A.  Yes! As long as your service is active and you can get an Internet connection, you can check your email from anywhere in the world. That includes your own computer at home or work.

  Open a browser (such as Internet Explorer or Firefox). In the Address Bar, type http://webmail.becon.org and press the Enter key or click "Go".   Enter your usual login (username) and password, and click the "Login" button.
   To read a message, click the subject line. Attachments are listed at the bottom of messages.
   You can read, reply, forward, compose and send, delete, and download selectively.

  Become familiar with Webmail before travelling in order to save precious time at that Internet Cafe. Practice by sending yourself messages.


Q.  What else can I do with Webmail?

A.  You can:

• Sort your email while it's still on the server - decide which messages to delete and which to download.  (Delete unwanted messages, sign out, then open Outlook Express and download the remainder.)
• Find out whether there is a large filesize message slowing or preventing downloading your mail using Outlook Express
• View a graph and details of your disk usage on our mailserver
• Send and download attachments. Multiple attachments in a message can be downloaded selectively. Some photos and documents can be viewed while you're in Webmail.
• Store an address book that is accessible no matter where you are
• See the same messages from any number of computers (as long as you don't delete them from the server)
• Avoid email viruses - you can't get them from email if you don't download messages
• Get your mail even if your normal mail program is malfunctioning or you don't know how to configure it properly
• Set many configurable options and create custom folders

A.  Click the Options link at the top, then Index Order. Click the Add button beside "size". Note that you can reposition column order from this area.
"k" means kilobyte, "M" means megabyte; one megabyte is 1024 kilobytes.


Q.  How do I delete unwanted messages?

A.  Beside each message is a checkbox. Check the boxes for all messages that you want to delete. (For mass deletes, note the options for Show All and Toggle All.) In the upper right, under "Transform Selected Messages", click "Delete". Selected messages are moved from the Inbox to the Trash folder [remember to empty the Trash folder as necessary].


Q.  I can't delete! HELP!

A.  Probably you're overquota and your grace period has expired (see the usage graph on the left of the page).

• Click the "Options" link at the top
• Click "Folder Preferences"
• In the upper right, in Special Folder Options, click the drop-down arrow beside "Trash" and click on "Do Not Use Trash"
• Scroll to the bottom and click "Submit"

A.  For more information, click the Help link at the top of the Webmail page or the "Have a Question?" link on the left side of Webmail. In addition:

• Each email account has only ONE Inbox on our mailserver. Webmail is one method of accessing it; it's the same Inbox that Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Incredimail, etc. access to download mail to their Inboxes.
• Webmail has a Trash folder that collects deleted messages, and a Sent folder for copies of sent mail. Clean these up regularly to avoid quota problems. To empty the Trash folder, click Purge, or open the folder and delete selectively. If you have created custom folders, remember to delete excess messages from them too.


• Some people routinely check their mail using Webmail first, then use Outlook Express to download only the messages they really want.

• "Session cookies" must be enabled (the default setting in modern browsers is to enable these). If you're having problems:
  • in Internet Explorer 5 click Tools | Internet Options | Security tab | Internet zone | Custom Level, and make sure "Allow per-session cookies" is enabled.
  • In Internet Explorer 6, click Tools | Internet Options | Privacy tab | Edit button; type "becon.org" [no quotes] into "Address of Web site:" and click Allow and OK.
  • In Firefox, click Tools | Options | Privacy; open Cookies; click Exceptions; in "Address of web site" enter becon.org, click Allow & OK.
    Session cookies are not stored on the computer, so you won't leave private information on a publicly accessible computer.


Back to FAQs