FastMail.FM FAQ

Getting Help with FastMail.FM

1. How do I get help with FastMail.FM and learn more about the service?
2. Can I get personal technical support?
3. Is there more information about pricing, FastMail.FM background, future plans, and so forth?
4. When should I post to the forum? What do I need to know before posting?
5. How do I contact the developers or management of FastMail.FM?

Common Trouble-shooting questions

1. Why do I get errors trying to send email from Outlook Express/Eudora/Mozilla/etc?
2. I got a message 'Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender' from 'Mail Delivery System'. What's it mean?
3. I got a message from a site I tried to email that the message was undeliverable - why?
4. Someone tried to email me but the email got returned; why?
5. I can't access FastMail.FM! What's wrong?
6. I can access the site and all links work, but when I click on a button, I get a "page not found" error. What's wrong?
7. I use SSL IMAP/POP and get 'certificate errors'. How do I fix this?
8. I use Internet Explorer on a Mac and FastMail.FM appears as gibberish. How do I fix this?
9. I'm getting strange display behaviour, such as colours changing from screen to screen; how do I fix it?
10. On Mozilla/Firebird/Firefox, I get a warning when I try to do a secure login!
11. I tried to delete an email in Outlook Express/Outlook XP/Eudora/etc, but it just got crossed out, not deleted; how do I get rid of it?
12. I am using POP to access my account, but there's an enormous email in there which I don't have time to download; what can I do?
13. Text/Popup Menus/Text Boxes/etc keep running off the right hand edge of my screen. What do I do?
14. Emails have disappeared from my account, where did they go? Can I get them back?
15. How can I get a folder restored from the server backup?
16. In Internet Explorer, a popup window keeps asking "Do you want to allow software such as ActiveX controls and plug-ins to run?" What should I do?
17. Can I delete some attachments from an email?

Questions about the FastMail.FM service and the company and people behind it

1. What's the latest news on FastMail.FM?
2. Why is it fastmail.fm?
3. Do you have any other addresses than fastmail.fm?
4. What planned enhancements are there for FastMail.FM?
5. What known bugs are there with FastMail.FM?
6. FastMail.FM doesn't look very pretty. Can I make it look nicer?
7. Why did a message I sent get bounced, referring me to this FAQ entry?

Email questions/problems

1. Why did a message I sent get bounced, referring me to this FAQ entry?
2. Why has a FastMail.FM user sent me spam?
3. How is header forging possible?
4. Why am I getting so much spam, I haven't told anyone my address?
5. I got an email from someone I don't know. How is that possible?
6. I'm getting email, with odd attachments, from someone I don't know. Why?
7. I think some site is blocking email from FastMail.FM. Why? What can I do about it?
8. I want to send emails to an opt-in list of users. How can I be sure to avoid any spam/abuse problems?
9. Can I get rid of the taglines that FastMail.FM adds to sent messages?
10. Are there sending or receiving limits?
11. How do I forward any new mails from FastMail.FM to another system?
12. How do I set up FastMail.FM to automatically reply to incoming emails? ("Vacation reply")
13. What's the size of the largest email I can send/receive at FastMail.FM?
14. When an email sent to me via two different routes/addresses, sometimes one never arrives. Why?
15. Some email I'm expecting with an attachment bounced back to the sender. Why?
16. What process does email delivery go through?
17. How come it doesn't show the sender's IP when sending an email through FastMail.FM? Doesn't that allow for abuse?
18. What headers are added by FastMail.FM ?

Signup and upgrade questions

1. What are the features and costs of FastMail.FM?
2. What are the advantages of FastMail.FM over other services?
3. I'm confused by all the options on the pricing table. What service level should I signup for?
4. How do I upgrade my account?
5. How do I upgrade if I don't have a credit card?
6. How do I get a shorter user name?
7. Do you have any other addresses than fastmail.fm?
8. I'm trying to signup, but it keeps going back to the login screen when I click the 'I Agree' button?
9. I tried to signup, but entered the wrong existing email address, what can I do?
10. I tried to signup, but haven't received the activation email. What do I do?
11. How does upgrading help me reduce spam?

