Email Tools
What are email tools?
In addition to the features in your email client, there are a number of extra features that you can use on the web that can help you manage your email. These include:
- Setting the junk email preferences,
- Displaying a message for holiday,
- Checking and changing your mailbox size limits,
- Forwarding mail to another address and managing your shared mailboxes.
More details about these tools?
Click on the headings below to reveal more information
Expand All
Collapse AllJunk email filtering
The spam filter tool allows you to filter your email to help keep junk email from your inbox.
What is Junk Email?
Spam and junk mail can clutter your inbox and can be both distracting and annoying. The University email systems are set to reject obvious cases and tag all external messages with a score marking the likelihood of the message being spam. You can opt to delete or filter all incoming messages marked as spam using the spam filter tool.
Do I need to change my settings?
Spam filtering is not turned on by default, so if you want to use this you must turn it on using the spam filter tool. It is recommended that you use the default setting on the form to filter mails marked spam into your spam folder but you can adjust the spam filter tool to be more or less strict or even delete the emails.
NOTE: Computing Services can not recover any emails deleted this way.
For more technical details see the Frequently Asked Questions entry.
General policy on email filtering
The University believes that in general the decision to accept or reject email is best taken by the individual recipient, and that it is not the University's job to censor email. Server side scripts or email software can be configured to automatically delete messages matching user-defined criteria. There are, however, cases where Computing Services has taken the decision to refuse mail from very well known sources of inappropriate material. For more technical details see the Frequently Asked Questions entry.
The University also reserves the right to and does scan and reject email attachments to prevent the spread of computer viruses. The University's email policy is recommended reading for all users of email systems at Bath.
Vacation message
The vacation message tool allows you to set an automatic reply to inform people when you are away and can't answer your emails. This message will automatically be sent to every person who emails you personally.
You can use this to notify people that you are away from your email and that they should not expect a quick response if they email you. It may be useful to include additional contact information or alternative contact information for people to use in your absence. It may also be helpful to advise people of the date of your return in order for them to be aware of when you are likely to respond.
Mailbox size checking
The mailbox checker tool allows you to check the total size of your mail and identify any large messages you may no longer need. You can also request an increase in your quota.
Exceeding your quota for mail stored on the university mail server (imaphost.bath.ac.uk) for more than four days will result in e-mail addressed to you being bounced back to the sender, without you being notified (you will, however, receive an automatic warning e-mail within 24 hours informing you that you are over quota). To avoid this situation arising, it is necessary to periodically remove messages from your mailbox. There are three ways of doing this:
- Move messages to a local folder (which does not reside on the mail server);
- Archive messages onto a CD-R or other disc;
- Delete messages.
Mailbox forwarding
The mail forwarding tool allows you to redirect your email to other off campus accounts.
If you do need forward your email please ensure the email service you are redirecting to is reliable. Computing Services will not take any responsibility for email forwarded off the campus network. It is your responsibility to make sure the forwarding address is correct. There is no need to forward your email just because you are away from the University, our email system can be accessed anywhere on the internet. The easiest way to read mail from off campus is using webmail. See more information on webmail.
This utility is only for people using the central University mail server and will not allow forwarding to other addresses within the bath.ac.uk mail domain. You need the email sharing tool to allow others to access your email on campus.
Shared mailbox manager
The shared mailbox manager tool allows you to manage your shared mailboxes and give access for other people to them.
To learn more about shared mailboxes, what they can do and how to use them then please see administering shared mailboxes.