Creating and Managing Webmail Mailing Lists

Last Update: 10/21/11

If you need to email the same group of people frequently, official mailing lists can be requested from IT for members of a university student organization, university departments, etc. The IT Department will not create personal email groups. You must create those within your email client; e.g., Webmail or Outlook Express.

If you'd like to create a new mailing list, please fill out our Mail List Request from our Self Service site. 

The instructions that follow will walk you through how to configure and manage the mailing list once it's been created. In these instructions, owner refers to you and subscriber refers to people you would like to add to your mailing list.

1. Go to https://webmail.uccs.edu and log in. Your mailing list will be listed under Folders on the left side.

Click on the 

 link (not the list name).

2. Type in an appropriate name for your mailing list in the Description box.

3. The Subscribe box should read moderated. This ensures that only the owner can add subscribers to the list.

4. Scroll down the page. Set the Accept Postings box to from subscribers to allow all subscribers to send to the list. Set it tofrom owner only if only the owner will send to the list. The New Subscribers block should read Unmoderated. The Allowed Format box should read anything. This allows subscribers to send mail in HTML format and send attachments. The Maximum Size box should be set to an appropriate size, like 1024K. This allows emails up to 1 megabyte in size.

5. The unsubscribe after box should read 200 Bounces. This prevents problems if a subscriber's server is down for an extended period of time.

6. Scroll down on the page. Type in the name of the list in the Subject Prefix box with square brackets around it. The list name is the -L name. The Direct Replies box should read to Sender. This sets the sender as the default when replying to mail (rather than the entire list). Erase everything in the Trailer block. Text in this box has resulted in spam filters blocking email sent to the list.

7. Now click the checkmark at the top left to save the settings.

The following instructions explain how to add or remove subscribers.

8. Click on the Subscription link at the top of the page. (If you closed Webmail, you'll need to reopen it and return to the mailing list.)

9. Building the list of subscribers initially is easiest using a text editor like Windows Notepad. To get to Notepad, click on theStart button, select All Programs, then Accessories, and open Notepad. Type each subscriber's email address on a separate line. When the list is complete, click on the File menu and select Save. Type a name for the list and click the Save button. Close Notepad.

10. Inside of webmail, click the Browse button and select the file you just saved. Then click the Subscribe button. All subscribers added from a file will have feed abilities unless you've changed the default to null. See below for a more detailed explanation.

Note: If the list fails, Webmail will give you a message stating a bad line. It checks each UCCS email address and will fail when it finds an address that isn't valid. You'll need to reopen the .txt file in Notepad (or other text editor). Correct the email address if it's incorrect or delete it if the person no longer has an account. Then Subscribe the list again. (It's okay to re-subscribe users. Webmail won't duplicate the entries.) You may have to do this multiple times if the list is old and long.

11. To add an additional subscriber, type the email address in the box labeled Single User. Find the Mode box at the bottom of the window. Set it to feed if the subscriber will send and receive email. Set it to null if the subscriber will send email but cannot receive email. An example of using null might be a subcriber that can submit requests to a list, but cannot view internal email between other subscribers. Now click the Subscribe button near the top of the window to add the subscriber.

12. To change a subscriber from feed to null, click the box to the left of the email address to add a checkmark. Set the Modebox to null and click the Set button to the left of the mode box. Change from null to feed in a similar fashion.

13. To remove a subscriber from the list, click the box to the left of the email address and click the Unsubscribe button. Unsubscribed users will still be on the list but will show unsub in the Mode column. Webmail will remove unsubscribed users periodically.