Signup screen

1. What limitations do I need to be aware of when signing up?
2. What happens if I reach a particular service level limit?
3. Can I use FastMail.FM for SafeLists?
4. How much does FastMail.FM cost?
5. I've seen dozens of hosting providers, with POP accounts and web-space cheaper than you. Why should I use FastMail.FM?
6. What do I type in the "User name" section?
7. What do I type in the "Password" section?
8. What do I type in the "Current email address" section?
9. What do I type in the "Full name" section?
10. What do I type in the "Referrer" section?
11. What are the Terms of Service
12. What happens when I click "Signup"?

Login problems screen

1. I've forgotten my password or account name. Can you send them to me?
2. How can I clear the saved password in the browser?
3. I tried 'Secure Login', but it didn't work. Why?
4. When I tried to login, it said my account is suspended. Why?
5. When I tried to login, I got a message saying 'FastMail.FM- An error has occurred'. What happened?
6. When I tried to login, I got a message saying 'The page cannot be displayed'. What happened?
7. I had a problem logging in, but not any of the above. What can I do?

Login screen

1. What does 'Save Password' checkbox do?
2. What does the 'Screen Size' popup menu do?
3. What does the 'Display Style' popup menu do?
4. What does 'Secure Login' mean?
5. What does 'Using a public terminal' checkbox do?

Mailbox screen

1. How can I find how much space is being used in my account/a folder?
2. How do I empty my Trash, or delete all emails in a folder?
3. How do I view another folder, for instance to see my sent items?
4. How do I select which mails my actions apply to?
5. How do I move messages to other folders?
6. How do I sort messages?
7. I'm sorting by date, but messages aren't all being sorted correctly. Why?
8. What does the 'Search' button do?
9. What does the 'Goto' button do?
10. What is the 'Action' popup menu for?
11. What does the 'Do' button do?
12. What is the 'Folder' popup menu for?
13. What is the 'Go' button for?
14. What is the 'Move' button for?
15. What does the 'Redirect' action do?
16. What is the 'People' text box for?
17. What does the 'Bounce' action do?
18. What does the 'Retrieve' action do?
19. What does the 'Poll' link do?
20. What does the '[+]' link do?
21. What does the '[-]' on the folder tree menu do?
22. What does the 'Move/Copy' popup do?
23. What does the folder popup do?
24. What does the 'Resource Usage' section show?
25. A message on the mailbox screen has an attachment, but it doesn't appear on the view message screen. Why?
26. How do I set the column to sort by permanently?
27. Why doesn't FastMail.FM remember the number of rows I want to display in my folders?
28. How do I get rid of the message preview?

View messages

1. Why do links in e-mails not open in a new window?
2. What's the different between "Text view", "HTML view", "Framed view" and "Raw view"?
3. What does the 'All (compressed)' link do?
4. I want to print emails, does FastMail.FM have a 'print view' mode?
5. When I try to print emails from FastMail.FM, it prints as gibberish. Why?
6. What is the 'File Storage' section for, on the right of the attachments?
7. What are the checkboxes to the left of the attachments for?
8. What do the links after `Delete and:' do?
9. What do the Reply, Reply to all and Forward buttons do?
10. What is the popup menu next to the Forward button for?
11. What does the Spam button do?
12. What does the Bounce button do?
13. On the advanced view screen, what is the menu of folders and actions for?
14. What happens when I `press ctrl-space for actions'?
15. Using ctrl-space doesn't seem to work on Safari. Is there an alternative?
16. Why are external images and forms disabled in my email? What are Web Bugs?
17. Why can't external images safely be displayed with my current browser settings?

File Storage screen

1. How can I access the file storage feature in my account?
2. How do I let other people view my 'Public' folder?
3. Can I have a default page, that visitors will see when they view my folders?
4. How can I store files?
5. What is DAV? What about FTP? What programs do I need to use them?
6. What is the '{My Files}' item for?
7. How does the File Storage screen work?
8. How do I copy or move files and folders?
9. How does the File Storage 'Actions' menu work?
10. How do I upload new files to File Storage?
11. Are there any kind of quota restrictions on File Storage?
12. If I reach my File Storage bandwidth or storage quota, will I stop getting email?
13. Can I use a stylesheet from my File Storage?
14. Help! I cannot download my files from file storage!!

Configure web access to file storage

1. How can I let others access my files?
2. I want to keep my username and domain secret, can I still make my files available to others?
3. What happened to the 'Private' website option?
4. How can I make my files available using my own domain?
5. Huh? That sounded like mumbo-jumbo to me. Just tell me how to make my files available using my own domain.

