Team Wikis:MailSetup

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Setting up your Freecycle.org mailbox

Using your Freecycle.org email address helps identify you and helps differentiate you from other mods. The Freecycle.org email address tells the GOAs and other teams that you have official business on more than one group; if you were using a personal email address on more than one group that would be against the guidelines of only modding one group. Use this address only on Freecycle.org business, not for any other purposes. Continue to use your personal email address on your local group, FIOD, leadership groups, etc.

Our "official" email service for all support mod groups can be found here http://mail.freecycle.org.

All team members have 48 hours to reply to emails (holidays and weekends excluded). If you are unable to meet that deadline, please let your Team Leader or Coordinator know so that someone can cover the mailbox if you need to be gone for an extended period.

Password

You may be given a specific password to use. If you change your password, you will need to provide your new password to your Team Leader, so do keep personal information separate. Your email account may be monitored, and someone may need to access your account when you are unavailable.

Email applications

We use Round Cube as our webmail provider for The Freecycle.org Network(R), or you can use IMAP to have your IMOD email sent to Thunderbird or Outlook. Here are some links to help you with IMAP:

Thunderbird

Outlook Express

Signature block

You have a number of options you can choose in setting up your account. It's only the first section for your signature block that must include your title and our trademarked name.

Optional settings

Go through the dropdowns if there is one and have a play around with the optional settings. The only suggestion I would make is that you choose Options>Display Preferences>Mailbox Display Options you might want to have 100 emails (or more) displayed.

Folders

We do not delete emails from this account – they should be filed into different folders. It may become necessary to refer to them from time to time so we need to keep them.

To set up folders on your IMOD box, click on NEW FOLDER from along the left of the screen. Follow the directions on the page. Set up folders at the root level rather than as subsets of the inbox.

To move emails into a folder, select the emails from the inbox by clicking the box to the left of the email (you can move more than one email at a time). Just above the list of emails is a "MOVE/COPY". Select the folder you wish to move the email into from the dropdown. Click MOVE.

If you are using Thunderbird or Outlook, these changes should upload the next time you log in.

If you find your box is getting too slow, this is usually because you have too many emails in your inbox. There is NO limit to emails you can have in folders, but there is limited space for our in-boxes. Not only does it slow things down for you, but it will slow down all other IMOD boxes since we all share the same space.

Via the Web

For this, go to http://mail.freecycle.org

  • User Name
    • This is your full email address (i.e. myaccountname@freecycle.org)
  • Password
    • The password which you have previously configured.

Via an eMail Program

Access can also be obtained by using an eMail client such as Thunderbird, Outlook etc. Detailed instructions for some common clients can be found below.

Most eMail clients support two different methods: POP3 and IMAP. freecycle.org does NOT support POP3 for the following reasons:

  • POP3 Usually downloads all your mail, and then removes it from the server. This means the following:
    • Shared-User Mailboxes - one person removes the mail from inbox witout others being aware of it
    • If your machine fails, you lose the mail on it. IMAP keeps a copy on the server.
    • IMAP means that the PC and Web folder lists are the same.

Once your account has been created, there are a variety of methods available to access it.

Thunderbird

  • For a guide on how to configure Thunderbird, please click Here

Microsoft Outlook 2000

  • For a guide on how to configure Outlook 2000, please click Here

Microsoft Outlook 2003

  • For a guide on how to configure Outlook 2003, please click Here

Microsoft Outlook 2007

  • For a guide on how to configure Outlook 2007, please click Here

Microsoft Outlook Express

  • For a guide on how to configure Outlook Express, please click Here

Microsoft Windows Mail

  • For a guide on how to configure Windows Mail, please click Here

Apple Mail

  • For a guide on how to configure Thunderbird, please click Here

Microsoft Entourage

  • For a guide on how to configure Entourage, please click Here

The BAT

  • For a guide on how to configure TheBat!, please click Here

Other Mail Clients

We cannot provide support for every incarnation of mail client that exists. For others, the following information in conjunction with the mail-programs. NOTE: Mail server to mail server transfers *MUST* have valid rDNS set up.

Inbound Server Settings

Setting Value
Protocol IMAP
Host mail.freecycle.org
Port 587
Security STARTTLS
Authentication Required Yes, SMTP AUTH
Login youremailaddress@freecycle.org
Password yourpassword

Outbound Server Settings

Setting Value
Protocol SMTP
Host mail.freecycle.org
Port 587
Security STARTTLS
Authentication Required Yes, SMTP AUTH
Login youremailaddress@freecycle.org
Password yourpassword