Access E-mail Archiver Now

Campus E-mail Archiving

The IT department understands that e-mail is a critical necessity to the continued business of the University, and that the loss of e-mail messages can pose a significant problem for the end user.   Ideally, mailboxes would be unlimited in the amount of messages that could be stored, but current technologies and budgets cannot support that option. Many end users are familiar with the manual archiving of messages into PST files, and this was common industry practice for many years. This has proven to be a rather risky method of maintaining important e-mails, as PST files could become corrupt, or the files were saved to an incorrect location on an end-users machine, and would be lost.

Since the PST method has proven unreliable, and with e-mails being of increasing importance, as well as being called upon in audits and litigations, IT has implemented an archival technology that takes the pressures off of the end-user, and captures all e-mails into a set of databases that are monitored for health and backed up regularly.

As with all changes, there will be some initial unfamiliarity to overcome, as this system works differently than what many are used to. IT is aware that some users wish to save important e-mail as long as possible, which can cause issues with the current mailbox sizes.  The new system captures a copy of all messages, which means that any items within the user mailbox can simply be deleted, without fear of losing the important messages forever. Should users still maintain skepticism prior to the deletion of a critical message, we highly encourage users to check our mail-archival system using the handy search fields and verify the message exists prior to deletion from the mailbox.

We urge users to familiarize themselves with our mail-archival system. Please see the helpful links below on instructions on how to access and use the mail-archival system. In addition, please review the FAQ section, as we will be updating that to answer end user questions we have encountered as we migrate to the newer system.

Accessing the Mail Archiver

Point your browser to http://mailarchiver.umes.edu to access the Mail Archiver website.  If you are prompted for authorization credentials please supply your campus e-mail as the username in the format username@umes.edu, along with your campus password.

Help Topics and Documentation

1. Browsing archived emails
   
   
   1. Expanding a conversation thread 
   2. Viewing emails 
   3. Downloading attachments 
   4. Refreshing the conversation lists 
   5. Browsing the conversation pages
      
      
2. Searching email archive stores
   
   
   1. Simple search 
   2. Advanced search 
   3. Search for emails with a specific label 
   4. Search by email size 
   5. Search by Message ID 
   6. Search by Recipient or Sender 
   7. Search by Sent or Received date 
   8. Search by email Subject 
   9. Search throughout the whole email 
   10. Searching using multiple search terms 
   11. Removing search conditions 
   12. Viewing emails returned by a search 
   13. Sorting search results
       
       
3. Creating and using search folders
   
   
   1. What is a search folder? 
   2. Creating a search folder 
   3. Viewing the search folder contents 
   4. Modifying the search folder query 
   5. Deleting a search folder 

FAQ

Q:	I had manually archived my messages into PST’s and now they have vanished, what happened to my archives?
A:	In an attempt to consolidate all archival, IT has implemented a process where all manual archives of PST’s are being gradually imported into mail-archiver. If your PST’s just vanished, please check in mail archiver within a day or two and your PST archived messages should appear.
Q:	Can I keep my old PST’s?
A:	The purpose of PST archival is storage and retention of older e-mails. We are not trying to make the end-users life more difficult, but IT has to standardize the system to meet legislative and message retention concerns. As such, we will eventually have to import all PST archives from user machines into our new mail archival system. For those that may be working out of attached PST’s, we recommend using nested folders under the inbox for organizational purposes, as those will not be removed by the import process, and are far more reliable.
Q:	I see some of my e-mail folders in Mail Archiver, but the folders are empty, where are my messages?
A:	Folder structure is a new feature with the current version of Mail Archiver, and has just been enabled. Older messages will eventually find their way into the correct folders, as will all new messages that are archived, but that process could take a long time. All messages still exist, and will be found in your inbox on Mail Archiver. To organize messages, we recommend using the very handy search folders. Please follow this link to learn how to use search folders: Creating and using search folders.
Q:	Can I really delete any of my old messages when I get the mailbox is full e-mails?
A:	The short answer to this question is yes. IT has been running mail-archiver in the background since 2006, so any messages since that time should be present in the system. We do encourage users to please verify that a message exists in Mail Archiver prior to the deletion of the most critical e-mails by using a simple search. Please see the following link on how to search: Searching email archive stores