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E-mail quota information

Starting from July 2012 each SISSA mailbox is checked for space occupation and limited by a quota.

After August 2013 e-mailboxes migration to the new storage, all users have a quota of 25Gb (except users that had requested a higher quota before migration).

The new quota is split in this way:

  • 5Gb for all folders (Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Trash, etc), to check this first quota please see the section Show quota information;
  • other 20Gb in the Archives folder.

Archives is a special folder:

  • you cannot copy e-mail messages directly in this folder,
  • but you have to create one or more sub folders. To make this operation easier, every year a new sub folder will be created with the name of the year. For example, for this year a sub folder named 2013 has been created.
If before August 2013 e-mailboxes migration a user already had a folder named Archives containing some e-mail messages, those messages have been moved in a sub folder called old_archives.

If your mailbox go over quota all the subsequent e-mails sent to you will be rejected. In this case a sender will receive an error that explains that the message is automatically rejected because your mailbox if full for quota exceeding. No error messages will be sent to your mailbox for those rejections. So you have to check periodically you mailbox quota occupation and take care of e-mails with quota warnings.

Warnings are automatically sent to you when the space occupation go over the 80%, 90% and 95% of the quota assigned to your mailbox. A quota warning is an e-mail like this:

From: postmaster@sissa.it
To: <USERNAME>
Subject: Quota warning - Allerta quota

Your mailbox is now 80% full - La tua casella di posta elettronica è ora piena al 80%.

To prevent the filling of your mailbox don't discard/ignore those mails from postmaster@sissa.it and take the time to delete not useful messages or to archive the old ones.

The simple way to display your mailbox quota information is to access with a webmail platform:

Anyway you could use any e-mail client compatible with the IMAP4 quota specification (RFC 2087), as for example Mozilla Thunderbird or Gnome Evolution.

With Thunderbird the quota check is done by:

  • selecting a folder (eg: the INBOX),
  • then right clicking on it and selecting Properties from the context menu. A dialog window is displayed (the last tab is about the mailbox quota information).

To enlarge the image, click on it. Quota information

Quota information is displayed also on the bottom toolbar of Thunderbird, but only when your mailbox is over 80% full.

To free space in your mailbox the possible actions are:

Delete SPAM or unuseful emails

When you receive a SPAM e-mail the best way is to mark it as “Junk” or to move it to a specific folder, in order to periodically check and delete. Thunderbird, like some other email clients, provides a Junk folder and special menu items to mark messages as Junk and takes appropriate actions. See the Mozilla Thunderbird support page "Thunderbird and Junk / Spam Messages". In addition SISSA mailbox have a special folder named “Junk” where emails categorized as probably SPAM are saved. Check and empty periodically this folder.

Empty Trash

You could empty the Trash folder periodically or set an automatic rule in your Thunderbird's configuration. To set up the automatic empty of Trash folder open the account configuration:

  • 1a) for Windows and Mac OS ToolsAccount Settings
  • 1b) for Linux EditAccount Settings,
  • 2) and then select Server Settings on the left section.
  • 3) Put a check in the Empty Trash on Exit box (the item marked with a red rectangle in the picture below), then confirm selecting the OK button.

Account Settings - Server Settings

Compacting emails

“Compacting” a folder has nothing to do with compressing or zipping the messages, but only with the removing messages previously marked for deletion or moved to another folder. In Thunderbird, when an email is deleted or moved to another folder, the file is copied and the original is marked for deletion and hidden from view. Those emails marked for deletion are not physically removed until you “compact” the folder. This is a tradeoff done to improve performance in large folders.

Thunderbird automatically compact folders on exit starting from version 5, but you could also select an account (eg: clicking on the INBOX folder) and then manually compact the folders using the menu command File → Compact Folders instead. You can also compact a specific folder by right clicking on it and selecting Compact from the context menu.

Archiving e-mails

The e-mail archiving on your server space is enabled for default in Thunderbird, but you are kindly suggested to check and adjust your archiving options, in particular if you have already used Thunderbird to archive e-mails to local folders.

To check and if it necessary to change your Thunderbird Account settings follow those steps:

  • for Windows and Mac OS ToolsAccount Settings,
  • for Linux EditAccount Settings,
  • select Copies & Folders on the left section,
  • in the drop-down menù Archives Folders on select your-username@sissa.it (for example jsmith@sissa.it),
  • customize archiving clicking on the button Archive options….

Account Settings -> Copies & Folders

In the Archive Option window:

  • 1) the Yearly archived folders box has to be checked,
  • 2) depending of your previous choice about archive subfolders and to preserve their structure, put/keep the check in the insert Keep existing folder structure of archieved messages box, then
  • 3) at the end click on the OK button.

Verify / change the box contents. After closing the Archive Option window … save & confirm the previous Copies & Folders page content clicking on the OK button.

After the reconfiguration of the archive feature, you can archive a group of messages (in the same folder) selecting them, then by right clicking on the selection and chose Archive from the context menu.

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