Mailbox management

Once WinGate mailboxes are created, they will be displayed on the Mailboxes tab of the Email panel. If you have created a domain rule on the Domains tab, you can specify that all mail WinGate receives for that domain should be delivered to a corresponding local mailbox. This is based on the matching the portion in the email address used in the incoming mail before the @ symbol, with a mailbox name. If there is no matching mailbox, or address handler configured, then the mail will be rejected.

Note

In WinGate, mailboxes are created initially to correspond to a user in the user database employed by WinGate. However, for administrative purposes it is possible to detach a user from a mailbox, and reattach the user to a new mailbox. This has been designed to assist in the migration of WinGate mailboxes when you change the user database provider for WinGate. Often mailboxes that were attached to users in the old user database, find that there is no corresponding user in the new user database. These orphaned mailboxes can be reattached to users in the new database when required.

You can attach a currently unattached mailbox to a user who doesn't have a mailbox, or attach it to a user who has an existing mailbox when you wish to merge the two. This is common when a user with a mailbox no longer exists, but you wish to keep the contents of a mailbox.

For example, you can easily assign an unattached mailbox to an administrative user, and merge the two so they can receive all mail previously delivered to the old unattached mailbox.

To detach a mailbox:

1. Open the WinGate Management console.
2. Navigate to Monitoring > Email.
3. On the Mailboxes tab right click on the mailbox you wish to detach from a user, and select Detach User from the context menu. This will open the Detach user from Mailbox configuration.

   

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4. Select from the detachment options:

   • Do not accept mail for this user

     WinGate will not accept mail for this user (default selection).

   • Hold new mail until the user is attached to another mailbox

     WinGate will hold all mail addressed to this user in the SMTP Delivery queue until the user is attached to another mailbox. Caution should be applied with this setting, as this will potentially enlarge the email delivery queue while email is still being received for this user when it has no mailbox.

   • Allow WinGate to create a new mailbox for this user

     WinGate will create a new mailbox for the user (user name with a number appended). In this example, if you selected this option then a mailbox would be created for the user name office called Office_1.

Attaching users to mailboxes

To attach a user to a mailbox:

1. On the Mailboxes tab, right click on the currently unattached mailbox and select Attach user. This will open the Attach User to Mailbox dialog.

   

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2. Search for the user you wish to attach the mailbox to (If the target user is already attached to a mailbox, then you will be shown the merge screen (see Merging Mailboxes section below).
3. Click OK, and the selected user will now show as being attached to that mailbox on the Mailboxes tab.

Merging mailboxes

When you are attaching a user to a mailbox, and the user is already attached to another mailbox, then you will be shown options in the Attach user to Mailbox dialog on how you want to handle both mailboxes.

Since a user can only be attached to one mailbox, you must decide on how WinGate will manage this. You can either select the Detach the user from the mailbox option, which will detach them from their current mailbox and automatically have them attach to the new one, or you can merge them.

Merging means that one mailbox will be kept, and all messages in the other will be transferred to it. If you select Merge mailboxes, you will be shown the Merge mailboxes dialog.

This allows you to pick the direction of where the merge will go.

Note