Welcome CompuServe Classic Users
Posted May 21st 2009 11:20AM by Webmail Team
Important Update (June 9, 2009, 4:28pm ET):
We believe we have fixed the majority of issues with the new mail system and have noticed that the system has been stable for the past 12 hours.
We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience through this migration. If you are experiencing any problems, please call Tech Support at 1-800-848-8990 or email us (websuiteblog@aol.com) to let us know exactly what is happening and provide as much detail as you can. This will help us to resolve your issue.
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As mentioned in earlier communications, the CompuServe Classic service will no longer operate as an Internet Service Provider as of June 30th, 2009. As a result, we have been working on enabling you to retain your CompuServe Classic email address -- by migrating to a new email system. Your email service is available to you at no charge -- but you will need to provide your own Internet access.
Some of the benefits of the new system include:
- Unlimited storage, which lets you keep as many messages as you want
- Ability to receive large messages (up to 16MB per message)
- Industry leading spam and virus protection to help eliminate threats and hassles
- Open accessibility and compatibility with IMAP and POP3
- Seamless integration with AIM for instant messaging
1. How do I login to my CompuServe Classic mailbox?
Once you have completed the migration, you will need to go to http://webmail.compuserve.com and login with your full compuserve email address (e.g. username@compuserve.com) and the password you created during the migration.
NOTE: we have fixed the problem with selecting the "Stay signed in until I sign out" option.
2. Which username should I use to login to my CompuServe Classic mailbox?
If you only have a numeric based User ID (e.g. 77777.7777), you will enter the User ID along with "@compuserve.com" (e.g. 77777.7777@compuserve.com) in the "E-mail or Screen Name" field.
However, if you have a friendly name (in addition to your numeric based User ID), you will need to use your friendly name as the username (i.e. friendlyname@compuserve.com). Your "friendly name" has been made the primary login name and the numeric based Member ID as an alias (which will allow you to continue to receive email sent to this User ID).
3. If I have a friendly name and a numeric based Member ID, which address will mail that I send from my CompuServe Classic mailbox display from?
If you have a friendly name and a numeric-based User ID, all mail that you send from your CompuServe Classic mailbox will display from the friendly name.
4. If I have a friendly name and a numeric based Member ID, will I continue to receive email that is addressed to my numeric based Member ID?
Yes, you will still receive any email that is addressed to your numeric-based User ID, however when you reply to that email, it will be addressed from your friendly name.
5. I just logged into my new CompuServe Classic mailbox and I don't see any of my old email?
We are working on migrating all your old email. It should be available to you within 24 hours of when you initiated your mailbox's migration.
6. Why is my CompuServe Classic account no longer forwarding email to my CompuServe 2000 account?
The new email system does not support the auto-forwarding of email at this time. We are working to support this feature in the future. You will need to login to your CompuServe Classic mailbox (http://webmail.compuserve.com) to read, reply, and send messages -- or access your mailbox via a POP3 or IMAP client.
7. Can I use a third party email client (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc) to send and receive email to my CompuServe Classic mailbox?
Yes, you can use any third-party email client that supports either POP3 or IMAP. Below are the POP3, IMAP, and SMTP settings that you will need to configure into the third-party email client:
pop.csi.com ; port 110 (SSL = port 995)
imap.csi.com ; port 143 (SSL = port 993)
NOTE: The port numbers are entered in a separate field from the POP or IMAP hostname.
When you are setting up your POP3 or IMAP client, you will need to use your complete email address (e.g username@compuserve.com) as your username and use the password you created as part of the migration. You will also need to configure your SMTP, or outbound email connection, to use:
smtp.csi.com ; port 587 (SSL = port 465)
NOTE: This new SMTP server will require you to supply your complete email address (e.g username@compuserve.com) and password to send mail.
8. What is the difference between POP3 and IMAP?
There are two basic ways to set up an email program such as Eudora, Entourage, Thunderbird, or Outlook to check your email. One is to use a POP (POP3: Post Office Protocol) and the other is to use IMAP (IMAP4: Internet Message Access Protocol).
POP3 is a one-way communication path. Your device asks us for data and pulls it from our servers -- but that's it. Things you do on your device have no effect on the server. If you read a message on your phone, then log in to your mailbox, you will see that same message marked as unread.