Spam / Virus Protection screen

1. What is the 'Virus' checkbox for?
2. What does "Silently discard virus laden emails" do?
3. What are the 'Spam Protection' radio buttons for?
4. What is a 'Spam Score'?
5. How does the Address Book whitelisting work?
6. Why doesn't the Address Book whitelisting work when I send mail to myself?
7. What does discarding spam mean?
8. What does filing spam mean?
9. What does spam subject marking mean?
10. Help! I deleted my 'Junk Mail' folder, and cannot recreate it!

Preferences screen

1. What is the Preferences screen for?
2. What is the 'Full Name' text box for?
3. What are the 'Password' text boxes for?
4. What does the 'Screen Size' popup menu do?
5. What is the 'Display style' popup menu for?
6. What is the 'View HTML' checkbox for?
7. What is the 'Timezone' popup menu for?
8. What is the 'Quoting default' popup menu for?
9. What is the 'Save Addresses' list for?
10. What is the 'Saved Password' area for?
11. What is the 'Default Charset' popup for?
12. What is the 'Communications Frequency' popup for?
13. What is the 'Web Bug Protection' checkbox for?

Pop Links screen

1. What does the 'Pop Links' screen allow me to do?
2. How do I add a new external POP server/Hotmail account?
3. What does setting a schedule do?
4. How does FastMail.FM delete a message after 1 week/1 month/6 months?
5. I want to leave messages on a server permanently; can I do that?
6. What does "Clear retrieved message ids" do?
7. What happens to errors that occur while retrieving from a Pop Link?
8. I want to retrieve email from Yahoo!Mail, mail.com, email.com, etc. How do I do that?
9. How do I put mail retrieved from a POP Link into a folder?

Addresses, Folders, Signatures and Upload addresses screens

1. What does the 'Signatures' screen allow me to do?
2. What does the 'Folders' screen allow me to do?
3. What does the 'Addresses' screen allow me to do?
4. What does the 'Upload/Download addresses' screen allow me to do?
5. I want to upload an addressbook with groups. Do you support that?
6. Are you going to support address book synchronisation via IMSP/ACAP/LDAP?
7. How can I transfer my address book from Microsoft Hotmail to FastMail.FM easily?
8. How do I add/sort addresses/folders/signatures?

Compose screen

1. What is the 'Quick List'? How do I use it? How do I show or hide it?
2. How do I change the number of addresses in the Quick List?
3. How do I add addresses to the Quick List? How do I remove an address?
4. What does the 'Address Book' button do?
5. What does the 'Check Names' button do?
6. What does the 'Save Draft' button do?
7. What does the 'Format' action('Format' button in the 'Advanced compose' screen) do?
8. What does the 'Spell Check' button do?
9. What does the 'Save new names' check box do?
10. What does the "From" popup do?
11. What do the "Custom" and "Personalities" buttons do?
12. What is the Signature popup menu for?
13. What is the Save Copy popup menu for?
14. What does the Notepad dropdown list do?
15. What are the 3 edit boxes and 'Browse...' buttons for at the bottom left of the screen?
16. What is the 'File Space' button for at the bottom of the screen?
17. How do you use an address group to send an email to many addresses?
18. What does the 'Attach More' button do?
19. What does the 'Do Action' button do on the Compose screen?
20. I need to send email with many different 'From' addresses. Do I always have to create or edit a personality to do that?
21. How do Drafts and Templates work?
22. How do I send emails with a Euro symbol?
23. How can I use formatting in the emails that I send?
24. How can I see what my HTML message will look like?
25. How can I enable the Cut/Copy/Paste buttons in Mozilla, Netscape and Firefox?

Search screen

1. How do I search messages in a folder?
2. How do I use the advanced message search screen?
3. How do I specify custom criteria to search on?
4. Can I search for messages in more than one folder?

Notepad screen

1. What's the notepad screen for?
2. How secure are notepad pages?
3. How do I add/sort notepad pages?
4. What does the "Is quick note?" checkbox do?

