Email timing out

[#1]

Hi

I've noticed that Thunderbird has been timing out on me for some time, when accessing the free-online imap server. I thought it was a Thunderbird issue, and was on the verge of dumping it and trying to find another email client that does what I want it to, but now I've noticed that even my phone and tablet are quite flaky in picking up emails. It can take an age for emails (that I know are there) to reach my devices and even the web mail site is timing out.

Is Plusnet having email issues generally; is it just free-online; or my account?

John

[#2]

Hello @John_Hull

Thanks a lot for reaching out. There were some issues that I'm aware of a week or two ago with our IMAP servers, though we're now under the impression that these have now been resolved.

Going forward, it might be worth deleting and re-adding your email account to your client, if you'd like to send across your account username, I'll be happy to reconfigure the component on our end. I've been unable to find your Plusnet account through your community profile.

[#3]

Hi Adam

Thanks for responding. Oddly, it seems better today. Thunderbird is still timing out, but it's been doing that for a while. My user name is Hulls, and I'm on Free-online. Any help at your end would be appreciated. I did delete the account and redo it, but Thunderbird still struggles (I also deleted a load of emails in case the mailbox size was the issue, but it didn't help).

John

[#4]

Thanks for your response @John_Hull

I've just reconfigured the Mailbox component on our side which is known to help sometimes. Other than that though there's little we can practically do. Are you having any issues with your service on Webmail?

[#5]

Hi @adam945

It's still happening, I'm afraid.

Emails on laptop (Thunderbird) and on phone and tablet taking an age to sync, or timing out altogether. When sending an email, it has timed out, so that the sent email hasn't been saved to my sent folder (I have no idea if it was delivered or not!)

John

[#6]

Ah fair enough @John_Hull

I'm afraid there isn't much practical action we can take on our end to rectify this issue, which does come and go sometimes to be honest.

Have you tried removing and setting up your email through IMAP again?

[#7]

Hi Adam - exactly the same issues! Started with Thunderbird tried eM Client - same result. Keeps reporting imap connection timing out. grove2 is my account.

[#8]

I do apologise @PaulGr

As I've said though there's very little that we can practically do on our end to get this resolved. I'll be raising this matter with some other members of staff to see if there's anything else we can suggest, and will post back on this thread for everyone once I have a response.

At the minute, we advise customers to use webmail when they can, and to try removing and re-adding their emails accounts through their clients.

Apologies for the inconvenience caused here everyone!

[#9]

To be honest, I'm a little relieved that it's not just me! 🙂

John

[#10]

Hi @adam945 

At your suggestion I tried Webmail but it's exhibiting the same issue - it pulled down emails back to 20th Sept then stopped. It came up with repeated errors of 'courier-imap server shut down by signal' and 'internal server error'. This seems to be across platforms and devices.

[#11]

Still getting the message as per the attached screen snip this morning. I appreciate that there's probably not much you personally can do, but Plusnet needs to sort out its email servers.

Edit: I should have said, this was on the web mail site.

[#12]

You could try increasing the server time out.

If you need to cull contents, this is worth a try...

Culling mailbox contents

If you need to clean out your mailbox, may be because it is over quota, then as well as tidying up the inbox, you need to also look at the SENT ITEMS folder and then afterwards clear out the TRASH folder. However some times webmail performance can make this process very tedious, particularly if the delete action (actually a move to the trash folder) fails.

If you primarily want to delete emails, you can mitigate delete performance issues by doing an "immediate" delete (rather than a move to trash for deletion later) by holding down the SHIFT key when pressing the DEL key. This works in both webmail and most PC based email clients. WARNING SHIFT+DEL is not recoverable so be certain absolutely, that you do not need the email before pressing the buttons!

Alternatively, in webmail (Round Cube) Settings -> Server Settings there are some options worth exploring controlling how deletes are performed...

1. Flag the message for deletion instead of delete
2. If moving messages to "Deleted Items" fails, permanently delete them
3. Compact Inbox on logout

Setting these options and using them together will avoid the over heads of moving items to the trash folder when you wish to delete them. They will simply be greyed out and remain in the inbox list. After logging out of webmail, they will then be removed from the mailbox.

Whilst this might be highly proficient, it needs to be used with care, for when they are gone, they are gone. Note also that Plusnet house-keeping clears out the trash folder weekly.

[#13]

Thank you @Townman - will bear in mind for the future. Fortunately things seem to have returned to normal over the weekend ... no more timeouts and inboxes and folders back in synch!😊