IMAP is a two-way communication path. Unlike with POP, your devices talk back to our servers and sync your changes automatically with IMAP. When you sign in to your account in a web browser, actions you've taken on your email client or mobile device (like putting a message in a 'work' folder) will also appear in webmail (your message will be in your 'work' folder). This all happens automatically once you set up IMAP, so you don't have to read or sort all your mail twice. This is really helpful when accessing your mailbox from multiple devices.
We recommend that you use IMAP access to ensure that you will always have the same view of your mailbox no matter where you view it -- at home, office, mobile, or anywhere. Below are the advantages to using IMAP:
- messages are stored on the server are accessible from any computer and webmail anywhere in the world
- IMAP mail folders remain synchronized with IMP (webmail)
- sent messages and drafts are also stored on the server
- IMAP mail is backed up on the server and can be restored
- ease of migration from a program to a program and from a computer to another computer/location
- ease of setting up additional computers to check your email, no need to copy anything fro one computer to another
9. Why don't I see the email addresses that are in my CompuServe Classic Client Address Book in this new webmail experience?
The email addresses in your old address book are stored on your local computer, so we have no way to migrate them into the new email system. If you are using either CS3 and CS4 clients, you can find your address book (ADDRBOOK.DAT) in the SUPPORT subdirectory. Make a copy of this file and save it in another location (such as your Desktop). Once you have completed this step, you will need to download a free utility that converts a .DAT file into a .CSV file. There are many of these tools available -- just go to AOL Search and search for "DAT to CSV".
Once you have converted your address book from a .DAT to a .CSV file, you can import the addresses into your new CompuServe Classic mailbox. You will need to login using CompuServe Classic webmail (http://webmail.compuserve.com) and use the instructions on how to import these addresses at our Help Portal.
10. Why can't I set mail filters in webmail?
Our development team is working on making this feature available. We anticipate that this feature will be available in mid July 2009.
We hope you enjoy your new webmail experience.
Rohit Kinra, AOL Mail Team
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Reader Comments (Page 4 of 11)
61. Hi, it seems lots of us are getting mails from other people bounce and they get a delivery failure report. I have been with CompuServe for seventeen years and am getting somewhat disappointed with their support now. We are still paying a subscription until next month and their service level on this migration is poor to say the least.
I have phone about six times and listened to lots of music; emailed 'support' twice and heard nothing back over a week. Given that losing mails is somewhat fundamental to a mail transport system you would think that someone in AOL/CompuServe would acknowledge this, wake up to the fact and attempt to do something about it. So far not. As previous comments this blog doesn’t seem to be read by them!
re connection issues; I have accessed my webmail (username permutations permitting!) and via various pop3 clients I use, namely Outlook, Outlook Express and WinLive mail on different pc’s.
All I did (apart from change to migrated username & password) was change the pop3 server name to; pop.csi.com and leave the smtp server as my Internet ‘access’ suppliers smtp, ie. the people who provide the ADSL/broadband access, as outgoing mails go from their server, BUT most importantly left off any port #’s and let the network sort these out. I was concerned that my Firewalls and Routers may have needed setting to accept these ports. Didn’t have ports defined before so didn’t define them now and my pop3 clients work ok – apart from losing mail from some people that is.
To see if it’s the server spam filters that are bouncing the lost mails (re aol blacklist messages etc) I’m gonna turn off spam filtering on the webmail settings and leave my pop3 clients and virus checker etc to catch them on my pc, if they get that far! But I really think its and AOL network issue.
If things don’t get sorted over the next couple weeks at the most I shall start migrating my main mail address to another provider, even after all these years of loyalty and paying a sub. and am tempted to cancel my June payment – but then I’ll probably get cut off altogether! Wake up support!!
Posted at 6:33AM on May 25th 2009 by johnhollingdale
62. As an example of mis – management this cut – over is yet another exemplar. Finding the issued information little better than generalised waffle / warm noises but no facts / I have been asking specific questions for weeks now. Why do we live in a world where software is so consistently hard to manage??
And as an example of CompuServe senior management’s ethos, its yet another illustration. In the 15 plus years I have paid these people, never ever has anyone above 1st line support dared put their heads over the parapet. I have a simple rule, if you don’t know the name of the MD (CEO in some parts of the world) then the organisation is flawed. As Churchill said – the first quality is COURAGE !
