SPY HILL Research
Spy-Hill.net

Poughkeepsie, New York [DIR] [UP]

Configuring Pine, Netscape, or Eudora
for reading IMAP e-mail


Computing and Information Services at Vassar provides a convenient centralized e-mail service, using what is known as IMAP (the Internet Mail Access Protocol). Here are simple instructions to configure your computer to access your e-mail via IMAP using either Pine, Netscape, or Eudora.
[Pine Configuration] [Netscape Configuration] [Eudora Configuration]

Pine Configuration

Pine runs on both Windows PC's and on Unix (and on MacOS X, which is based on Unix). In either case, the simplest way to configure Pine is through the "Setup" menus. Simply run pine and select "SETUP" (or press "S") from the main menu. Then press "C" to enter the Configuration menu and do the following:

Now from the main menu go back to the Setup menu again (press "S") and then press "L" (labeled "collectionList") to edit your list of folder collections. Then do the following:


If you are using Pine on a Unix computer and you are familiar with a text editor (such as emacs or vi) then you can also easily change your defaults by editing the configuration file .pinerc directly. Here is what to do:

You can change the other fields as well, such as smtp-server and user-domain, to the values shown above.

Windows users can also edit the pinerc file using the wordpad editor. You will find this file in the same folder as pine.exe, probably C:\Pine or C:\Program Files\Pine



Netscape Configuration

Configuration of netscape to read e-mail from CIS's central servers is very easy. Simply pull down
Edit -> Preferences -> Mail & Newsgroups
and fill in the appropriate fields for each of the items listed:
Identity
Fill in your name and e-mail address (which is your userid followed by "@vassar.edu". If you want to use a .signature file you can list it here. (a .signature file is a file which is added to the end of every message you sent.) Don't select a "vcard" -- not everybody can read them.

Mail Servers
Press "Add" to add an Incoming Mail Server, and enter:
imap.vassar.edu/ssl

Set the Outgoing Mail (SMTP) server to:

smtp.vassar.edu
The Outgoing mail server username is not required (at least not yet) but you might as well set it to your uniqname.

It also doesn't hurt, and might help, to set "Use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) if possible".

You can change any of the other options under "Mail & Newsgroups" as you like, or leave them alone. When you have filled in everything, pres "OK" to accept the changes and make them take effect.



Eudora Configuration

Eudora, which runs on Apple computers, now supports the IMAP protocol, and, it is easy to configure your Eudora installation to use the IMAP service. Here is what to do:

  Copyright © 2005 by Spy Hill Research http://www.Spy-Hill.net/~myers/help/IMAP-mail.html (served by Islay.spy-hill.com) Last modified: 19 January 2005