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On this page:
Overview
Requirements
Login
Read Mail
Send Mail/Attachments
Reply and Forward
Delete Messages
Folders
Save Messages to Computer
Options
WebMail and Other Email Clients

Note: MIT WebMail is for IMAP email users. The web-based email program for Exchange email is Outlook Web Access. If you're not sure which system you use, see: Q: How do I tell if my email is on the Exchange email server or the IMAP email server?

Overview

What it is
Welcome to MIT's implementation of WebMail for IMAP email users, a convenient way to read, reply to, send, and delete current email! WebMail lets you access your MIT email through almost any web browser, almost anywhere in the world. Access to the MIT post office servers is over a secure, encrypted link; check for the closed padlock, or other secure connection symbol, on your browser window. The messages and folders you see in WebMail are stored on the post office server until you explicitly delete and purge them. When you logout of WebMail, remaining messages and folders are left on the server. Individual quotas are enforced on the MIT post office servers, so you should move messages you wish to keep to your local computer and purge them from WebMail. The WebMail client being provided for general use by the MIT community is IMP.

What it is Not
WebMail is not for Exchange email users, their web email solution is Outlook Web Access. Webmail is intended as a primary email client, or for long-term, archival handling of your email. It is mainly for when you are not on the computer on which you normally handle your email. For long-term management of your email, you should use an IS&T-supported program.

Requirements

Before you can use MIT WebMail, you must have the following:

• A web browser connecting to http://web.mit.edu/webmail/.
  • The browser must support SSL encryption.
  • JavaScript must be enabled.
• An MIT Kerberos username and password (same as Athena, Eudora email, MITnet account).

Login

1. Go to https://webmail.mit.edu/
2. On the login screen, enter your Kerberos username and password, and click Login.

Logout
When finished with your WebMail session, click Logout at the top of the WebMail window.

Warning: Browsers Saving Passwords
Browsers can be set to remember user passwords to web pages. Especially if you are not on your usual computer and log into WebMail, answer No if the browser asks if you want it to remember your password. To set the browser to not remember passwords, and to clear any passwords it may have stored, see Disable Password Saving in Web Browsers.

Read Mail

WebMail opens to your INBOX of messages received; messages are listed with the most recent at the top.

• To read a message, click on Date, From, or Subject for that message.
• From the message window move to the next or previous message in the list by clicking on the small down- or up-pointing arrows to the upper- or lower-right corner of the message window.
• While in the message window, act on the message by clicking on the functions just above or below the message ( Delete | Reply | etc.)
• To read messages in other folders, select the folder from the drop-down menu next to Open Folder.
• To return to the message list for the current folder, click on Back to ... (for example, "Back to INBOX").

Receive Attachments
If an incoming message includes an attached file, when you open the message, information about the attachment appears in the header, along with a diskette icon.

To receive the attachment, click the diskette icon; you will be prompted for where you want to download the attached file on your computer. An application to open or read the file must be installed on the computer.

WebMail and Spam Screening
As with other email clients, MIT WebMail may be set up to screen your incoming messages for spam. For details, see MIT Spam Quarantine.

Send Mail/Attachments

Compose Message
Messages to be sent are prepared in the Message Composition window.

• To prepare a new message, click on Compose at the top of the WebMail window. A new window opens in which you address and write your message.
• To save a copy of the message on the MIT mail server, click the check box in options next to Save a copy in and select a folder from the menu options provided. To make this the default behavior, edit your preferences as follows:
  1. In WebMail, click the Options icon.
  2. Click on Personal Information in the Your Information category.
  3. Choose the Default Identity and click on Edit your identities.
  4. Make sure Default Identity is selected in the Your identities field.
  5. At the bottom there is an option for Save sent mail. Check this option, and select a sent mail folder.
  6. Click on the Change button at the bottom.
• To save a copy of your outgoing WebMail messages in your usual email program, Cc yourself when sending a message.
• To take final action on the message, click on the appropriate button: Send Message; Save Draft; Cancel Message. (Click Save Draft to put the message into a folder named webmail-drafts.)

