How to access your email using IMAP

What is IMAP?
IMAP Support
Setting up IMAP
View and Download Emails
How to Subscribe to Outlook Folders
Changing Your Password

What is IMAP?

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) allows you to access your emails on a non-ADS computer using an email client such as Outlook.

IMAP works by:

Giving you the choice of downloading particular messages and folders. This is quicker than downloading a whole mailbox.
Downloading message headers (which shows the subject line of an email message), instead of complete messages, therefore it is quicker to read emails.

Emails remain on the ADS email servers, therefore you can be assured that you can access emails from both work and non-ADS computers.

IMAP Support

IMAP is supported in the following versions of Outlook and Outlook Express:

Outlook Express version 6
Outlook 2002
Outlook 2003

IMAP is not supported by Outlook 2000, in this case Outlook Express can be used.

Setting up IMAP

Step 1

Open Outlook, go to the Tools menu and choose E-mail Accounts. Select to Add a new e-mail account.

Click Next.

Step 2

Choose IMAP, click Next.

Step 3

Enter your user name and email address in the User Information section. In the Logon Information section enter the following details:

- Username: in this format adm\ucz****
- Password: your ADS password

Check the Remember Password checkbox.
Enter the appropriate server details in the incoming and outgoing mail servers options.

Step 4

Click on the More Settings tab. On the Outgoing tab:

Check the Log on Using checkbox and enter the following details:

Username: in this format adm\ucz****
Password: your ADS password

Ensure that the Remember password checkbox is selected.

Click Finish. Your IMAP access is now configured.

View and Download Emails

Once connected to the mail server you will see two parts to the Outlook folder list. The top part Outlook Personal Folders is local to the PC i.e. any emails copied here will be stored locally.

The bottom section s7-adm.ucl.ac.uk (in this case) is the link to your mailbox hosted on the mail server. Emails can be viewed by clicking on the + button, as illustrated below.

Initially only the email headers will be downloaded. Emails can be read by double-clicking on the header.

Copies of email messages can be stored locally for use later i.e. when working offline. This can be done by clicking on the email header from the Inbox and dragging it to the Inbox of the Outlook Personal Folder. A line will then appear through the email in the mailbox on the server, indicating that the email has been copied. If the email is then deleted, the email will be deleted from the local storage and mailbox.

By default only the Inbox email headers are downloaded but more folders can be added as detailed in the next section.

How to Subscribe to Outlook Folders

Step 1

Open Outlook, go to the Tools menu, click on IMAP folders. The following window will appear:

Step 2

Click on the query button to display the folders that are available to subscribe to.

Highlight the folder that you wish to subscribe to and click on the Subscribe button. A little envelope icon will appear against the folder name. Continue this process to subscribe to all the folders that you wish to subscribe to. To select multiple folders, hold down CTRL while clicking folder names.

Note: If the "When displaying hierarchy in Outlook, show only subscribed folders" check box is selected, then only the folders you are subscribed to will display when you download folders.

Once you are happy with your select select OK.

To unsubscribe from a folder, highlight the folder that you wish to unsubscribe from and click on the Unsubscribe button. To select multiple folders, hold down CTRL while selecting folder names.