Alert! Your Barnard Mailbox is Almost Full

If you have been getting emails with a subject line, “Alert! Your Barnard Mailbox is Almost Full”, your email account is approaching the space limit for messages stored on our server and you need to free up some space. If your account exceeds 90mb, you won’t be able to receive new email messages until you move or delete some of the messages already in your account. If your account reaches 100mb, you may not be able to log into your account to delete messages.

There are several approaches to fixing this problem: deleting messages in Webmail, deleting and moving messages in Email Clients, deleting messages in Pine, and reducing the size of personal Web Pages.

Delete Messages Using Webmail

• Log into your account via Webmail.
• Navigate to your Sent folder and delete all the messages you don’t need anymore. (If you click “Show All” and then “Toggle All” it will automatically select all of the messages in the folder.)
• Do the same for any other folders in your account.
• Click “Purge” next to the Trash folder

The Webmail tab in Ebear displays a graphic depicting how much of your space has been used. This graphic is only updated once a day - after you clear messages from your account, it is best to check your account size in Pine. Directions can be found here.

If you can’t log into Webmail, you may have exceeded the 100mb limit and you should try one of the following.

Delete or Move Messages Using an Email Client

If you already view your email in a client like Outlook Express, Thunderbird, or Mac Mail, move old emails from your Inbox to a local folder. Local means that any files inside the folder are stored on your computer, not on the server. This will delete the messages from the server but save them on your computer.

Drag emails from the Inbox on the Barnard server to a Local folder. Now those emails are saved onto your hard drive. You should also set your client to automatically expunge deleted emails from your account.

Below you can find examples on how to configure your email client to do all of this.

Outlook Express:

Use the instructions on the Academic Technologies site to set up Outlook Express to read your Barnard email.


 

Tools > Options > Maintenance tab:


 

Thunderbird:



Edit > Properties > Server Settings


 

Mac Mail

Coming soon!
 

Delete Messages Using Pine

Access your account through Pine. To run pine, you must use a secure client, such as SSH Secure Shell, Putty, or Terminal for Mac OS X. SSH Secure Shell is available in eBear and installed on all Barnard lab computers. There are detailed instructions on how to use SSH Secure Shell and Putty.

In Pine, you can sort your inbox by message size and move delete large messages and attachments. The Columbia AcIS website has a detailed article on using Pine.

As always, you can call the Help Desk (x4-7172) for assistance in identifying unneeded files and messages.

For additional information see our Love Your Computer Week Over Quota Tips.