Desktop and Server Virtualisation Specialist 

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Precedence Technologies Ltd
Technology House, 36a Union Lane
Cambridge, CB4 1QB, United Kingdom
T: +44 (0)8456 446 800 / +44 (0)1223 359900
E: enquiries@precedence.co.uk

Someone's sent me a really big email and it's too big for me to download.

There are two ways to fix this: by hand or with a program.

By hand

  1. Locate the address of your POP3 server (for PTLNet it is pop3.ptlnet.com).
  2. Find a telnet program on your chosen computer. You can often do this easily from a web-browser by running a telnet:// URL. Connect to the POP3 server on port 110. To connect to PTLNet's POP3 server click on the following: telnet://pop3.ptlnet.com:110/.
  3. Once you have connected to the server (you will see a line beginning with +OK), type USER followed by a space and then your username. Next press Return e.g.
    +OK POP3 noisy.precedence.co.uk v4.xx server ready
    USER jsmith
    +OK User name accepted, password please
  4. When you see the next line beginning with +OK, type PASS followed by a space and then your password. Next press Return, e.g.
    +OK User name accepted, password please
    PASS verysecret
    +OK Mailbox open, 24 messages
  5. Wait for your mailbox to open. This may take a while if your mailbox is very large
  6. After the next +OK, type LIST and press Return. This will list all the messages in your mailbox and their sizes., e.g.
    +OK Mailbox open, 24 messages
    LIST
    +OK Mailbox scan listing follows
    1 357470
    2 9849
    3 73844
    4 73852
    5 24995171
    6 4815
    7 24993513
    8 9537
    9 5851
    10 349337
    
  7. For each of the large messages, type DELE followed by the number e.g.
    DELE 5
    +OK Message deleted
    DELE 7
    +OK Message deleted
    
  8. When you have finished, type QUIT followed by Return.

With a program

There are a number of little programs available which basically do exactly the same as the manual method above, but which offer a nice user interface. They are probably a bit slower to use and of course, require you to download software, learn to use it and have a suitable computer (e.g. be running Windows or such like) whereas the above method can be performed from pretty much anywhere.
Name Operating system Licence URL
QuickDeleteWindowsFreewarehttp://www.yeti-soft.de/
MailScoutRISC OSCommercialhttp://www.imagesoft.co.uk/mailscout/
PoppyUnix (perl)Freehttp://home.sprynet.com/~cbagwell/projects.html

Just because programs are listed above, this does not imply that Precedence Technologies Ltd recommend or support the products. We have listed them for convenience only.

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