Currently (a full week down the pike !) I have the following:
1. My outgoing mail works on the CompuServe client still. Outgoing mail from Outlook does not work if set up to CompuServe’s instructions (any edition of them ! eg “smtp.csi.com Port 110” [why do they not explain to we non- tecchies that these things go in separate boxes? ] ) so I have had in some tecchie help and configured to talk to my ISP’s SMTP server. If anyone else has this problem I can let you have the server details. Its in the Isle of Man (an Island in the Irish Sea, between Liverpool and Belfast UK), which has significant alternative – route resilience, plus massive massive pipes. So even if you all pile in, provided the server stands up, and will accept mail from you, it should work.
Obviously there will be other SMTP servers round the world which will accept mail from “foreigners”.
2. The item in POST 17 above
“
Do NOT tick the "Stay signed in until I sign out" box!
If I tick the box, I get "Invalid Screen Name or Password. Please try again." If I don't tick the box, I get logged in. “”
is confirmed as a repeatable error. Amazing.
And of course nothing about how long the system takes before it times you out. Again, real consideration for the users shown !
3. Access to the system varies. Sometimes it works, sometimes not And that’s when its not down of course (happened more than once).
4. Address book conversion. Spent a day fiddling with it, trying to get the old Addressbook.Dat into CSV or tab – separated format so I can feed it to Outlook. File is riddled with non – printing characters and IMHO frankly too risky to transfer yet, VERY frustrating, and again a foreseeable problem which C/serve should have a solution for. I have asked them for it.
5. Spam filters.
As comments above, much of my mail goes straight there. Control of filters required ASAP. And a spam inbox is no use if, as points 2 or 3 above, you cannot get in there to look. Also, its another wasteful time – consuming operation if what you want is an auto – download of everything, then get off line.
6. Auto -forwarding of Messages
Anybody seen this? Could save a lorra lorra problems while we wait for them to get it working. !!
ASBeesley@compuserve.com
Posted at 8:50PM on May 25th 2009 by asbeesley
63. Hi, those of you commenting on getting your Classic address book across to a pop3 client (DAT to CSV etc) here are some tools I used about seven years ago when I moved from Cim Classic 4 to Outlook (and OLE) and started using pop3;
www.cs2exchange.com
These people (they seem to be still active) have various convertors (Endura as well) and they worked! Took all my Folders; Inbox, Sent etc AND Cim Address book over to Outlook and from there could do more with them anyway, like export as csv etc.
Worked well and only some tweaking and tidying up needed on the results. Good luck!
Posted at 6:51AM on May 25th 2009 by johnhollingdale
64. Posted at 6:33AM on May 25th 2009 by johnhollingdale:
"To see if it’s the server spam filters that are bouncing the lost mails (re aol blacklist messages etc) I’m gonna turn off spam filtering on the webmail settings and leave my pop3 clients and virus checker etc to catch them on my pc, if they get that far! But I really think its and AOL network issue."
It will be interesting to see if this has any effect. I don't expect it to, as the only thing the spam filtering should be doing is to determine whether an email that has reached your Inbox should be left there or be moved across to the Spam folder. In the case of messages that are rejected by the AOL blacklist, I wouldn't expect them to get as far as the spam filter.
Posted at 8:40AM on May 25th 2009 by Mike Strauss
65. The biggest limitation of my old Compuserve mail account was that the once the server had accumulated 250 emails it would refuse to accept any more -- and it didn't even have the courtesy to let the people sending those emails know that their messages wouldn't reach me. This wasn't a problem when I was at home and, back in the days before significant spam, I could go on holiday for a couple of weeks and still not accumulate as many as 250 emails for downloading upon my return. The situation is different nowadays, and I can't leave my mail for even a week before I have 250 messages in my Inbox. So on holidays lately I've had to obtain internet access frequently and use e-mailanywhere to go into my Compuserve account and clear out the spam to keep under the 250 message limit.
Now that I've migrated, e-mailanywhere no longer works but I should be able to get at my account via the Webmail facility. My question is whether this actually is necessary. Do we still have a 250 message limit on our Inboxes? Or has that limit been removed since the migration?
Is anyone who is reading this blog using the new system as a 'proper' Webmail system -- i.e. not using an email client to download their emails to their PC -- and thus building up an accumulation of email in their Inbox on the server? If so, have you come up against any limitations on the amount of email that can be left on the server, either in terms of number of messages or storage space occupied?
Posted at 9:08AM on May 25th 2009 by Mike Strauss
66. Mike Strauss
The very first benefit of the transfer, mentioned at the top of this thread, might allay your concerns I would have thought. ;-)
Posted at 9:37AM on May 25th 2009 by Andy Coleman
67. Having been a CompuServe User for more than 2 decades, I seem to be a fossil. So how can I save my received emails and attachments to my PC using http://webmail.compuserve.com? All instructions under HELP relate to AOL and its ikons. Where do I find the relevant ikons (save as?) in the new email system?