Addressing
In the To, Cc, and Bcc fields, MIT WebMail is set up to automatically add @mit.edu if only a username is entered (for example, jdoe becomes jdoe@mit.edu).

Send Attachments

1. In the Attachments section of the Composition window, click on Browse.
2. Locate and select the file or folder on your computer; the file name appears in the Attachment field.
3. Click Attach, to the right. The Compose window refreshes, and the file name and file size are shown in the Attachments section.
4. To remove an attachment, click on the check box next to the file name, then click Remove Selected.
5. When all files to be sent are listed in the Attachments section, and you have typed in your message, click Send Message, as above.

Confirmation or error messages related to attachments are displayed at the top of the composition window.

Avoid Session Time-out
When composing a message, leave your main WebMail browser window open to the INBOX. This will prevent your session from timing out due to inactivity between your browser and the WebMail server, and loss of your message when you try to send it. At five minutes before your session expires, a dialog box will appear, prompting you to reload the page to prevent losing your work and continue editing. A similar message will appear when the session is one minute from expiring.

Resizing Composition Window
In some older versions of browsers, if you resize the composition window after entering text, your work will be lost. Resize the window before you start entering text, or verify that resizing will not result in loss of your work.

Reply and Forward

You must be in the message window itself to reply to, or forward the message being read.

• In the message window, click on Reply, Reply to All, or Forward to open the Message Composition window and perform the desired action, as in Send Mail, above.
• To forward a message without adding any comments, click Redirect in the action menu bar. In the "Redirect this message" window, fill in the To field. A resent message is delivered to the recipient without the original header information, and without indication that it is a forwarded message.

Addressing
In the To, Cc, and Bcc fields, MIT WebMail is set up to automatically add @mit.edu if only a username is entered (for example, jdoe becomes jdoe@mit.edu).

See above for information about avoiding a session time-out while composing a reply.

Delete Messages

MIT WebMail keeps messages on the post office server until you delete and purge them.

1. To remove a message from WebMail:
   
   
   • In the list of messages, select the message by clicking in the check box at the extreme left of the message in the folder listing. Click Delete above or below the list of messages.
   • In the message window itself, click Delete above or below the message.
2. In the list of messages, this marks the message with a trash can, strike-throughs, and shading, but does not remove the message from the post office server.
3. To finally remove the message from the server, while in the window where you marked messages for deletion, click Purge Deleted, to the upper- or lower-right of the message list.
   Note: Once you have purged a message it is erased from the server and cannot be recovered!

Undelete
To unmark a message for deletion, select the message, then click Undelete above or below the list of messages.
Note: Purged messaged cannot be recovered.

Folders

When you login to WebMail, it initially displays an INBOX folder by default, which lists messages as they are received. You may create additional folders to help manage your messages in WebMail.

Creation and management of folders takes place in the Folder Navigator window: click Folders in the menu bar at the top of the mailbox or message window. To see a complete list of folders, click the + (plus) sign next to INBOX, or click on Expand All.

Create New Folder

1. All new folders are created as a sub-folder to the INBOX: click the check box next to INBOX to select it.
2. In the drop-down menu for choosing an action, select Create Folder.
3. In the dialog box type the name of the folder and click OK. A message at the top of the window confirms creation of the folder, or displays a message if an error occurred.

Open a Folder
To go to another folder and see its list of messages, select the folder from the drop-down menu next to Open Folder at the upper-right of the WebMail window. You may also click on the folder name in the Folder Navigator window.

Move a Message to Another Folder

1. If you are in the message listing window, select the message by clicking the check box at the left of the message.
   If you are in the message window itself, begin with the next step.
2. In the Messages to drop-down menu, select the folder to which the message is to be moved.
3. Click on Move or Copy. If moving a message, it is marked for deletion in the originating folder; if copying a message, it is left unmarked in the originating folder.

Managing Folders
The Folder Navigator window is where you perform other functions, such as renaming, deleting, or downloading folders. To perform a function, select the folder by clicking the check box to the left of the name, then select the function from the Choose Action drop-down menu.

Folders and Other Email Clients
See WebMail and Other Email Clients below.

