How to Download Your E-mail Using IMAP

By Eduardo De León

E-mail programs use one of two methods to check your account for messages: IMAP or POP. The POP protocol downloads new messages to your computer, meaning that you can no longer access those messages from a different computer. The IMAP protocol (which ITS recommends instead of POP) leaves messages on a centralized e-mail server until you move or delete them. One of the main advantages of the IMAP protocol is that messages remain available to you at all times, regardless of which computer or mail program you use to access them.

One of the challenges of using IMAP, though, is that the server that stores the messages has limited disk space, which is why most e-mail accounts have storage quotas (NYUHome provides a generous 100MB quota). What can you do, then, if you have so much saved mail that your account is nearing or over the quota, preventing you from receiving new messages? Fortunately, there is a simple procedure, described here, that allows you to download selected mail messages (removing them from the mail server) and save them on your computer or external media such as a CD.

The first step you should take is to sort your messages into different mailboxes, according to whether you want to keep them on the e-mail server, or download and delete them from the server. Next, configure your favorite mail program to access your e-mail using the IMAP protocol. This article will show you how to configure Outlook 2003 on Windows XP or Apple Mail on Mac OS X to use IMAP to access your NYU e-mail, and then instruct you on how to download you mail. Note that this process is similar in all e-mail programs.

CONFIGURING OUTLOOK FOR IMAP ACCESS TO YOUR NYU E-MAIL

Open Outlook by selecting Programs from the Start menu, then selecting Microsoft Outlook from the Microsoft Office suite. In the window that opens, select E-mail Accounts... from the Tools menu. Select the option to Add a new e-mail account and click Next. On the following screen, select the IMAP server type and click Next.

Figure 1. The Outlook IMAP account settings.

Enter the following information about your account, as shown in figure 1: In the User Information section, within the Your Name textbox, enter your name as you would like it to appear on outgoing e-mail; in the E-mail Address textbox, enter your NYU e-mail address; in the Server Information section, enter mail.nyu.edu as the incoming mail server, and smtp.nyu.edu as the outgoing mail server.¹ In the Logon Information section, enter your NYU NetID as the Username and leave the Password field blank. (ITS recommends that you never save passwords on your computer.) Click Next, then Finish. Outlook will prompt you to enter your NYUHome password when connecting to the mail server.

CONFIGURING APPLE MAIL FOR IMAP ACCESS TO YOUR NYU E-MAIL

Open Apple Mail, then select Preferences from the Mail menu and click Accounts. Click the plus (+) sign to add a new account, and enter a description (such as "My NYUHome E-mail") in the Description textbox. For the Account Type, select IMAP (see figure 2). Enter your e-mail address and your name as you would like it to appear in outgoing e-mail. Enter mail.nyu.edu for the incoming mail server, your NYU NetID for the Username, and leave the Password field blank. (ITS recommends that you never save passwords on your computer.) Enter smtp.nyu.edu for the outgoing mail server.1 Close the Accounts window, and save your changes when prompted. Mail will prompt you for your NYUHome password when connecting to the mail server.

Figure 2. The Apple Mail IMAP account settings.

SYNCHRONIZE & DOWNLOAD

Once you have configured your mail program, you should synchronize the mailboxes in your account by checking for new messages (enter your NYUHome password when prompted). Synchronizing makes your mail program aware of how many mailboxes you have on the server, and how many messages there are in those mailboxes. In Outlook, select Send/Receive Mail from the Tools menu. In Mail, select Get New Mail from the Mailbox menu.

Next, create new folders on your computer to store the messages you want to download. You must create the new folders in your computer's local folders area, not on the e-mail server. In Outlook, the local folders are listed under Personal Folders. In Mail, your local folders are under On My Mac. To simplify the process, give these new folders the same names as the folders or mailboxes on the e-mail server. For example, if you want to download a mailbox/folder on the server called "December2004," then you should create a new mailbox/folder in your computer's local folders named "December2004." To create a new folder in Outlook, open the File menu and select New, then Folder (see figure 3). To create a new mailbox in Mail, open the Mailbox menu and select New (see figure 4). Repeat this process for each mailbox that contains messages you want to download.

Figure 3. To create a new local folder in Outlook, open the File menu and select New then Folder.

The next step is to download the messages you choose from the server to your computer. Unfortunately, it is not possible to download an entire mailbox/folder from the server at once, so you will have to select the messages you want to download, and then copy them to the local mailbox. To do so, open the mailbox on the server containing the messages you want to download, then either select the specific messages you wish to download, or select all of the messages by choosing Select All from the Edit menu (in both Outlook and Mail) when the mailbox is open. Once selected, copy the messages to the corresponding local mailbox/folder by dragging and dropping them; or you can right-click (or Controlclick when using a Macintosh) the selected messages, choose Move To, then select the local folder to which you wish to move the messages. If necessary, repeat this process until all the messages you wish to download are moved to your local folders. Once finished, you may then choose to copy these messages to a CD or other external media for storage, or leave them on your computer.

Figure 4. To create a new local folder in Apple Mail, open the Mailbox menu and select New, then name the folder in the window that opens.

Note that, by default, when you move your messages in this way, they will be copied to the mailboxes on your computer and deleted from the mailboxes on the mail server. This means that these messages will only be accessible to you when you are using the computer to which you downloaded them and the mail program you used to transfer them. The benefit, however, is that these messages are now deleted from the server and will not count towards your mail quota.

If you need assistance with this process, you may contact the ITS Client Services Center at 1-212-998-3333 or its.clientservices@nyu.edu.

Author Biography

Eduardo De León is a User Support Specialist at the ITS Client Services Center.

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