Why does email to me bounce with inbox full?
Hi, everyone. Leo Notenboom here where
we've been dealing with full inboxes since
2003. By the way, if you're not getting my weekly email newsletter in your inbox,
visit Askleo.com/newsletter and sign up today.
Let's start with the question.
"People are telling me that when they send me an email,
it gets returned with a message about inbox full or something like that.
My inbox is empty.
What's going on?"
So this is actually a very common question. This particular wording is
a synthesis of several versions of what are essentially the same question.
The problem is actually very simple.
The inbox that's empty isn't the inbox that matters.
Understanding why that might be the case
however, that's a little bit more complex.
And we need to understand exactly how email is handled.
When an email is sent to you, it's actually sent to your email provider.
So let's say for a moment you're using an outlook.Com account.
When somebody sends an email to your Outlook.com email address,
it goes to the Outlook.com servers at Microsoft where it sits.
It basically is collected waiting for you to do something with it.
Now, downloading your email is what you would be doing if you're using a desktop
email program, which I suspect is the case here.
As you'll see in a moment, downloading can mean either of two things.
It means copying that email that has been
collecting on your email services, servers down to your PC,
into your desktop email program like Thunderbird or Microsoft Office Outlook,
and then deleting it from the email services servers.
So your email is in only one place, it basically moved from the server where
it was being saved for you and collected for you and has now been transferred onto
your computer using your desktop email program.
The other scenario is where the email is once again copied from your email services
servers down to your PC, but it's not deleted.
The first scenario is really common and it's common because it's the default
scenario has been the default scenario for many years.
I'll even say decades.
It's what happens by default when you
configure an email account using the POP3 protocol
POP3 by definition is designed to move the email from where it's been
collected for you down to your email program.
It works well if you have one and only one
PC on which you intend to interact with your e-mail.
That's what leads us to the second
scenario that one and only one PC thing is changing a lot for many people.
They want to interact with their email
on many different devices, multiple PCs, multiple mobile devices, who knows what.
So what they've done is they've set up
their email downloads to either use what's called the IMAP protocol,
which makes a copy but does not delete from the server,
or they've instructed their POP3 protocol to leave a copy on the server.
That's another way of making that email available to other PCs or your mobile
devices while still downloading it to your PC.
IMAP is by far the most common, but I suspect in this case you're not
using it because when you use IMAP, if you empty your inbox on a device,
be it your mobile phone or your desktop PC, the actual inbox is empty.
That gets synchronized across all
the devices, including whatever is stored up on your email service providers server.
Unlike POP3, when you have POP3 configured
to leave a copy of mail on the server, then when you delete it on your PC,
it's not deleted on the server, it just accumulates up there.
Now there are configuration parameters
that will allow you to say keep it for 30 days or keep it for some number of days.
But in the meantime,
you can empty your inbox all you want, but you're not changing what's on the server
when email is bounced because your inbox
is full, it's that inbox of collected email on the server that's full.
What you've done on your PC means nothing.
It's that inbox on the email provider's server that's full.
And the best way to check for that,
the best way to see what's going on is don't use your PC for a moment.
Use the Web based email interface that your email service provider offers.
For example, Outlook.com is natively a Web based email interface.
So go have a look using the Web based.
Email interface and see if there's a bunch of stuff in an inbox in your outlook.com account or whatever email account you're using.
If there is, then you know what's going on.
The email is accumulating on your email
provider's server, even though you're downloading it to your PC.
Now, the most common scenario is,
of course, that you're using POP3 with leave messages on server checked.
And obviously you can check
that and confirm that that is, in fact, the problem.
In my opinion, the right way to fix this problem is instead to start using
IMAP. IMAP as a protocol to connect to your desktop PC, to your email account and your
mobile phone, to your email account and your other PC to your email account is
great because what it does is it keeps them all in sync, like I said earlier.
So if you delete mail from your inbox, yep.
It all goes away in all of those places, including the server where that inbox
quota where that full inbox is being encountered.
Now, there's one other thing that I want
to mention that may or may not apply, but it is a very important distinction.
If you go online using the Web interface, I strongly recommend you look not only
at your inbox, but any folders that may have been created up there.
It is very rare for email to bounce because only an inbox is full.
It's actually a quota or a limit on all
of the email that you can store on your email service providers servers.
And that includes the email that's in any of the folders.
It may not include spam and it may not
include trash, but if you've got other folders up there that are also holding
email, that takes up space that could count once again,
in my opinion, the solution is IMAP because you can create folders,
but when you do so, they get synchronized across all your devices.
You're moving things around in those
folders, but it gets copied or synchronized across all of the devices so
that when you move something to a folder on your PC, it shows up in that folder
online that shows up in that folder on your other devices.
But that means you've got full control
of understanding exactly where all the email is.
So bottom line here, if you're running into a size limitation
where email is getting bounced because it says you're over quota or your mailbox is
full, then there are four possible solutions.
One is to switch to plain old POP3.
In other words, have the email always
downloaded to your PC, but realize that's the only place
that it will be if you actually access that email through a mobile device.
Once you've downloaded email on your PC, it will disappear from the mobile device
because it will have moved from the email service provider servers.
The second solution is if you're using POP3 with "leave on server" configured
at a time frame or if you've got a time frame, shorten it.
So that email that is older than a certain part of time are automatically deleted
for you, freeing up space on the email provider's server.
The third solution if you want to continue
using a desktop email program, my strong recommendation is that you
convert to IMAP. That way, when you're accessing email on your
desktop or your mobile or online, it all looks the same.
Everything's in sync.
If you delete it over here, it's deleted over there.
If you market as unread over here, it's marked as unread over there.
If you move it into folders, all those folders show up across all the devices.
But that will ultimately let you know
exactly where your email is, both on your machine, your PC and online.
And finally switch to webmail.
The fourth option.
That way, you're not worried about how
your email program on your PC is configured.
Just go visit the web mail for your service Outlook.com, for my example.
That way, once again,
you know what all the email is when you empty the inbox, the inboxes empty because
it's the one and true inbox that's on the email provider's server.
But those are the options.
It is incredibly complex. I get that.
It really is.
But the very first thing to understand, if you're getting an email box full
message that it's the email mailbox that's on your email services server
that counts for comments, for related links, for updates,
for clarifications and more, visit askleo.com/132398.
I'm Leo Notenboom, this is Askleo.com. Thanks for watching.