NewDeal Technical Support Document 283

NEWMAIL

Tips about using NewDeal's E-mail client

E-Mail Attachments

To change the location where NewMail saves incoming attached files on your hard drive, open the Preferences dialog box from the Options menu in NewMail. Click the File button under Attachment File Location. In the File dialog box, double click the folder where you want to save your attachments. Then click Apply. Double check the path next to Location in the Preferences dialog box.

Attached files that you receive may be compressed or encoded with a variety of special softwares, or they may have been created with a software that you might have or might not have. If you cannot determine how to open or use a file you have received as an attachment, check the file name extension of the file. Sometimes, but not always, this may give you a clue about the compression method used or the software used to create the file.

For example, if the file ends in .ZIP, it is probably compressed with PKZIP. You will need PKUNZIP or equivalent to expand the file back into its original format before you can use it. If the file ends in .UUE, it's likely a UUEncoded file. In this case, you will need a UUDecoder program to return the file to its original format.

Be careful! Use caution when dealing with attached files. An attached file could contain a virus or trojan horse that might damage data on your computer if you open or run it. Unless you know and trust the person who sent the file, we recommend that you delete attached files without opening them. When I try to attach a file, it tells me "File not found."

To attach a file to an email, double click the file's name in the Attach File dialog box, then click the Attach button.

NewMail hangs when getting email

Some of our customers have reported that NewMail appears to hang or stall while trying to get mail, especially certain large emails. Since the email is not properly received, it is not deleted from the user's mailbox on the server, even if the option "Leave messages on server" is unchecked in the Preferences dialog box. Thus, NewMail may encounter the same problem each time you try to get mail until and unless the large email message is removed from the mailbox on the email server.

NewDeal engineers are looking into this problem and expect to provide a solution in an update or future version of NewMail. Until an update becomes available, here are three ways to work around this difficulty if you happen to encounter it:

  1. If you have access to a different email client, you can use it to get your email and to delete the large email from your mailbox on the server.
  2. You could call your ISP and ask them to clear the large email from your mailbox. The drawback to this approach is that you might lose email messages when the ISP clears them.
  3. You can check your email and delete the large messages from your mailbox on the server using a Web-based email access service. Several such services are listed below. These services provide access to your email account through a Web browser.
Once the large email has been cleared from your mailbox, you should be able to again use NewMail successfully.

Here are several Web-based email access services that work with Skipper as of this writing. We provide this list as a service to our customers. NewDeal does not endorse or support these web sites.

EmailPlanet - www.emailplanet.com

Check your POP mailbox from anywhere in the world using a browser. There's an option to delete a mail from the server, too.

Mail2Web - www.mail2web.com

A fast gateway for reading your POP mailbox from any browser and for sending messages.

MailReader.com - mailreader.com/mr2/nph-mr.cgi

A sophisticated web-based POP mail reader with many options.

QD-POP - www-informatics.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/qdpop/qdpop.htm

Web-based access to your own POP-mail account; appears to work well.

ReadMail - www.readmail.com

There's a statement on the home page that all mail is left on the server. However, there's a button when reading mail that can be used to delete messages.
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Last Modified 30 Apr 1999