IMAP/External Mail access

1. Why should I use IMAP? What is the difference between POP and IMAP?
2. How can I access my mail at FastMail.FM using Outlook/Netscape/Eudora/etc?
3. I'm having problems setting up my email client, can you help?
4. I know how to set up SMTP/POP/IMAP myself, I just want to know: What are the server details?
5. I'm behind a firewall and can't access IMAP/POP/SMTP. Can you help?
6. POP is much quicker and easier than IMAP, why don't you provide it to free accounts? Why don't you provide SMTP access for free accounts?
7. When I delete messages with my IMAP client, it just appears crossed out. Why?
8. How can I get mail from another account using Opera's mail client?
9. How can I get mail from another account into FastMail.FM?
10. Can I get mail from Hotmail to my FastMail.FM account?
11. How do I get Outlook to save sent messages in my Sent Items folder?
12. Can I access folders other than Inbox using POP?

Resource Usage

1. Why does FastMail.FM track bandwidth used when no one else does?
2. How is my monthly bandwidth limit determined?
3. What happens if I use up my monthly bandwidth quota or disk quota?
4. How often are the details on the resource screen updated?
5. What does bandwidth used 'this month' mean?
6. How does FastMail.FM calculate how bandwidth is used?
7. Are there any known problems or limits with bandwidth monitoring?
8. I need to send lots of large attachments regularly to a group of users, what can I do?
9. Does sending email to another FastMail.FM user or myself use bandwidth?
10. How do I conserve bandwidth?
11. 40MB per month doesn't sound like much to me?
12. Does my monthly bandwidth rollover? What about extra purchased bandwidth?
13. I have an email that says it has a 3M attachment, but it's using 4M of quota space. Why?
14. I got a message that I'm using lots of quota space, but I can see that I'm not, what's going on?

Aliases and virtual domains

1. What is an Alias?
2. What does the Aliases screen do?
3. How many aliases can I have?
4. Can you give me some alias and virtual domain examples?
5. How do I setup my own virtual domain?
6. I have an existing domain and my email is currently hosted elsewhere. What do I need to do to change it to FastMail.FM?
7. What is DNS? What are nameservers?
8. How do I set up multiple accounts under a single virtual domain?
9. How do I create an email address which is broadcast to multiple receipients?
10. How do I buy a domain?
11. What's the advantage of a virtual domain over email forwarding from my domain registrar?
12. How do I use FastMail.FM's subdomain addresses and "plus-addresses"?

SMS Messages

1. What is an SMS message?
2. Who can I send SMS to?
3. How do I send an SMS message?
4. How large can an SMS be? What if I send an SMS that is to long?
5. How do I pay for SMS messages?
6. How do I purchase SMS credits?
7. How much does one SMS credit cost?
8. Some people I send SMS's to are not seeing my phone number as the sender. Why?
9. How do I tell if my SMS has been delivered?
10. Why hasn't my SMS been delivered?
11. Do I still get charged if my SMS isn't delivered?
12. Can I be notified via SMS of urgent emails?

Charging and Billing

1. I received a charge on my credit card from "WP-Messaging Engine PT, Bundoora", is that related to FastMail.FM?
2. I have no credit card. How can I subscribe?
3. How do I pay using PayPal?
4. How do I pay using direct debit / telegraphic transfer?
5. How do I pay using a cheque or money order?
6. How and what does FastMail.FM charge for?
7. What are the different membership levels?
8. How do you charge for resources (eg bandwidth, disk quota, etc)?
9. I'm poor, I can't afford $20 a year for Full access. What can I do?
10. I upgraded to Member, then Full/Enhanced, and got charged more than I expected. Why?
11. Member level access seems to give everything you need, why would anyone pay for Full or Enhanced level access? Given no-one will buy these, you can't make money and will go broke...

Referral Program

1. Do you have a referral program? How do I earn credits?
2. How much do I earn for each referred user?
3. I earned some referrer credits, and want to use them, how do I do that?
4. I earned some referrer credits, can you pay me the cash?

Rules

1. What does the 'Define Rules' screen let me do?
2. I changed some rules on the 'Define Rules' screen, but they don't work?
3. I want to create some more complex set of rules. What can I do?
4. What does the 'look in' part of Define Rules mean?
5. What does the 'Order' column in the 'Define Rules' screen do?
6. What does the 'Forward type' column in the 'Define Rules' screen do?
7. How do I tell what address an email was delivered to?

Other

1. How do I add a new address, signature, notepad page, personality, etc?
2. Can I change the display order of addresses or signatures on the Addresses and Signatures screens?
3. What are the \/ and /\ items next to names on the mailbox, addresses, signatures, pop links columns for?
4. What does the popup next to 'Items:' do?
5. What does the popup next to 'Rows to display' do?