CS Unix mail – clean and reduce size of folder (inbox, Sent Items, etc.)

PLEASE NOTICE: From 20/9/2022 access to CS Unix mail is possible only from inside Technion network (CS or Technion SSLVPN)
Due to size limitations in mail system, please keep your Email folders not bigger than 4GB size.

If you get an alert that your Inbox or Sent Items folder is big, please move some of the messages in the big folder to other folder.

You can check the folder size by using one of the following:

  • Login to CS Webmail. Select Settings , Folders, Click on Inbox (or other)  folder. Click on “Click to get folder size”  . 
  • login to the Unix server (csa/csm) and check the file size. Inbox is at /var/mail/your-username  file. Unix Command :  ls  -lh    /var/mail/your-username

Please check you have enough disk quota in your homedir.

How to move Email messages from one folder to a new folder:

The instructions below are for Outlook 2010/13/16 with IMAP to Unix mail. The same for other Outlook versions and other mail utilities.

You can also  use Unix command line and mutt utility to do it.

The instructions below are for moving old Inbox messages to a new folder Inbox-2016.

  1. Create a new folder:
    1. Click on “Folder” tab. Click on “New Folder”.
    2. In opened window “Create New Folder”, click on top account in “Select where to place the folder:”.
    3. Enter name of new folder in “Name:”. Example: Inbox-2016
    4. Select in “Folder contains:” “Mail and Post items”.
    5. Click OK to create the folder.
    6. The new folder should be listed now in the folders list of the account. Click on it to see its empty.
  2. Click on Inbox folder in folders list.
  3. Now select old messages to move from Inbox to Inbox-2016:
    1. Go to the newest message you want to move (Example: the latest at 31/12/2016), and click on it.
    2. Scroll up until first message (oldest) in the folder.
    3. Hold Shift and Click on it. It should mark all massages from the first to latest you selected.
    4. Click on Home tab. Select Move menu and select the folder to move to “Inbox-2016” (In Other folder…), or you can select “Copy to Folder” to make sure they are copied and then delete the copied messages from Inbox.
    5. Click OK. The messages are copied. It may take time.
    6. See that the messages are in the destination folder “Inbox-2016”.
    7. If you selected “Copy to folder”, re-select the copied messages in Inbox and delete them. Make sure you purged the deleted messages.