cGuide: email tips at cornell med
IMPORTANT UPDATE!
December 9, 1999
The Office of Academic Computing is implementing a web-based email system for Cornell, and phasing out Pine (telnet-based email). While the instructions below have worked fairly well in the past, chances are that you'll have to make some modifications to your settings in order to continue to use an outside Yahoo! account to check Cornell email. The other thing is that you probably won't experience the same amount of frustration/difficulty in accessing email with the new official Cornell web-based email, so you probably won't need the Yahoo! account as much either. Anyhow, the point is that if you were thinking about creating a Yahoo! email account, go ahead and do so, but it's probably not going to help you get to your Cornell email that much now that things are being upgraded.
How to check your mail.med account via an Yahoo! mail account on the web
(You might want to print these instructions out before you begin, since there are a bunch of detailed steps.)
Tired of getting the "Too many users logged in" error message when you try to check your mail.med.cornell.edu account through Telnet? And you don't want to use Eudora? Read on.
1. Get a Yahoo! email account
One-time deal; takes about 5 minutes to sign up.
Go to mail.yahoo.com and sign up for an email account. The instructions are fairly straightforward, so I won't repeat them here.
2. ALWAYS remember to SIGN OUT
If you don't sign out of your Yahoo! email account, other people can use it an pretend they're you. By the same token, NEVER check the box that says "remember my ID and password", for obvious reasons.
3. Set up your Yahoo! account with the right return address
One-time deal; takes about 2 minutes to do this.
- A. Click on "Options" on the menu on the left side of the window.
- B. Click on "Mail Preferences" under the "Personalization" column in the new main window.
- C. In the "Reply-To" blank, fill in your Cornell email address, e.g. "abc2003@mail.med.cornell.edu"
- D. Hit the "Save" button at the top or the bottom of that page.
4. Set your Yahoo! account to check your mail.med.cornell.edu account
One-time deal; takes about 5 minutes to do this. Helps to print out these instructions.
- A. Now you're back at the main options menu. This time, click on "Check Other (POP) Mail" under the "Mail Management" column.
- B. Click on the "Add Mail Server" button.
- C. Fill out the blanks as follows:
i. Mail Account Server: pop.med.cornell.edu (you may want to try "mail.med.cornell.edu" if this address doesn't work)
ii. Mail Account Username: (fill in your Cornell username)
iii. Mail Account Password :(your Cornell password)
iv. Port Number: (DON'T CHANGE THIS)
v. Download to Folder: Inbox
vi. Leave mail on POP server : YES (make sure box is checked) Note: you *must* check this box to be able to use Pine to check your email when you don't want to use Yahoo!/web email.
vii. Retrieve new messages only : NO (make sure box in unchecked)
viii. Use filters : No (set to no for now, but it doesn't matter... up to you, when you learn how to use filters)
ix. (You can also give your Cornell mail messages a color code, to distinguish them from the ones sent directly to your Yahoo! account.)
- H. Now, hit the "OK" button.
- I. You're all set.
And now, how to get Yahoo! to download your Cornell email
NOT just a one-time deal! Use these steps *everytime* you check your Cornell email using Yahoo
Now, everytime you want to get a copy of your mail.med.cornell.edu email onto your Yahoo! email account, just do the following:
1. Log on to your Yahoo! email account
2. Click on "Check Mail" in the left menu column
3. Click on "Check Other Mail" at the top of your message list. You'll be taken to the menu which lists your non-Yahoo email accounts.
4. Click on "Check Mail" on the right-most column for mail.med.cornell.edu.
5. BE PATIENT. Yahoo will tell you, after up to a minute, that it's done downloading your Cornell email, how many messages it downloaded.
6. Click "Check Mail" again -- and, sure enough, your mail.med.cornell.edu email should be in your Yahoo! inbox.
Fortunately, the original copy should still be on your Cornell account if you remembered to to specify "Leave mail on POP server" as a checked box in the outside account options.
And always remember to sign out, or else someone else can come along and pretend they're you.
Use these instructions at your own risk. But, take note: I've used this method to check email when everyone else is getting "too many users" message from the Telnet interface, and it works... but it's also tricky for some to set up. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that most people too frustrated by the "Too many sessions open" error message probably don't have the patience to set up a Yahoo! account, either, but will probably just sit around and complain until their faces turns blue. Oh well. For the rest of you, now you have a way around the frustration.- HGW 10/20/99, updated 11/06/99
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