Ticket reply

[#1]

My care4free email stopped working on December 9th. I raised a ticket - REQ01293836 - on the 12th and was told to expect a reply in 5days. As yet I have heard nothing. I am getting my desperate about what I’m missing. I get an engaged tone every time I try to ring. I have checked and haven’t been migrated to Greenby. Where do I go now?

[#2 · Accepted solution]

I've taken a look at the ticket and sent you a test email to see if there's a bounce-back.

Are you unable to send or receive in webmail? 

[#3]

What (if any) error message do you get?

Is it a case of you cannot connect or you are not receiving new email / cannot send emails?  A full mailbox would give rise to that experience.

Determining IMAP mailbox size.

Mailbox size can be found in some clients by various means, but there is nothing I am aware of on iPhones, iPads or MACOS clients.

MS Outlook will give you some indication for utilisation as follows

1. Right click on the account in the left panel
2. Select Data File Properties
3. Click the Folder Size Button
4. Read: Total Size (including subfolders)

Using RoundCube Webmail

1. Select Folder Actions... (cog icon bottom left)
2. Select Manage folders
3. Select each top level folder
4. Select the Information tab
5. Click "Click to get folder size"
6. Do each top level folder in turn
7. Add them up

The figure found / calculated might not be precisely the same as on the server, but it will be near enough.  If you have more than one mailbox on the account, you need to do this for all mailboxes and take the sum of them.

Pre-migration, the ACCOUNT storage allowances (across all mailboxes) are...

• Plusnet, Free-online and Force9 1GB - when 'full' emails may still be received and sent, but be aware that the contents are liable to being archived after 30 days of non-rectification
• The rest (Brightview and MAAF brands) have a hard 250MB allowance - when full no mail may be received, sent and in some cases deleted**

Post migration all accounts have a hard 2GB allowance - when full no mail may be received, sent and in some cases deleted**

**The standard action of DELETE is a MOVE to the trash folder - that requires free space on the server; if it is totally full the standard delete will not work.  The following might be found helpful...

1. Empty the trash folder if there is anything in it
2. Do a HARD delete - most email clients will do a non-recoverable delete in situ if the SHIFT key is depressed when doing a standard delete from (for example) the inbox - such deletes DO NOT go into the trash folder, so be careful!

[#4]

I cannot receive or send on my iPhone, outlook on my pc nor webmail. I have been told that attempts to email me tend to be bounced back. I have also had messages when trying to use it saying that imap is full. I have emptied all the sent, rubbish, received (apart from a handful) folders. I do have a raft of archived messages. Could they be the problem?

[#5]

Whatever is on the server in whatever folder counts to the 250MB server store, the content of local mail folders does not count, so it depends where your archive is.  It only needs a few emails with massive attachments (photographs) to blow 250MB of storage.

These small legacy mail services were fine in the days when folks did not use email for document transfer purposes; in such circumstances IMAP is not overly practical and one needs to use the dreaded POP3 client which stores everything received locally.  It does not through download anything in the server's sent items folder as might be sent via some other client.

Mixing POP3 and IMAP is never a good idea, especially where multiple clients are used ... and folks insist on using email of am object transfer service.  This might also help...

Culling mailbox contents

If you need to clean out your mailbox, may be because it is over quota, then as well as tidying up the inbox, you need to also look at the SENT ITEMS folder and then afterwards clear out the TRASH folder. However some times webmail performance can make this process very tedious, particularly if the delete action (actually a move to the trash folder) fails.

If you primarily want to delete emails, you can mitigate delete performance issues by doing an "immediate" delete (rather than a move to trash for deletion later) by holding down the SHIFT key when pressing the DEL key. This works in both webmail and most PC based email clients. WARNING SHIFT+DEL is not recoverable so be certain absolutely, that you do not need the email before pressing the buttons!

Alternatively, in webmail (Round Cube) Settings -> Server Settings there are some options worth exploring controlling how deletes are performed...

1. Flag the message for deletion instead of delete
2. If moving messages to "Deleted Items" fails, permanently delete them
3. Compact Inbox on logout

Setting these options and using them together will avoid the over heads of moving items to the trash folder when you wish to delete them. They will simply be greyed out and remain in the inbox list. After logging out of webmail, they will then be removed from the mailbox.

Whilst this might be highly proficient, it needs to be used with care, for when they are gone, they are gone. Note also that Plusnet house-keeping clears out the trash folder weekly.

[#6]

No webmail doesn’t work either. I have tried iPhone mail and outlook. All are out of use. I have been told that sending emails to me can trigger a mailbox full rejection message. Trying to send a message I have on occasion had a imap memory full message. I have emptied all the trash, bin and junk folders. I only have a handful of messages in my inbox and sent folders. One thing I wonder about is where does outlook put files when it archives them as it requests to do from time to time? I have my own collection of archive files that are stored locally but could outlook’s archiving be filling the imap space? As you can see I’ve had several helpful responses and I will follow them through but none appear at this stage to help with any files that may be hidden away somewhere.

[#7]

@Bodge1 have you checked all the folder sizes using webmail as per @Townman s post above

Using RoundCube Webmail

1. Select Folder Actions... (cog icon bottom left)
2. Select Manage folders
3. Select each top level folder
4. Select the Information tab
5. Click "Click to get folder size"
6. Do each top level folder in turn
7. Add them up

Also , when you select 'Manage folders' make sure that all folders are 'subscribed'  i.e they have ticks against them