Mailbox storage usage that you can usually find in your mail settings. — Jim Rossman/TNS
A lot of my topics are from readers who write me to ask a question, but my family is also a great source of topics.
This week I got a phone call from my brother, who was trying to help his wife figure out why her email had stopped working on her iPhone.
My brother and his wife each have a Hotmail account, which is an older email address from Microsoft.
I had him check the account settings, which include the login name, password and addresses for the incoming and outgoing mail servers.
Since they both used Hotmail, he was able to verify from his phone that her settings were still correct.
As an IT guy, my next thought was to delete the email account from the phone and then add it back.
My brother wasn’t quite sure they remembered the password, which was saved on the phone, so he was hesitant to delete the account from the phone until he was sure they had the correct password.
I told him to try accessing the account through a browser to see if they could remember the password. This would also show if there was an overall email issue or if it was strictly an issue with the account on the phone.
He was going to call me back after trying on the computer, but instead he ended up finding a solution without my help.
It turns out her email box was full, which was keeping her from being able to send or receive until she deleted some messages to make more room.
Of course, you can also pay for more storage.
If you do need to delete some messages, you can search your inbox for messages from specific senders that are not worth saving. If you’ve signed up for emails from any stores or catalogs, chances are they send you way more messages than you realize -- sometimes two or three per day.
Searching your inbox for those addresses allows you to select all the messages from a particular sender and then delete them all at once.
Also, don’t be afraid to unsubscribe from emails from stores or websites you no longer want to receive. You’ll find unsubscribe links in the small print at the bottom of their messages. – Tribune News Service
