If your UMail account is full or over quota, you will stop receiving messages. Undelivered messages are not deleted and you will receive them if you free up some space in your account within two (2) days after the first failed attempt. After two (2) days, messages are bounced back to the sender.

UMass Amherst students get 30 MB of space for their UMail accounts; faculty and staff get 500 MB. Start by deleting and purging messages from your UMail folders (especially the Sent folder). Learn more about cleaning up your account.

If your account has reached its quota, you will not be able to send or receive messages. Check the UMail Post Office to see how much space you have left. You will be able to send messages, and your incoming mail will be saved and delivered once you clean up your account.

Note: If the Post Office indicates that you have space in your account, and you still cannot send or receive mail, please contact the OIT Help Desk.

If you need to restore messages that have been permanently deleted (i.e., purged), please fill out an online help request. OIT can only restore messages or folders that were purged within the past two weeks.

Depending on your mail configuration, deleted files and folders are usually marked as deleted or you may have moved them to the Trash folder.

Purging deleted messages or deleting a folder permanently removes messages from your account. If you have not performed one of these actions, you can easily restore deleted messages yourself.

To restore deleted messages, select the check boxes next to the messages you wish to restore, then from the Mark as: drop-down menu, select Not Deleted. Your messages will appear as Read (without the gray shade and strikethrough of deleted messages).

Here are a few steps you can take to protect your account:

• Use UMail only for University-related email. Create a separate email address for other online activities (e.g., shopping, social networking sites, etc.).
• Make sure Spam Filtering is enabled for your account (a spam folder will appear in your list of folders). OIT's spam filtering feature is turned on by default, but you may have disabled it. Log in to the UMail Post Office, then click Spam Filtering.
• Mask your email address. When you post your email address online (e.g., commenting on a blog, on your own Web site, etc.), you become a prime target for spam. To mask your email, insert spaces into the body of the address (e.g., andreeac @ domain.com), write out the entire address (e.g., andreeac at domain dot com), or list your user name without the domain name (e.g., andreeac). Make sure you reference the domain name elsewhere on the same site.
• Do not forward or reply to suspicious messages. Your reply will only verify your email address to potential spammers. If your account receives a lot of spam, we recommend not using automatic vacation replies.

Learn more about phishing and email viruses.

OIT employs two anti-spam tools - the first identifies messages from known spammers and the second filters spam by tagging suspicious messages and placing them in a spam folder.

Our spam filtering is activated by default for all OIT Accounts (a spam folder will appear in your list of folders). Your spam folder is automatically purged every 14 days. Log in to the UMail Post Office to change how often the contents of your spam folder are purged. Note: To avoid using up your quota, we recommend that you use the 1 day or 3 days options, especially if you receive a lot of spam.

In rare instances, our spam filtering software will incorrectly filter an email from a legitimate source and place it in your spam folder. These incorrectly filtered e-mail messages are called false positives. If you find a false positive, please send the message subject line and the sender's address only (not the entire message) to false-positive@oit.umass.edu. We will notify the software company.

Make sure you are entering your NetID and password correctly. The UMail login fields are case-sensitive, so make sure you don't have CAPS LOCK enabled.

Can't remember your NetID? Come to OIT Account Management (Room A113, LGRC, M-F, 8:30 a.m.-4:45 p.m.) with your UCard.

Can't remember your password? On the SPIRE Logon page, under OIT Accounts (right side of the page), click Password Help to retrieve your password reminder or get a new temporary password.

Your UMail password is your OIT Account password, and you can change it in SPIRE. Visit the NetID & Passwords page for detailed instructions.

Check our Email Software section for step-by-step instructions for all email applications supported by OIT (e.g., Mozilla Thunderbird, Apple Mail, etc.).

Yes, you can. Go to the UMail Post Office, then click Forward Email. This is especially useful if you already have a departmental email account and you wish to check all your messages in the same place.

Note: As an undergraduate or graduate student, you are responsible for staying current with all official University communications sent to your UMass Amherst email address. OIT is not responsible for how other email providers, including other UMass Amherst departments, handle the delivery of forwarded mail. Email Communications Policy

To access UMail from a mobile device (e.g., iPhone), use UMail's Incoming and Outgoing Mail Server settings to set up a profile. Do not save your password in the setup wizard or anyone will be able to read your mail if your device is lost or stolen. Note: OIT currently does not support any mobile devices.

If you set up UMail to compose messages in a new window, and you have pop-up blocking software installed on your computer, make sure that this software is not blocking the New Message window. Try composing a new message in a different browser (e.g., Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, or Safari) to make sure this is not the issue.

For security reasons, UMail will automatically block any messages containing files with the extensions listed below. Extensions appear after the period of a filename. For example, in a file named whatever.exe, .exe is the extension.

The blocked extensions are:

ade, adp, app, asd, asf, asx, bas, bat, chm, cmd, com, cpl, crt, dll, exe, fxp, hlp, hta, hto, hgx, inf, ini, ins, isp, jse?, lib, lnk, mdb, mde, msc, msi, msp, mst, ocx, pcd, pif, prg, rar, reg, scr, sct, sh, shb, shs, sys, url, vb, vbe, vbs, vcs, vxd, wmd, wms, wmz, wsc, wsf, wsh.

Some of these file extensions are associated with malware (e.g., viruses and worms), while others, such as .exe or .dll are associated with specific applications that run on Windows computers.

If you have to send someone a file with one of these extensions, we recommend saving it to your UDrive and sending the recipient a link to it, burning it to a CD, or saving it to a USB drive. If you are a UMass staff member, you may be able to use a shared network drive to exchange these kinds of files.

If you use UMail with an email client (e.g., Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Apple Mail), there is a size limit of 15 MB per message.
Note: Some files become larger when converted into attachments in UMail. PowerPoint presentations, image, video, or sound files may even double in size after conversion, so the size of the file on your computer might not be the same as the size of the file as attached in UMail.

UMail on the Web has a smaller attachment size limit (5 MB per message). There is no limit on the number of attachments you can send.

You can set up automatic vacation replies using the UMail Post Office.

UMass Amherst graduates and students who leave the University in good standing have access to UMail at no cost for 6 months after they leave the University. Students can also use SPIRE to extend their UMail account for 6 additional months. Extend your UMail Account

Note: Your UMail account stays active if you are studying abroad or are on medical or work-related leave (e.g., sabbatical).

If you encounter problems, submit an online Help Request.
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Contact the OIT Help Desk at 545-9400.