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Webmail's Offline Reader

 

Webmail's Offline Reader

You can now archive/backup your EMail so that it can later be read on any computer with a current Internet browser-no Internet connection required!

Backing Up vs. Archiving

When you Back Up e-mail, it means you are selecting messages that are important to you, and you want to have in multiple locations in case something happens to the original. In the past, with the very restrictive quotas that were in place, it was possible for Technology & Communications to maintain a centrally housed backup of everyone's e-mail. However, with the extended quotas which have come with the new e-mail system, it is not viable to maintain this centralized backup. 1

When you Archive e-mail, it means you are selecting messages that you no longer need right at hand, but may perhaps need to refer to them in the future. The process removes messages from the server, stores them in an alternate location, and as a result reduces your quota usage on the mail server.

Backing Up Your E-Mail

You can use the Offline Reader to give yourself a second copy of some or all of your e-mail that is on the mail server. 2 In the event of data loss on the mail server, 3 you will have access to these messages via the offline reader file.

Backup your Mail, Step-by-Step

  1. Log into Webmail
  2. If you are in Scheduler, 4 click Inbox to get to your e-mail.
  3. Click Options and then, toward the upper left, click Offline Reader
  4. If you have any Offline Reader files waiting to be downloaded, you will find them here, listed in red at the top of the page. 5
  5. Next, you select which folders you want to include in the offline reader file. Choose individual folders (such as Inbox or Sent Items 6 ).
  6. Now it is time to select the date range. The first time you do this, you may want to get everything. In the future you will probably only want to select the past few months (i.e. starting with the month of your last backup).
  7. Finally, choose the Action you want to take. For Backups, choose 'Download selected folders, but leave them on the server'. This gives you a copy of your e-mail, but doesn't change anything on the server.
  8. Click Start.

Downloading your Offline Reader File

Depending on how much mail you asked the server to package up for you, as well has how busy the server is when you ask, the process may take as little as a few seconds or as much as twenty minutes.

When it is complete, you will receive an e-mail indicating that your Offline Reader files are ready. The first reaction most people have is to look around for an attachment to the e-mail: you won't find one! As mentioned earlier, your Offline Reader files can be downloaded from the Offline Reader page (where you started the process). There is a good reason for this: Offline reader files do not affect your quota. If they were delivered as an attachment via e-mail, they would affect your quota.

Download your Backup, Step-by-Step

  1. Log into Webmail
  2. If you are in Scheduler, 4 click Inbox to get to your e-mail.
  3. Click Options and then, toward the upper left, click Offline Reader
  4. If your Offline Reader file(s) are available, you'll see
    The following offline reader files are now ready for download
  5. The files themselves will be listed below that, in black, named 'Offline-year-month-day.zip' 7
  6. Simply click on the black filename to download it.
    1. When prompted to 'Open' or 'Save', choose 'Save'.
    2. Select a location, preferably a folder within your 'My Documents' folder, 8 to store your offline reader files.
    3. Click 'Save' again. That's It!
  7. Now, when you do a regular PC Backup, your e-mail files will be included. Or you may choose to write them to their own CD 9 to help keep them organized.

Viewing your Offline E-Mail

Viewing your offline mail is a relatively simple matter of extracting the files from the .ZIP archive, 10 then opening the Offline Inbox. The result will look and feel very much as if you're using Webmail, except that all the data is locally on your PC and there is no need for an Internet connection. Even your attachments are available, just as if you were in Webmail reading the original message.

The methods to extract your offline e-mail from the .ZIP file vary a bit depending on your Operating System and what software you have installed. In general, Windows XP handles .ZIP files itself, not requiring a special program. Earlier versions of Windows require some kind of unzipping program. On campus, machines will have such a program already installed, called "EnZip". If you are using your personal PC, visit www.download.com where you can find a variety of free Zip programs (just search for "unzip"). WinZip is probably the most popular Zip program for Windows, but it is not free beyond its trial period.

Most Macintosh users will probably already have a program, such as StuffIt, which can extract the files from a Zip archive.

