Computing & Information Services
Email Quota
Due to limited server space, every e-mail account has storage restrictions. The default quota is 500 MB - enough for plenty of e-mails with proper management. Neglected e-mail accounts could exceed the quota however. When your quota is reached you will no longer be able to send and receive messages with your Reed address, so it is important to keep your e-mail organized and trim:
How to monitor your quota
Your quota is shown in a toolbar in the Webmail interface. This toolbar will change its appearance depending on the status of your storage situation. At normal usage levels (between 0 and 70% of quota), the bar should be brown.
When your space usage exceeds 70%, the bar will turn yellow to visually notify you that you are approaching your quota.
When space usage exceeds 80%, the bar will turn red. At this point, you should begin to take steps to help free up space (for more information, visit our page on managing quota). When usage is at 100% or above, no new emails will be delivered to your account. Incoming mail will be held for up to 5 days and will be delivered once you have made room. After 5 days, emails will be returned to the sender with an explanatory note.
Thunderbird also offers an extension (comes installed with Reed's customized Thunderbird installer) for monitoring your quota. The Display Quota extension will mimic the behavior of the bar in Webmail, offering an indication of your storage space usage in the lower right-hand corner of your Thunderbird window.
Managing Your Quota
Simply deleting messages is not enough to help reclaim space on the server. One thing to note is that deleted messages are moved to the trash, and that messages in your trash continue to take up space on the server. After deleting messages, you must empty your trash to reclaim the space.
There are many other things you can do to help free up space:
- delete attachments, while saving the message
- delete large emails
- empty your spam and trash folders
- move messages to your local computer
For detailed instructions on how to do this, please see our page on managing your quota.
