6.0.0-git
2024-10-06
Last Modified 2019-08-05 by Guest

Horde User's FAQ

IMP Questions

How do I get an account?

To get an account on a particular organization's IMP system, you will need to contact the support staff at the organization. IMP's developers have no connections with the organizations that use IMP.

IMP won't let me login.

If you are unable to login to IMP, contact your organization's support staff. They are the only ones who can manage accounts within your organization; IMP's developers cannot.

What is my email address?

To risk sounding repetitive, contact your organization's support staff for all information regarding your local mail system. You can also send mail to a friend requesting that they reply, and observe the address to which their reply was sent.

How do I change my password?

[IMP 2.2] If your organization's installation of IMP supports password changes over the Web, you will see a Change Password link in IMP's menu. Click on that link in order to change your mail password. If that link does not appear in the menu, your support staff will be able to inform you of password-change procedure at your site.

[IMP 3.x/4.x] If your organization's installation of Horde and/or IMP supports password changes over the Web, you will see a Password link in Horde's and/or IMP's menu bar. Click on that link in order to change your mail password. If that link does not appear in the menu, your support staff will be able to inform you of password-change procedure at your site.

What do "new" and "recent" mean at the top of the IMP display?

[IMP 2.2] In IMP's status bar, above the mailbox index or message body part of the display, "new" refers to messages which have not been read since they arrived, while "recent" refers to messages that have arrived since the last time you looked at the mailbox's index.

What does the plus sign ("+") [IMP 2.2] or the image of a face [IMP 3.x/4.x] in the message index mean?

A plus sign ("+") [IMP 2.2] or image of a face [IMP 3.x/4.x] in the left-hand column of an entry in the mailbox index view means that that message was sent directly to you, and not only Cc'd to you or sent via a mailing list. In other words, your address appears in either the To: or Cc: header.

In mailbox view, IMP occasionally shows the recipient, instead of the sender, of the message.

IMP's mailbox view shows the recipient in the From column on messages for which you are the sender. (In other words, since you sent it, you know who the sender is, so IMP tells you who you sent it to.) This is particularly useful for the sent-mail and drafts folders.

Why do I have to "subscribe" to folders?

Depending on the way your site has configured IMP, you may be presented, when you click on the Folders link in IMP's menu, with a list of mailboxes to which you can subscribe (and unsubscribe). Since it is possible to have a very large number of mail folders in your account but not actively use all of the folders -- the others, for instance, being archives of old mail -- IMP allows you to specify which folders you wish to be able to access in IMP. Subscribing to a folder makes it appear in the lists of folders to which you can copy, move, and save messages and for which you can display a message index.

If your site's IMP configuration allows you to use multiple folders but does not require you to subscribe to the ones you wish to access, you will always see all of your folders in IMP's folder lists.

Note that folders are only supported if using an IMAP server - POP servers do not support the concept of mail folders.

How do I get rid of deleted mail?

[IMP 2.2] When you tell IMP to delete one or more messages (by clicking Delete in the message view, or by selecting the check box to the left of the message in the mailbox index view and then clicking Delete), the mail is only marked as deleted, and is not immediately removed from your mailbox, giving you the opportunity to decide to undelete it. If you are certain you will not need the deleted message(s), click on Purge Deleted (or, in older versions, Expunge) in the mailbox index view. If you only wish to make IMP stop displaying the deleted messages, without permanently removing them, click Hide Deleted from the mailbox index view.

[IMP 3.x/4.x] IMP 3.x can work in two modes: marking mail as deleted, and moving deleted messages to a Trash folder. In the first mode, it works the same as IMP 2.2 as described in the above paragraph.

If you are using the Trash folder feature, it acts somewhat differently. When you tell IMP to delete one or more messages (by clicking Delete in the message view, or by selecting the check box to the left of the message in the mailbox index view and then clicking Delete), the mail is moved to a Trash folder, giving you the opportunity to decide to undelete it (remove it from the trash) later. If you are certain you will not need the deleted message(s), click on Empty Trash folder in the mailbox index view. In addition, you can have IMP schedule to automatically empty your trash folder at various intervals via the "Maintainence Operations" section of Options.

How do I send mail to more than one person?

To send mail to more than one person, separate their email addresses in the To:, Cc:, or Bcc: header (or a combination of all three) with commas (","). Do not use semicolons (";") to separate lists of email addresses.

How can I quickly access the entries in my Contacts List?

[IMP 2.2] Instead of opening the Contacts List dialog, you can save time when sending mail to people in your Contacts List by typing their nickname in the appropriate header field in the Compose window itself.

