Tech Guide

EMAIL
It is important to have your email set up correct as it is now used for important announcements and communication between the professors and you.

If you don't know about your UMass email address, please refer here.

 

Forwarding Your Email

If you don't use your UMaill as your primary email address, you can use the forwarding function on your UMail account.  To do this:

1)  Go to umail.oit.umass.edu, select UMail Post Office and login

2)  Choose Forward Email, select the circle stating "Forward all my incoming email to this address" and enter your primary email address in the text box.

3)  Click Submit and you're done.

Deleting Your Email

Some of you may have noticed that when you use your browser for email on UMail, and use the delete function, a cross on the message only appears but it isn't actually deleted.  Note that this happens on most popular email clients due to the IMAP (type of network protocol for your email) nature used by OIT.  The message will still take up your email space if it's crossed out!

For UMail through your browser:
If you delete your messages and don't see the crossed out messages (your messages is deleted), please check the right hand side to see if it looks like this:

If it looks exactly like the image above, click Show Deleted to have the crossed out messages show up.  And to permanently delete your messages, click on Purge Deleted.

Why do they make this extra complicated you ask?
Sometimes you may delete a message didn't mean to delete.  You can always check the crossed out message you accidentally deleted and click Undelete on the top left of the website.

It is a good idea to leave your deleted messages in there and purge deleted message every week or until your email quota (how much space you have left on your account) is close to full.

For Outlook Express:
You must have your specific account selected, ie:
mail-a.oit.umass.edu.  In other words you must have your inbox showing.  The top bar may look like this:

And just hit Purge to delete all deleted (crossed out) messages.  If the Purge button doesn't appear, right click on the top panel (where the Print, Send/Receive buttons are):

And you'll notice a menu like the above will show.  Select customize, look on the right hand area of the new window and you'll notice a list of options that you can use for your buttons on Outlook Express.

Select the buttons you want to see on the tool bar by just clicking Add.  You might have to scroll to find the Purge option.

Spam

Unfortunately there is no easy way to control this.  What you can do is trust in the OIT system of handling spam (but it isn't always accurate and you may see your friend's message in the SPAM folder!)  But you'll have to check to make sure the email in the SPAM folder is indeed spam!

To allow OIT to handle your spam:

1)  Go to umail.oit.umass.edu, select UMail Post Office and login

2)  Choose Spam Filtering and hit the radio button (the selection circle) for "Enable spam filtering."  Note you can choose the number of days before the account automatically deletes the spam messages.  All spam messages are kept in your SPAM folder (it's on the dropdown box that says Inbox when you're accessing UMail through your browser)

3)  Click Submit and you're done.