Troubleshooting
E-mail Quotas
Whether you use WebMail or a third-party e-mail client, all your e-mail is originally stored on the Wesleyan mail servers. Since you share this space with thousands of other students, each user is subject to a quota on the amount of space available. The current quotas are:
- Undergraduates: 100MB
- Graduate students: 30MB
- Faculty and staff: 30 MB
- Class of 2006: 50MB
- Alumni: 25MB
If you approach your quota, you will receive a warning e-mail. If you have exceeded your quota, you will receive an e-mail warning that your account will be disabled in 24 hours. In order to avoid this disabling of your account, you must delete stored messages so that you are no longer over quota. After doing so, you will receive an e-mail confirming the status of your account. If you do not heed the over-quota warning, all non-Wesleyan e-mail will be automatically bounced and will not reach you. Wesleyan does not keep a log of bounced email.
Attachments
To help protect our network, all incoming and outgoing e-mails are scanned for inappropriate attachments, such as those that may contain a virus. If a virus is detected and cleaned, an e-mail goes to the recipient, not to the sender; same with attachments. Illegal attachments include:
.scr, .com, .zip, .exe, .vbs, .cpl, .bat, .pif, .ceo, .reg, .scf, .vbe, .wsc, .wsf, .shb, .wsh, .sct, .lnk, .chm, .cnf, .js, .jse, .mad, .maf, .mag, .mam, .maq, .mar, .mas, .mat, .mav, .maw, .shs, .shb, .xnk, .mhtml, and .webpage.rar.
Attachments whose names contain ten or more characters of whitespace, whose names end in double extensions (such as football.exe.jpg), or whose names are longer than 150 characters are deleted. E-mails with over 50 attachments are also deleted.
Server Ports
Wesleyan's mail servers use standard ports to send and receive mail. They are as follows:
- Incoming Mail
- POP: If using SSL, use port 995. Otherwise, use port 110.
- IMAP: If using SSL, use port 993. Otherwise, use port 143.
- Alumni, faculty, and staff e-mail does not support SSL for POP connections.
- Outgoing Mail (SMTP)
- If using SSL, use port 465. Otherwise, use ports 25 or 587.
- We recommend using the SSL port for purposes of security.
- If you are using port 465, make sure you choose SMTP with authentication in your e-mail client. You should enter your e-mail username and password.
- Some ISPs (like Comcast) block SMTP port 25. If you find you cannot send mail using port 25, use 587 instead.
Spam
Spam is a major problem for most e-mail users. Wesleyan provides sophisticated services for managing unsolicited e-mail. Users can set SPAM settings from the Options window in WebMail.
Still not working? Make sure you have not whitelisted *@wesleyan.edu. Please note that internal Wesleyan email is not scanned through the spam filter, regardless of your settings. Remember to report spam that makes it past the filter by clicking the Spam button in WebMail; also, report legitimate e-mail that gets caught by the spam filter by clicking Not Spam in WebMail. This helps improve the accuracy of our spam filters.
Mail Forwarding
If you would like to have your mail forwarded to a different address, go to your E-Portfolio and click Mail Forwarding in Tools and Links. Note that forwarded mail is not scanned for spam by Wesleyan's spam filter.
Fixing Common Problems
Cannot create folders in WebMail: You are likely trying to create a folder with a name that includes illegal characters. Stick to alphanumeric characters.
WebMail no longer sorts mail: "Threaded View" is likely enabled. To turn this view off, look under the "Move Message to" select box above your main message list.
WebMail is missing mail: Typically, this happens accidentally when you set up an external mail client using POP. Either change your client's settings to leave mail on the server, set it up to connect via IMAP and drag all your mail to your inbox, or contact Operations via HelpDesk to restore your mail.
Reply-To problems: If others replying to your e-mails are receiving odd messages, check your Reply-To field under Personal Options in WebMail. This field should contain a full, valid e-mail address. While "jdoe@wesleyan.edu" will work, "jdoe" will not.
Outgoing mail is delayed or rejected: Many large ISPs have tagged Wesleyan's forwarding mail servers as spammers. This occasionally results in rejected or deferred mail to people who forward through us. Contact HelpDesk for assistance.
Lots of spam: Wesleyan's spam filter is off by default. Make sure you have an action for detected spam, such as 'move messages to Spam folder'. SpamAssassin configuration can be accessed from WebMail by clicking on Options and then Spam Filter Configuration.
My mailbox is small, but is still over quota: Make sure that you have purged your Spam and Trash folders; these count towards your quota, too! If all folders look within quota but there is still a problem, you may be subscribed to a folder that you cannot see. Go to the "Folders" link in WebMail. You should be able to subscribe to the missing folder, and then will be able to see it to delete messages. Additionally, certain users of older systems may have junk data in their home directory. Contact HelpDesk for assistance.
Sources
Portions of this page were obtained from https://dokuwiki.wesleyan.edu/doku.php?id=email:faq and are subject to the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license. Other portions were obtained from http://wesconfess.com/wiki/index.php?title=Wesleyan_email_FAQ and are subject to the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2.