[IMP 3.0] Instead of opening the Address book window, you can save time when sending mail to people in your Address book by typing their name, or part of their name, in the appropriate header field in the Compose window itself and the using the Compose window's Expand Names button to expand the name to the full address. If multiple Address book entries match, you will be given a selection list of all the matching entries from which you may select the desired address.

[IMP 3.1/4.x] In addition the the Expand Names button discussed above in IMP 3.0, IMP 3.1 has an Address Book button which can be used to look up names in the Turba Address Books (if available).

How do I store more than one email address in a Contacts List entry?

[IMP 2.2] Each Contacts List entry can only contain a single email address.

[IMP 3.x] Full support for multiple addresses is still being implemented. But, in most cases you can store multiple addresses in a single Address book entry simply by listing all the email addresses in the Address book Email field separated by commas. Do not use semicolons (";") to separate lists of email addresses.

Note that the number of addresses that fit in a single entry may be limited.

[IMP 4.x] IMP 4.x integrates with Turba to provide list entries to contain multiple contacts. First, you must create a separate entry for each
address to be included in the list. Then you can create a list containing those entries. IMP 4.0 versions have a few display issues when using
such lists which are fixed in IMP 4.1.

How do I attach a file to a message I've composed?

Due to the nature of Web-based mail, attaching a file to a message you are about to send is slightly different than what you may be accustomed to in conventional mail programs. Attaching a file requires two steps. While composing the message:

  1. Type the filename in the Attachment field, or press the Browse button to use a dialog box to choose the file to attach.
  2. Press the Attach button to attach the selected file. This may take a moment as the file is copied from your computer to the server on which you access IMP (In [IMP 4.1] it is no longer necessary to click the Attach button.)

Please note that for large files and/or slower Internet connections, the process of uploading and attaching your file to the email may take a while. Please be patient and do not click on other things while you are waiting.

How do I forward an email including its attachments?

(The following answer concerns Horde 5, IMP 6.2.)
The plain "Forward" button results in the text of the email being forwarded along with some header information, but without attachments. In order to forward attachments, there are different options, which you can reach by clicking the downward-pointing triangle next to the plain "Forward" button.

  • "As Attachment": the whole original email including its attachments is packaged into a file named "Forwarded Message". Many email clients (including Horde IMP and Gmail) automatically extract the attachments from that file.
  • "Attachment and Body Text": the attachment is the same as in "As Attachment". Additionally, the body text and some header information of the original email are included in the body text of the new email.
  • "Edit as New": The attached files of the original email are attached individually to the new email. The body text of the original email is copied to the body text of the new email.

The "Edit as New" behavior of Horde IMP most closely resembles the "Forward" behavior of other email clients (like Outlook, Thuderbird, or Gmail), with the difference that IMP "Edit as New" does not include the header information of the original email. The rationale behind this behavior of IMP is that forwarding is considered as sending the unchanged original message to a new recipient (see this mailing list discussion, especially this post).

How can I view a message's full headers?

To see the entire message header, click the Message Source link in the Parts section of the message view. This will show you the raw mail message in the mailbox, including full headers and any attachments in encoded form.

How can I filter, forward, block, or automatically respond to mail?

[IMP 2.2] All of the above functions should be done when mail arrives in the mailbox, not via IMP. Speak with your organization's support staff to see what facilities are available.

[IMP 3.x] All of the above functions are best done when mail arrives in the mailbox, not via IMP. Speak with your organization's support staff to see what facilities are available for this. However, limited support for filtering and blocking of messages within IMP is supported.

If you want to filter future messages from the same person as the message you are currently using, use the Blacklist link when in the message view. This will add a rule to filter out that sender, and take you to the Filter Rules Options page.

For more general filtering, select the Options menu item in IMP, and then select Filters from the Mail Management section.

Note that creating a rule does not filter any messages! You must click the Apply All Rules button on the Filter Rules page or the "Apply Filters" icon next to the INBOX name in the mailbox view to filter all undeleted messages according to the specified rules. If your installation has persistent options, you can set up filter options to apply your filter rules at login and/or when the a mailbox is refreshed.

You can also create, remove, or arrange the order of rules from the Filters Rules page. Note that rules are applied once per message, hence rule order is significant. Make sure you have the most important rules first.

There are also modules in CVS to interface with SpamAssassin (sam), set up vacation notices (vacation), and set up automatic forwarding (forwards).

