This page provides answers to some of the questions which will occur to you once you start using Webmail. See also the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page provided by Horde, the manufacturers of IMP.
One advantage of Webmail is that you can use it to access your e-mail while you are away and unable to use your usual mail program. Using Webmail temporarily will not usually cause problems, but there are circumstances where dificulties could arise. The following notes describe the interaction of Webmail with other mail systems.
Irrespective of what program you use to read your mail, incoming mail is stored on your home server until you have read it. What happens next depends on which mail program you use, and what choices you make.
Usually Eudora and Outlook remove messages from the mail server when you download them to your Mac or PC. You can alter the settings in these programs to change this behaviour, but we do not usually advise you to do this unless for special reasons.
Webmail will leave your messages in your Webmail INBOX unless you store them in a folder or delete them. This usually means that messages will continue to be available to Eudora and Outlook after you have read them with Webmail, unless you store them in a folder or delete them.
The interaction of the different mail programs is summarised as follows:
If you have used the Unix "mail" program in the past, your read messages will (by default) have been stored in a file called mbox in your home directory. Webmail places your new mail messages in the mbox file. If you don't have one (which will be the case with most people) Webmail leaves your messages in your incoming mail area on the server.
If you do have a file called mbox, Webmail will use it. In this case you will find that as well as your new messages you may have a number of old messages, possibly very old messages dating back to the early days of the Unix servers.
If the mbox file goes on growing you risk running out of disk quota.
In order to send a Word document or any other file by e-mail you have to "attach" it to your message. Different mail programs handle attachments in different ways, and although Webmail is compatible with most of the other common mail programs you must be prepared for problems.
Many of the problems that people encounter with attachments have nothing to do with the mail programs. If you send a document to someone as an attachment, they must have software that is capable of opening the document.
Remember that attachments are the commonest way in which viruses are distributed. So only open an attachment if you know who sent it. Even if you know the sender you should only open the attachment if you are reasonably sure that they intended to send it. Do not send unexplained and unannounced attachments to other people.
Webmail has a limit of 2 MB on the size of message (including attachments).
Sending attachments is described in the Webmail FAQ.
When someone sends you an attachment Webmail will display a link to the file. This behaves like other hypertext links in your Web browser: when you click on it your browser will try to display the file. If your browser doesn't have the necessary plug-in to display the file it will offer you the option of saving it on your disk.
Remember the security warnings about downloading and opening attachments. E-mail attachments are the commonest means for spreading viruses. Only click on an attachment to download it if you know what it is and are sure that it was sent intentionally by your correspondent. When you use Webmail it is easy to bring the attachments down onto your Mac or PC, so make sure you have adequate anti-virus software.
Clicking on the "Addressbook" icon on the main menu bar brings up either the "Address Book Listing" window or the "Search" window:
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Clicking on the "Options" link in the addressbook menu bar gives you the opportunity to set one of these as the default to appear each time you open your addressbook.
You can now search the local directory of e-mail addresses using the Search window of the Webmail Addressbook.
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