Are you having trouble sending/receiving Private Messages (PMs)?

[Jacques]

For members who use the Personal Messaging (PM) system a lot , there may be a problem if any of your mailboxes become full to capacity, in which case you may not be able to send or receive any PMs:

...Make sure ALL of your PM folders have some room, I have found if any folder is 100% full, the system chokes on that
...

In my opinion there should be some sort of FAQ on managing Private Messages. Currently, the FAQ library has only three FAQs in the PM area and none of these FAQs pertain to the management of one's PM folders. I think that this would be especially useful for those members who are very active in sending/receiving PMs.

As CRguy has mentioned above, the system may stop receiving or sending your PMs if some of your PM folders are full. Thus, for members who are very active in the PM environment, it would be important for them to periodically check on the size of the PM folders and take appropriate action if any folder is approaching the limit of 100 messages.

• Folder maintenance. A user's default PM configuration has 3 main folders with 100 message limits. The links for checking these are given below. When you click on a link you will see how full that particular folder is right now. You will see a message something like, "Folder is 2% full (2 out of 100 messages stored)". Thus, when you are getting up close to 90 messages stored, then you will need to do something to clear out some space for new messages otherwise any new messages will be blocked, either temporarily or permanently, depending on how your PM options are set.
  
  View messages: Inbox
  http://coloncancersupport.colonclub.com/ucp.php?i=pm&folder=inbox
  
  View messages: Outbox
  http://coloncancersupport.colonclub.com/ucp.php?i=pm&folder=outbox
  
  View messages: Sent messages
  http://coloncancersupport.colonclub.com/ucp.php?i=pm&folder=sentbox
  
  (Note: You can arrange to have up to 4 additional PM folders for storage, and if you have already set up some additional storage folders you should check on the sizes of each of these folders, too.)
  .
• Verification of your PM settings. If you have checked the size of all your PM folders and are still having problems with PMs, you can check your settings to see if something has been turned off or deactivated. There are two main places where PM-relevant settings are found:
  
  
  • Edit Global Settings
    http://coloncancersupport.colonclub.com/ucp.php?i=ucp_prefs&mode=personal
    
  • PM Rules, Folders and Settings
    http://coloncancersupport.colonclub.com/ucp.php?i=ucp_pm&mode=options
    
    
    'If folder is full' setting
    'Default' settings
    'Add folder'setting
• Other issues. There are several other points to make:
  
  If someone has sent you a PM and has then deleted the PM before you tried to read it, you will not be able to access or read the PM. You will still see a header with the original PM's title, but you will not be able to download the message itself because the message itself no longer exists.
  
  If a member has chosen the option to block all their incoming PMs, you will not be able to send PMs to that particular member.
  
  If your Inbox becomes totally full, you will not receive any notification at all of new PMs arriving, since there is no longer any room to store them. These messages might possibly be kept on the server until you free up some space, but this depends on what options you have in place. So, if you are expecting a PM from someone and you don't receive any notification, it is urgent for you to check whether or not your Inbox is already full.
  
  If your Sent box becomes totally full, then recipients will not be able to open any PMs you are sending to them because there is no longer any room in your Sent folder to store your sent messages.
  
  When you send a PM to someone, the PM will stay in your Outbox until the user is able to download it. Once the user has accessed it and read it, your message will be moved to your Sent folder (if there is any space left there).

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