[IMP 4.x] There is now a separate module called Ingo to do filtering. IMP no longer has any filtering itself, and instead interfaces with Ingo for filtering.

There is also a configuration item in IMP which allows one to report spammers to a local spamassassin installation additionally or instead of the IMP blacklist. Optionally it can also report messages incorrectly filtered as spam as not being spam.

After using IMP, my non-Web mail program shows a message with the subject, "DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE -- FOLDER INTERNAL DATA".

This is an artifact of the IMAP server (UW-IMAP) that your organization uses from which IMP retrieves your messages. The message can be ignored.

After spellcheck, how do I find out the correct spelling of misspelled words?

[IMP 2.2] IMP 2.2 does not suggest replacements for misspelled words; it only identifies words which do not appear in its dictionary.

[IMP 3.x/4.x] IMP 3.x/4.x will suggest replacements for misspelled words automatically.

How can I request a return receipt or delivery notification?

[IMP 2.2] IMP 2.2 supports neither return receipts nor delivery notification.

[IMP 3.x/4.x] IMP 3.x/4.x does have support for return receipts. You can request a return receipt by clicking the "Request a Return Receipt" checkbox in the message composition screen.

Whether or not you will get a confirmation back depends on many factors outside of IMP's control. For example, some mail servers will remove return receipt requests from mail before it reaches the recipient, and some mail clients will allow the user to select if return receipts should be honored. Because of these and other factors, you should not depend on return receipts being honored by all recipients.

How can I have IMP notify me when new messages arrive?

[IMP 3.x/4.x] If you IMP installation supports persistent preferences, you can configure this via the Options link in the IMP menu bar. From Options select New Mail (from the "Other Options" area), then check the checkbox labeled "Display pop-up notification of new mail."

Can I undelete messages?

[IMP 3.x/4.x] You can undelete messages any time up until you click on the Empty Trash or Purge Deleted buttons, or until any automated emptying of the trash occurs if you have set up such an option. To undelete messages (marked as deleted) from the inbox listing, check the checkbox to the left of the messages you wish to keep, then press the Undelete link at the top or bottom left of the page. When you are viewing a message marked for deletion, there will be a link at the start and end of the message to undelete that message.

If you are using a Trash folder, you can undelete the messages by moving them out of the Trash folder into another folder.

How do I print the content of an email message?

[IMP 2.x] In IMP 2.x there is no seperate print option. You will have to use the print option of your web browser.

[IMP 3.x/4.x] When viewing a message, you can easily print the contents of the message using the Print link in the menu bar that appears above and below the message. You should print the message this way rather than using the browser print function, as the browser's print function will print the entire web page rather than just the message contents.

When you click the Prink link, the message will open in a new window so you may print it. Depending on the web browser and operating system you use, your browser's print dialog box may automatically open for you. If it does not, pull down the browser's File menu and choose Print.

How do I manage multiple POP3 or IMAP accounts from inside IMP?

[IMP 5.x] Fetchmail/Getmail like functionality has been removed from IMP 5 Ticket #8077.
[IMP 4.x] IMP can "Fetch mail" from other accounts and merge it into your INBOX or other folder(s) displayed by IMP. If you want to manage them separately rather than merging them all into one folder, you can simply create a separate folder for each account, and then configure IMP's Fetch Mail to download messages for each account to its own unique folder. Each folder would then represent an account. Using multiple identities tied to each account's email address, you can set it up so that when you reply to a message from any given account, the proper From: address is used.

What is a Virtual INBOX folder and/or Virtual Trash folder?

[IMP 4.1] A Virtual Inbox folder is a logical grouping of all mail messages in all polled folders that are marked as unread. Opening the Virtual Inbox folder will present a listing of all such mail messages. This provides a way to quickly read all new (unread) messages which may be spread across many folders.

A Virtual Trash folder is a logical hiding of all mail messages which are marked with the IMAP Delete flag across all folders.
An IMAP server would normally mark a message as deleted but not move it anywhere or actually delete it, and it would still show up in the folder listing where it resided even though it was marked for deletion. With a virtual trash folder, the email messages marked for delete would no longer show up in the folders they reside in (though there would actually still be in those folders), but they would appear in a 'Trash' folder (the Virtual Trash). This satisfies some people's expectations (visually), as it in essence duplicates the metaphors typical of a POP3 retrieval of email in a typical mail client.

You can open the Virtual Trash folder to see all your deleted mail. Messages stay in the folders they were originally filed or placed in, instead of being copied to an actual Trash folder or being shown as marked as deleted in their original folders.