topic Re: Reducing mailbox size in Email

Reducing mailbox size

wjhd — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 18:43:04 GMT

Hoping someone can help me please.

I keep receiving a message saying my mailbox is too large.

I don't know how to resolve this.

I have tried to delete emails but it seems to be very slow. I pick up my email regularly on my PC and mobile and have all of my emails in Outlook in folders on my PC and archive them regularly, should they still be on the server? Can't I take them off the server and keep them on my computer without them causing an issue, or do I need to permanently delete messages from my PC?

Apologies for my lack of knowledge!

Thanks

Re: Reducing mailbox size

RPMozley — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 20:15:57 GMT

To see what is currently stored on the server, login to the webmail @ https://webmail.plus.net

There may well be lots of emails in the trash folder, best start there and empty it out. If there’s more than 1,000 emails in the inbox you might need to look into it. Also check the archive emails haven’t been stored on the server accidentally.

Re: Reducing mailbox size

wjhd — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 20:48:07 GMT

Thanks, I keep logging in and trying to empty folders (really old stuff) but it just starts to buffer and if I refresh they are all still there. It's taking sooo long.

Some messages are greyed out, does that mean they are already archived? I can't seem to delete them...

Re: Reducing mailbox size

RPMozley — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 21:24:32 GMT

I believe the greyed out ones are marked as deleted. They’re not quite the same as actually deleted emails (i.e. moved to trash) but they should disappear as soon as the inbox list is ‘compacted’.
The webmail does take its time with large amounts of mail, just leave it to complete if you have time.

Re: Reducing mailbox size

Mads — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 12:48:42 GMT

Hey @wjhd,

Sorry to hear you are having trouble with the size of your mailbox and I apologise for the inconvenience caused.

I'm afraid we have no tools this side to mass delete emails, nor do we have the feature for customers to mass delete emails themselves. I would suggest keeping the inbox at below 750mb.

Thanks.

Re: Reducing mailbox size

Townman — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 20:15:25 GMT

@wjhd

You refer to Outlook - there are lots of versions and they each behave quite differently - particularly in respect of how deleted items are managed. Only Outlook 2013 onwards does that half reasonably!

@RPMozley

Webmail (the browser base round cube interface) does indeed take a lot of time if the folder sort option is anything other than "none".

Re: Reducing mailbox size

Gandalf — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 12:17:51 GMT

@wjhd If you're collecting your mail on Outlook using IMAP, the emails will stay on webmail until you delete the emails from the inbox either on Outlook or webmail. Realise that webmail can be quite slow if you've got a lot in your mailbox.

If you've archived your mail in Outlook, you should be able to delete emails from the regular inbox folder while retaining what's in the archive. Another option assuming you are using IMAP, would be to set up your emails in Outlook using POP3.

You'd then be able to set things up in a way that your emails will automatically be deleted from webmail once Outlook gets a copy of the message. It'd then be solely stored on your computer in your Outlook inbox, not on webmail/our server.

If you're already using POP3 then I'd recommend checking that the option to "Leave a copy of messages on the server" is unticked. There's a little more information Here about this.

Hope this helps.

Re: Reducing mailbox size

tjmckee — Sun, 15 Mar 2020 16:41:05 GMT

I am getting the message below, but have failed to find "personal settings" to click. I have tries phoning and emailing without success and have had to try this route.

I suspect it relates to a past version of the system?

We're letting you know you have now used more than 75% of your mailbox capacity, and you need to take action to reduce the size of your mailbox. If your overall mailbox size is larger than the 1GB allocated amount, we may have to archive your largest mailbox to bring you under the 1GB limit.

The reason we do this is because large mailboxes can have an adverse effect on other users on the platform.

To help you reduce the overall size, here's a list of your largest mailboxes -

Mailbox Size
default 410.784 MB
angel 235.9 MB
tbacku 153.224 MB
Total 799.912 MB

Itâ€™s easy to keep track of your usage on Webmail. Just follow these steps
1. Click Personal Settings.
2. Then choose Folders.
3. Click on the folder you want to check.
4. To see the size of the folder, choose Click to get folder size.

Please don't hesitate to get back in touch online at http://contactus.plus.net or by phone on 0800 432 0200 if we can be of help.

Re: Reducing mailbox size

Townman — Tue, 17 Mar 2020 00:04:27 GMT

Indeed, those instructions are not clear at all!!

This refers to options under webmail - see webmail.plus.net
Log into the mailbox
The option you want is SETTINGS (there is no personal settings option)
Select FOLDER tab
Select the folder on the left panel
Select the INFORMATION tab
Click the "Click to get folder size" link

@JonoH @JW - can the guidance in the FUP waring email be reviewed please?

