My mother wrote to me that although the folders in her mail program (I assume she’s using Outlook Express) are nearly empty, she keeps getting messages from the ‘quota manager’ to say her mailbox is full.
I think that what has happened must be that her mail program is not configured to delete messages from the server once downloaded, and that she has exceeded her storage space on the server.
Could anyone tell me;
a) Whereabouts in OE is the option to delete downloaded messages from the server; I’ve had a look but can’t find it
b) How can my mum delete the messages she’s already read and deleted on her computer, off the server?
AHHHHHHHHH
Be careful! When writing mail using Outlook Express with your Hotmail account…Outlook express copies a “copy of the email” to a “Sent Folder” in the Hotmail account. So, go into Hotmail and check the “Sent” folder!
If you want to delete mail out of the deleted folder, and permanently off your comp. Just go into the Deleted folder and click delete on the mail you want gone.
Sorry for the misunderstanding. Try, "right click"on “Deleted Folder” and “empty folder”. that’ll take the messages off her computer and possibly her server?
My only other suggestion is this…
Go to mail2web.com/
Enter email address and password.
See if anything turns up. You can delete messages from there…
Good luck!
ps. You can also use mailwasher, but you’d have to get the software.
Doesn’t she have webmail access? I can access my POP mail by going to www.myserviceprovider.com/webmail - then enter username and address to view my mail account as if it was hotmail or yahoo or something.
Thanks Stragbasher & Stevieboy for the webmail tip. Can you really delete messages from the server using webmail? I don’t have POP3 mail so can’t try this out. I need to give my mum a complete, straightforward solution because she isn’t very confident with computers.
I used Netscape Communicator for a while several years ago. Both it and Outlook Express seem to have pros and cons. But my mum spent long enough learning OE that she wouldn’t want to have to start over again with Netscape.
On Outlook Express (even outlook), you have to make sure (as u already said) that you don’t leave a copy of the messages on the server. I know that some ISP won’t delete the message even if they are there for 1 year…
This option (leave the message on the server) is enabled by default on OE.
To disable: (I do it from my memory since I don’t use OE, but it should be something like that):
-> Go to “Tools”
->Choose account
-> open the properties of your account, and go to the “Advanced” tab.
-> On this window you will have many options: one of the last is the “leave the message on the server” checkbox. Make sure that this box is checked (or unchecked).
Get your mom’s password and account name. Log in and check it out for yourself. It’s too much trouble if you try to tell her what to do and you can’t see what she’s doing.
That’s what my mom had to do for my grandmother. My grandmother couldn’t answer all my mom’s questions, so when my mom went online she wrote some instructions that my grandmother could follow, and also let my grandmother know how she had gone wrong.
You can log on as your mother… It might feel like you’re impersonating her, but using her email account isn’t like wearing her clothes.
Another suggestion is to simply use ICQ to check email on the server.
It has the ability to preview and delete emails directly.
You have ICQ right? it’s very simple to set up - ask your mother for her password, username, pop3 server, and outgoing (which is probably the same as pop3 server)
I use ICQ to preview my emails before I download them to my computer. It saves me from downloading viruses, trojans and spam.
Just delete the crap right off the server before it even gets close to my inbox.