Select your operating system below:

  • Windows XP
  • Windows 2000 or below: coming soon
  • Macintosh OS X: coming soon
  • Macintosh OS 9 or below: coming soon

Viewing your Offline E-Mail: Windows XP, Step-by-Step

  1. Go to your My Documents directory
  2. Find the subdirectory where you placed your Offline Reader file
  3. Extract the files
    1. Right-click on your offline reader file
    2. From the context menu, left-click "Extract All".
    3. The Extract Files Wizard is introduced. Click Next
    4. Choose a directory to extract to; the default is fine. Click Next.
    5. The files will be extracted; by default, 'Show extracted files' will be checked on the next dialog. Click Finish.
    6. A window will open listing the messages that you included for your Offline Reader file.
    7. Find the file named '<foldername>.html' and double click it. From this point you can navigate your offline e-mail as if you were in Webmail.
  4. That's it! There are now actually two copies of your offline e-mail on your local PC-- one set in the .ZIP file, and another set all extracted and available to view. When you are done viewing your offline mail, you can delete the extracted folder, leaving the .ZIP file behind in case you need to review this set of offline messages again in the future.
1 Time, more than the storage capacity of our tape backup system is the primary issue. A recent attempt to back up the mail server required in excess of 25 hours to complete. We already require nine hours to handle the centralized backups of various servers and other systems.
2 The offline reader interacts ONLY with mail that is currently on the server. If you use a mail client (such as Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird), you may also have mail stored on your local PC. Until you perform a backup of your PC.
(Keyword Tutorials: PC Backup)
3 The likelyhood of data loss on the mail server due to hardware failure is very low. Any disk in the system can fail and another is already in place to take over. If another disk should fail after synchronization is complete, all data will still be accessible (although performance may make the system inaccessible). However, your backups also protect you from loss as the result of accidental (or intential) deletion of messages, corruption caused by your mail client, or similar issues.
4 If you use Scheduler more than you do Webmail, you can choose to log in directly to your calendar instead of to your Inbox. This may even speed up your login (if you have a very large inbox), since the server doesn't have to process your Inbox at login. To do this, while in Scheduler, simply click 'Options', then 'Show Schedule at Login', and finally, 'Save'.
5 Remember-- Offline Reader files are only available for a week or so after creation. They cannot be recovered after that, nor can an offline reader action (such as move to folder or delete) be undone, at any time. Until you are comfortable with how the offline reader process works, we recommend you choose the action 'Download...but leave them on the server.'
6 Unlike the 'Sent Items' folder in a mail application such as Outlook or Thunderbird, the Webmail 'Sent Items' folder cleans itself up according to the setting under the 'Options' page. If you want to keep your Sent Items forever, you might consider using Offline Reader on that folder periodically.
7 If you create multiple Offline Reader files in one day, they will be saved in different files, such as 'Offline-2006-11-01-1.zip', 'Offline-2006-11-01-2.zip', etc.
8 Technology & Communications strongly recommends you store your Offline Reader files somewhere in your My Documents folder-- 'Offline E-Mail' would be a good foldername. By putting them within your My Documents folder, they will get backed up when you follow the PC Backup Tutorial.
9If you plan to store your e-mail on CD or DVD, you might want to consider extracting them first. That way, you can browse directly from the CD or DVD, rather than having to extract them from there. For more information, continue to the next section and read about 'Viewing your Offline Mail'.
10 A 'zip' file, or 'zip archive' is a common way to compress files to take up less space on a disk. Many files and folders can be stored in a single 'zip' file, but they must be extracted before use.
It is important to note that if you simply open a Zip file, then open one of the files within it, only that file is extracted. The rest are still inside the Zip file, which means any links leading to them won't work.
To navigate through your offline mail, you'll want to extract all the files into a folder, and then open the offline Inbox.

Dr. Jeremy D. Brown, President
EDINBORO UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
219 MEADVILLE STREET
EDINBORO, PENNSYLVANIA 16444
888-8GO-BORO  •   814-732-2000

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