts of mailstore space.

When sending attachments please bear the following in mind:

Limit of 50MB

For all outgoing messages, there is a limit of 50MB, but you should make sure that your attachments total no more than 25-30MB as they may increase in size by up to 50% when they are sent, due to the MIME-encoding mechanism. For more information about limits to message size see Limits on message size below.

Stripping attachments

Some companies use security software that may strip away your attachments when your message is received by their mail server.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

IT Services advise that you do not send large attachments at all, but instead use FTP, the Internet protocol for transferring files between computers.

» How to move files between computers
» Download file transfer software for your own computer.

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Is an attachment really necessary?

You should avoid sending attachments if you can send the information in another way:

• if you need to send a relatively small amount of text, it's much more efficient to cut and paste the text into the body of an email
• if you need to send information that changes frequently it's much more efficient to upload it to a web page and just include the URL in the body of the email

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Errors and warning messages

Delivery failures

Sometime a message cannot be delivered because there is an error in the person's mailname or email address. In this situation the message will be returned to you. The returned message will be from Mail Delivery System and the subject will be Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender. In this situation you should check that you have correctly typed the address. The message will consist of your original message preceded by some explanatory test. In the example below the mail name "rogers" is not a valid username:

Delivery delays

Sometimes the message cannot be delivered immediately because of a technical problem. If this situation persists for some time you will be informed. The message will be from Mail Delivery System and the warning will be of the form Warning: message 13o1t6-0001hQ-00 delayed.

There are a number of reasons for delivery delays, for example:

• There might be problems with the equipment that forms the link to the recipient's site;
• The mail system at the recipient's site might be temporarily offline;
• The recipient might have a full INBOX or exhausted their mailstore quota and be unable to receive any more mail.

There is no need for you to do anything in this situation as the system will keep trying to deliver your email (although, if it was an urgent message, you might wish to telephone the recipient to check that their INBOX is not full). The message you received was just for your information.

An example of the message you might receive is given below:

A more detailed description of the retry policy follows. The retry policy depends on where the mail is being delivered. If it is going to a campus address, i.e. to a system on campus, then the policy has three components, tried in turn:

1. For the first 2 hours, an attempt is made every 10 minutes on the assumption that the problem may be transitory;
2. After the first 2 hours, further attempts are made after another 2 hours (i.e. 4 hours after the first failure), and then with a 1.5 geometric progression (so after 3 hours, then 4.5 hours, then 6.7 hours) until the message has been in the queue for 16 hours
3. After the message has been delayed for 16 hours, attempts are made every 8 hours. This retry interval is used until the message has been delayed for four weeks, at which point it is rejected and returned to sender.

For mail being sent off campus, a similar three stage procedure is used, but less effort is spent:

1. Initially attempts are made every 15 minutes for 2 hours
2. After the first 2 hours, further attempts are made after another 2 hours (i.e. 4 hours after the first failure), and then with a 1.5 geometric progression (so after 3 hours, then 4.5 hours, then 6.7 hours) until the message has been in the queue for 16 hours
3. After 16 hours attempts are made every 8 hours for 1 week when the sender receives an automatic message warning of the delay. The sender will continue to receive the warning every 24 hours while it is impossible to deliver the message.

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Limits on message size

Incoming mail

There is a limit of 50MB on any single incoming mail message. Any message, including all attachments, that exceeds this limit will be returned to the sender. You will not be informed of the returned message. If the sender contacts you about this matter IT Services can arrange for the sender to provide the file. Please contact Online Support for further details

As mentioned earlier, your incoming messages are held in your mailstore (in your "INBOX") until you either delete or move them into another mailbox (folder). The size of your INBOX is governed by the total space available to you in your mailstore. Each account has a nominal 1GB of storage space available.

You will receive a warning message from your mail handler program (such as Mulberry) when you are using more than 90% of your mailstore capacity. This warning will repeat every time you open one of your mailboxes.

If you receive this warning, you should reduce the size of your INBOX or other folders by deleting unwanted messages. Note that the system will not deliver a new message to you if your mailstore is full. If a message cannot be delivered to you because of this, it will not be returned to the sender immediately but instead held in a queue for up to 7 days, during which time further attempts will be made to deliver the message. However, you will not be told that there is a message waiting to be delivered, but during this time the sender will be informed of the difficulty in delivering the message. After 7 days of unsuccessful delivery attempts, the message will then be returned to the sender.

One of the major causes of excessive mailstore space usage is the presence of messages with attachments. IT Services strongly advises you to remove messages with attachments as soon as possible, first having saved the attachment elsewhere if necessary.

If you are informed by someone that their message was returned as it was too large you should contact Online Support who will advise you on how to overcome this problem.

Outgoing mail

As for incoming email, there is a limit of 50MB on the size of a single message that can be sent. See above for information about how you can use FTP instead of email to send/move large files.

Forwarded mail

An increasing number of students are getting their Sussex email automatically forwarded to another service such as those hosted by Yahoo and HotMail. Some of these services have lower limits on the maximum message size than Sussex. This means that some messages, which could have been received at Sussex, will not be accepted by the other mail service. Instead the message will be returned to the original sender. This can not only affects students but also those (such as teaching faculty) who wish to use email to communicate with their students. Please note that the returned message will have the email address of the person at the "forwarded" site not their Sussex address.

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Email domains

The Sussex email system uses a system of domains, so as to allow the various schools and departments to use email addresses that more closely identifies them, and to allow use of generic, role-based addresses. The domain names appear before the word sussex in an email address, for example the hypothetical address head@english.sussex.ac.uk. Please note however that domained addresses cannot be used on an ad hoc basis; they need to be set up in advance as aliases by IT Services.

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IMAP or POP?

There are two "protocols" (languages used for communication between email clients and email servers) for accessing email:

IMAP

Internet Message Access Protocol

POP

Post Office Protocol

The IT Services system uses IMAP.