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Clearing Your Mailbox

We often see complaints in the newsgroups about AT&T Worldnet Service members attempting to retrieve their e-mail only to have the download get stuck on message X of Y. The reason this occurs may be due to a corrupted e-mail message that is plugging up your mailbox or it may just be a huge binary someone sent you. There are several ways to get rid of the offending message without having to download it and without having to call customer service.

You can use the new AT&T Worldnet Service Message Center to retrieve the headers, and delete the stuck message. The Message Center gives you access to your AT&T Worldnet Service e-mail directly from the Web. There is no software to install or configure, your standard Web browser is all you need.

• AT&T Worldnet connection: http://webmail.att.net/

Another alternative requires the use of a telnet program. Telnet is built into Windows 95/98/ME/XP/NT/2000. If you are using Windows 3.1 or a Mac, you may need to download a telnet program from the Telnet page here at WURD. EWAN seems to be the one that works for most people using Windows 3.1. We've included instructions for using telnet below.

Using Telnet to clear your mailbox:

To connect to the AT&T Worldnet Service via telnet, you need to know the following information:

• Host Name: postoffice.worldnet.att.net
• Port: 110
• Term Type: vt100
• Your e-mail id (without the @worldnet.att.net part)
• Your e-mail password

Following is an example procedure for using telnet to clear a message from a mailbox using Windows 95's built in telnet application:

1. Connect to AT&T Worldnet Service using either the AT&T Worldnet Connection Manager or Microsoft's DUN. Make sure that you don't have your browser or e-mail application open.
2. From the desktop, click on Start menu and choose Run.
3. In the Open field, type telnet.
4. Select the Terminal menu, choose Preferences and make sure the local echo box is checked.
5. Select the Connect menu and choose Remote System.
6. You will then see a dialog box with 3 settings, like this:
   
   For Host Name, enter postoffice.worldnet.att.net. Enter the other items as shown in the graphic above.
7. After changing the settings, Click Connect.
8. You will then see the following screen:
   
9. Type in user followed by your e-mail id. Like this, except using your e-mail id in place of wurd:
   
10. Type in pass followed by your e-mail password. Like this:
    
    The graphic above shows asterisks (*) in place of your password. This is normal. Be sure to type in your e-mail password, not the asterisks.
11. You then have several commands you can use. These are:
    

    Command	Response
    list	Will give you a list of all the e-mail messages in your mailbox
    dele	Will remove a specific message from your mailbox
    uidl	Will list the header information of a specific e-mail so you can see where it is from
    retr	Will retrieve the message for you to read
    quit	ends the telnet session

12. Type in list and you will get a list like this:
    
    In this example, it shows I have one message that is 698 bytes in length.
13. You can see where the message came from by typing in uidl followed by the message number. Like this:
    
14. To remove the message, type in dele followed by the message number. Like this:
    
15. Once done, type in quit in order to make the delete take effect and end your telnet program.
    

Note: If you have more than 100 messages that you would like to delete, you could call customer service at 1-800-400-1447 and they will do it for you. However, they can NOT delete individual messages... every message still on the server will be deleted.

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