Using Pegasus Mail with an IMAP Account

Although Pegasus Mail is primarily a POP (Post Office Protocol) client, version 3.12a(Win32) or later does have support for IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). IMAP is an internet protocol that allows you to access mail folders which are kept on a remote computer system rather than on your computer.

This writeup is not intended to be a tutorial on the many features of Pegasus Mail, such as mail filtering or making use of multiple mail folders, but is intended simply to describe how to configure Pegasus Mail so that it may be used to retrieve mail which is sent to an IMAP address obtained from UNET.

In order to access a remote IMAP mailbox with Pegasus Mail, you need to create an IMAP profile, which you do by selecting the IMAP Profiles item in the Tools menu and specifying the required information. The profile name is simply a name which you make up ñ you may call your profile anything you wish. For IMAP accounts obtained from UNET, the IMAP Server address will be mail.maine.edu, and the Server port should be left at the default value of 143. A Timeout value not longer than 60 seconds is recommended. The Login name is simply whatever is in front of the @ sign in your e-mail address, and it is necessary to type its associated password twice, so that Pegasus can check that it has been typed correctly. The Mailbox reference should be left blank.

The profile window also lists four options which you may or may not wish to select:

1. If you want Pegasus Mail to automatically and periodically check your INBOX (the IMAP mailbox) for newly arrived mail, then check off the "Periodically update the INBOX view" option,

2. If you intend to create folders inside other mail folders as a way of organizing your mail, then check off the "This server supports folders within folders" option,

3. Pegasus Mail will mount this profile automatically each time you run the program if you check off the "Always connect to this profile at startup" option. Usually, this is what would be desired.,

4. For dialup connections, checking off the "Only get folder status for INBOX when connecting" will result in a marked improvement in performance, at the price of not knowing the status information for any other folders you may have.

For example, the following IMAP Profiles window could be used to create a profile called "myprofile" for an IMAP account with the e-mail address myuserid@mail.maine.edu:

You will of course also want to send mail as well as receive mail. IMAP is only a protocol for accessing folders with incoming mail and does not provide any capability for sending mail. To send mail, you will need to use the SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol). The settings for SMTP are specified by clicking on the Tools menu in Pegasus Mail, and then on Internet Options. Select the General tab and fill in your e-mail address. For example, for the IMAP account with a userid of "myuserid", the screen would look like the following:

Then select the Sending(SMTP) tab and specify "maine.edu" as the SMTP host, if you use UNET to access the internet (for example, you dial up to a UNET modem pool to get on the internet). If your connection to the internet is from another internet service provider (ISP), then you will need to obtain the name of the SMTP host you should use from your ISP. If UNET is your ISP, the screen would look like the following:

You do not need to fill in any settings for Receiving(POP3), unless of course you also have a POP account and wish to also use Pegasus Mail to receive mail sent to that e-mail address.

To read and work with the mail in your IMAP inbox, you use either the Mail Folders choice in the File menu or its equivalent, the folders icon in the toolbar (third icon from the left), to bring up the Folder Manager window which will display your IMAP inbox. Double-clicking on your IMAP inbox will list all the mail in your inbox, which you can then open, copy to other folders, reply, delete, or whatever it is you wish to do with your mail. An important consideration with Pegasus Mail, which may be different from the way other mail software works, is that deleting mail in your IMAP inbox will really delete that mail from the IMAP server. However, any mail you delete from your IMAP inbox will automatically be copied to a local folder on your PC called "Deleted Messages, which you must also delete if you really donít want to keep any copies of that mail. The following image illustrates what the Folder Manager window looks like with the inbox for the "myinbox" IMAP profile opened up and the inbox window itself displayed beside the Folder Manager window:

One final consideration in setting up Pegasus Mail for an IMAP account, assumming you are not also using Pegasus for a POP3 account, is that you will not want the POP3 new mail folder to automatically open at startup, which you turn off by clicking on the Tools menu, then Options, and then unchecking the option for opening the new mail folder at startup.