Re: Reducing mailbox size

tjmckee — Tue, 17 Mar 2020 09:22:56 GMT

Thank you. I have been floundering as I was not certain where to go and what I would find. What a shame that the suggested phone number and email could not answer this over recent weeks. Much appreciated

Re: Reducing mailbox size

JW — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 10:39:50 GMT

@Townman I've added a task to our internal queue so that we can review the content of the message. I can't give a time frame for that at present though.

Re: Reducing mailbox size

Lerk — Tue, 07 Apr 2020 13:55:55 GMT

I've recently started getting these mails too. I thought I'd cracked this issue a couple of years ago by setting up an archive - but it doesn't appear to have worked (well the last email I can see on my IMAP device is the last unarchived message, but I've just got another >750MB reminder).

Last time I cleared my mailbox by setting up a pop3 account and downloading the lot - but as an IMAP user this rendered my email history inaccessible other than through my laptop so I'm loathed to do that again.

Webmail portal only shows 540 pages of messages back to the start of the year so I can't even manually delete the oldest messages.

Any ideas?

Re: Reducing mailbox size

tjmckee — Tue, 07 Apr 2020 20:47:21 GMT

The guidance above let me find size of one file. nearly 4000 emails and 400MB.

I gave up keeping attachments - so I sorted by size. It tends give "file error" once or twice but works in the end.

The boxes underneath let me select the current "page" about 40 items which I then deleted.

They went into the deleted folder, so I went to that and did the same to that. It save me 200MB so I hope I will stop getting the messages.

That is the best I could do. There was one I want to keep, so I forwarded it to another email address - and had to then also delete it in the sent items. I agree with the guidance I got from customer support. In essence "Our system is very old and not really fir for purpose. Why not use Google or Microsoft?" I do not want to use google or microsoft. May resport to a payed for service (IONOS, ex 1and1) for example. Good luck. Be patient The webmail system here crashes with large folders.

Re: Reducing mailbox size

Lerk — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 08:36:29 GMT

Aha!

I realised I have two sent items folders...
One of which had mails from 2008 in it!

Deleted these old sent messages (400MB) so hopefully should be ok now

Re: Reducing mailbox size

Townman — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 09:45:51 GMT

@tjmckee wrote:

I agree with the guidance I got from customer support. In essence "Our system is very old and not really fir for purpose. Why not use Google or Microsoft?" I do not want to use google or microsoft. May resport to a payed for service (IONOS, ex 1and1) for example. Good luck. Be patient The webmail system here crashes with large folders.

That depends on what is seen as the purpose of an email system. Email was never really intended to be a file sharing and distribution system. One might argue that using email to share massive attachments is not proficient or sensible. A more practical approach is to palace such content into a file sharing system and then share a link to that content via email.

Similarly solely accessing email via a webmail client is not "owning" the content; accessing email via a 'proper' email client which allows one to "off-line" and archive old emails.

What is your objection to Google or Outlook? Google I agree would not be my preference, but (aside from one cannot use one's own domain name) is a good solution, especially if conjoined with OneDrive for storing and sharing large files.

Re: Reducing mailbox size

balvack2 — Sat, 02 May 2020 15:49:59 GMT

Is there some way of finding out the current size of each mailbox without having to wait for the email from Plus to say you've hit the 75% level? I don't mean looking at the sizes of the folders within each mailbox. i.e. can I see the same info as is used to generate the automatic warning email?

ETA: I've looked at every option in Member Centre and the email settings only allow me to create/delete mailboxes or change the password.

Re: Reducing mailbox size

tjmckee — Sat, 02 May 2020 19:27:09 GMT

I am afraid that there is no good news here. I am getting frequent automated messages about this. (The contents of that give incorrect advice) I have had to log on to each id, go through a complicate procedure to see the size of files. (Someone kindly suggested) As you say, it is the same information as the email - but it does update if you delete some mail. When trying to delete or sort by size it may take repeated attempts as I get a series of "server error (error)" messages and gave to repeat. Sometimes the files are still in the folder when I next sign in. Deleting each page of 40 separately is sometimes successful. I have attached a typical error message. I have been unable to make it work and the help line did not sound surprised. The most positive suggestion was to give up and use someone else's mail system. In London I used Virgin and it worked well.

When I get time I'll review other systems, but apart from this problem Plusnet have been very helpful.

Re: Reducing mailbox size

Toni — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 16:44:51 GMT

This thread has been so helpful, 100% more helpful than any phone call I've had with Plus net. Thank you