Lots of Options with PSMail Rules

These days, it seems we all wear a number of different hats. There’s a hat we put on for our job (or two for our jobs!), one for our family, another couple for civic activities and friends. In our digital world, it seems inevitable that all these aspects of our lives, however diverse, end up running into each other in one concentrated space: our inbox.

PSMail has recently introduced a mail rules system to help untangle your inbox and keep all your “hats” in order. It can even take care of some simple tasks on its own, saving you time and effort. Best of all, it’s included at no extra charge with the subscription you already have!

Continue reading Lots of Options with PSMail Rules

Switching from POP3 to IMAP without loosing emails

If you have been using the POP3 protocol to collect email for a long time and would like to move to IMAP to support multiple machines or to ensure that your messages are preserved on the server, here are the steps you should take (NOTE: more on the relative advantages and disadvantages of each protocol here):

1. Create a new IMAP account on the same computer with the same email client that you currently use with POP3. Don’t delete your current POP3 account.

2. Ensure the new IMAP account can send and receive emails.

3. Disable but do not delete the POP3 account. In most email clients you can do this by selecting “Do not include this account when sending and receiving.” If there is no such option, just enter an incorrect password in the POP3 account to prevent it from collecting any more emails while the IMAP account is still functional.

4. Drag and drop emails from specific folders (Inbox, Sent, etc.) in your POP3 account to related folders (Inbox, SENT-ITEMS, etc.) in your IMAP account.

5. After the copy operation is complete, ensure that all emails actually copied and are complete. You can check this by closing your email and logging into your PSMail account via your browser at https://mail.psmail.net/dashboard/.

6. Go ahead and delete the POP3 account on your email client.

You’re finished! If you have any questions about this process or need further guidance, please contact our helpdesk here and we’ll be happy to help!

Repeatedly downloading messages when using POP3

PSMail allows our users to choose between IMAP and POP3 protocols. Each has its own specific advantages and disadvantages (see a more detailed comparison here), but if you’ve chosen POP3 there is a specific complication that may arise concerning repetitive email downloads. Typically with POP3, messages are stored on our server only until you access them. At that point, they move to your device and are deleted from our server. However, if you’ve selected to store messages on the server, there is no reliable way in this protocol to identify unique messages (in other words, which messages are new and which are old), so every time you get your messages from the server, it will download every message, whether or not you’ve already downloaded it before. It will continue to do this every time you retrieve messages.

Typically the reason to stick with POP3 is that you would not like messages kept on our server. If you want to keep the messages on the server (and be able, therefore, to access them from multiple devices) then IMAP is the right and reliable protocol to use.

For users who have faced this problem when downloading messages from the server, we recommend that you switch your email client setup to IMAP and afterwards entirely remove POP3 with the “save on server” option from the email client. You may need to retain current POP3 settings while also copying the “Sent” folder (or other local folders) to a server based folder accessible via IMAP.

Inserting a hyperlink into email when using webmail

To insert a hyperlink in email, just type out the link or copy and paste the link into email. The system will automatically convert it to a hyperlink. Note when you copy and paste you may need to either type Space or Enter keys to activate the link

Automatic hyperlinks in email edit

To insert hyperlinks from a picture or a custom text, select the picture or custom text and then use Command-K in Mac or Ctrl-K in Windows to activate the link. The link will be prompted and you can enter the full URL provide custom attribute like “Title” which will be visible on mouse over the link event and “Target” which is safe to leave it as “New Window”. See screenshot below for details

Manual enter hyperlinks using Command-k (Mac) and Ctrl-K (Windows)