Save Messages to Computer

Download Folders
As with other webmail programs, in MIT WebMail it is not possible to move individual messages from the post office server to your local computer. You can, however, download a folder and all of the messages it contains to your computer for reading or archiving. This is especially handy if you are traveling with your laptop and wish to save on connection charges to MIT WebMail.

To download a folder (or folders):

1. Click on Folders at the top of the WebMail window.
2. In the Folder Navigator window, click the check box by the folder you wish to download.
   Hint: Collapsing the mailboxes will not download the mailboxes beneath it. You need to click the checkbox next to each folder you wish to download.
   Note: If you check more than one box to download multiple folders at a time, all the folders will be stored in one mailbox file.
3. In the drop-down menu to choose an action, select Download Folder(s). A series of dialog boxes will appear.
   1. In the first box, click OK to continue with the download.
   2. In the next box, click Save File.
   3. In the last box, designate and location on your computer; click Save.

The contents of the folder are downloaded as a single text file, with the extension MBOX. The file may be opened in a text reader or in an email program such as Eudora.

Windows and Eudora
If you run Eudora on a Windows system, you can incorporate mailbox folders downloaded from WebMail with one caveat. After downloading the IMAP folder via WebMail, the text file will appear to Windows as a UNIX file. This means that while the file contents are the same, the line endings are slightly different. There are a number of free tools to convert a UNIX (linefeed) text file to a Windows (CRLF or carriage-return linefeed) text file. However, it is simpler to use an SFTP program such as SecureFX to perform the conversion for you. Simply upload the mbox file you just created to Athena and then download it again. SecureFX will automatically convert the UNIX file to a Windows file when it is downloaded.

Once you have converted the file, rename the file with the extension .mbx, then move the file to where your other Eudora .mbx files are located. After closing and re-opening Eudora, the downloaded mailbox will be listed.

Options

WebMail lets you set options which can be saved from one session to the next. These options cover your personal information, mail management, filters, display, and others. Your settings are stored in an MIT-maintained, secure database associated with the WebMail server, and are available from wherever you login to WebMail.

Filters and Spam Screening
In the filter rule options, you have an allow list and a deny list to which you may add any email addresses that you want to either block as spam (Deny) or ensure they get through to your inbox (Allow). However, these lists do not apply to the MIT mail servers which deliver mail to either your Inbox or Spamscreen folder. To ensure legitimate email gets through, IS&T encourages you to first set up and maintain an Allow list via the Spam Screening Personalized Settings page, since "Allow" rules entered here are applied at the MIT mail servers.

The advantage to using an Allow list in WebMail is that you can review messages here without downloading any of them to your local machine. If you find legitimate email in this folder, you can move it to to your Inbox, then add the sender's email address to the Allow list you manage from the Spam Screening Personalized Settings page. If you do not have a Spamscreen folder set up in any of your chosen email clients, see Creating the Spamscreen Folder in WebMail.

WebMail and Other Email Clients

In MIT WebMail you are working only with mail addressed to you@mit.edu and currently stored on the MIT post office server. Messages read and not deleted/purged in WebMail remain on the server, as do folders created in WebMail. Mail addressed to you at any other domain (e.g., @sloan.mit.edu or @yahoo.com) cannot be accessed using MIT WebMail. Likewise, mail folders or messages stored on your local computer or in your Athena home directory cannot be accessed in WebMail.

The assumption is that, in addition to occasional use of WebMail, you will manage and archive your email with another client such as Eudora or Athena on your computer. If these or another email client are set for IMAP, you will be able to access messages and folders on the post officer server, including those created in WebMail. If your email client is set for POP, you will see only the INBOX (or top-level folder) in WebMail. By default, Eudora is set to POP.

Settings in POP clients, such as Eudora, let you specify a length of time to leave mail on the post office server, or to delete it from the server after the mail is downloaded to your local computer. If you plan to use WebMail in conjunction with a POP client, be aware of any automatic actions your POP client may be set to perform. Athena or Unix users should also be aware of any automatic actions which are performed at login. Automatic operations by POP clients on your post office server mailbox may be a source of confusion when using WebMail.

For further information, see Choosing an Email Program at MIT.

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