Posted at 10:23AM on May 25th 2009 by Thomas
68. Message 66. Exactly - see my message 60. And there is conflicting information about how long e-mails are saved for. Like Thomas I have been paying Compuserve a small fortune over the years (three accounts) and now there seems to be no support or help whatsoever.
Posted at 11:56AM on May 25th 2009 by bertramrota
69. Well I've just had my first test email which I sent on the 22nd, returned as too old ! So as I suspected, it's been sat on one of their servers for three days, whilst AOL support people were sat on their backsides.
Would anyone in their right minds ever join or recommend AOL after this debacle. I really hope one of the magazines get hold of the story, because we deserved a lot better than this.
Posted at 12:49PM on May 25th 2009 by Andy Coleman
70. ANYONE WITH PROBLEMS CAN OBTAIN ASSISTANCE AT:
http://community.compuserve.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?webtag=ws-cssoftware
Posted at 3:23PM on May 25th 2009 by Joseph
71. Anyone found a good DAT to CSV converter program - if so, I would like to know - thanks :)
Posted at 3:35PM on May 25th 2009 by ejbloom
72. Those of you looking for Address book transfer etc. Msg's #68 and 70 - see my post msg # 60. It works!
Mr Beesley msg #59 (Hi !) see my msg 59 paragraph 4
Posted at 5:16AM on May 26th 2009 by johnhollingdale
73. Hi, thanks Mike Strauss. (msg #61) As expected turning off Spam filtering on the webmail page hasn’t improved any mail throughput at all. The main benefit however is that I only have one Spam folder now on my pop client to check for misdirected mails and can adjust the Spam settings locally in my security suite.
The lost/bounced mails is obviously a network capacity or server bandwidth issue as well as maybe ‘aol blacklist’ intervention and the timed out failures are because of routing delays. How come AOL/CompuServe are taking so long to work this out and solve it. It should be basic stuff for an isp – what we’re getting is service levels akin to a small company’s IT dept. As per Andy Coleman (msg #66) – 'we deserve better than this'; we are paying a subscription fee after all.
AOL are likely to loose a lot of clients willing to pay for their email with reliable service levels – I am starting to look around as this loss of mail is something I cant be doing with.
I just received a reply to my Support email of one week ago, so it looks like there’s a seven day backlog on response. They suggested going to;
www.compuserve.ch
There’s pdf document there which explains in more details the migration process which would have been handy for everyone to have had last week and why it wasn’t posted on .com rather than Switzerland’s own site beggars belief. Once again their wording erroneously implies that the classic system will be shutdown after the 18 May – which it will (30Jun) but the way it reads suggests immediately and created the panic migration last week and blocked the system up. Good communication eh!
Given the apparent seven day backlog on Support messages I should get the reply to my missing/lost mails query this Thursday – keep you posted. John
Posted at 5:23AM on May 26th 2009 by johnhollingdale
74. Re: #50. Posted at 1:32PM on May 24th 2009 by 72624.3064
> Any ideas why messages can't be sent from Outlook Express 6?
> '72624.3064@compuserve.com'. Server: 'SMTP.csi.com', Server Response: '553 5.7.1 : Sender address rejected: not logged in'
The smtp.csi.com server requires you to use your emailaliasname@compuserve.com as the sending address (unless you never signed up for an email alias and only have a numeric address).
Posted at 11:01AM on May 26th 2009 by Don
75. asbeesley,
You need to use port 587 for SMTP (Not port 110).
Posted at 12:02PM on May 26th 2009 by Rohit
76. All,
If you have ever set-up a friendly name for your compuserve account, this will take priority. You can only use the friendly name to login or send mail from.
Please try logging in using your complete email address for webmail or POP3/IMAP access to your mailbox (e.g. friendlyname@compuserve.com).
Thanks,
Rohit
Posted at 12:04PM on May 26th 2009 by Rohit
77. Mike,
There is no longer a limit to the number of messages you can have stored in your compuserve.com mailbox. You will not run into any issues when you have more than 250 messages in your inbox (or any folder).
Thanks,
Rohit
Posted at 12:06PM on May 26th 2009 by Rohit
78. Paul,
You should really use the IMAP protocol if you are attempting to set-up your blackberry. IMAP will keep the messages on the server, so you can see all your mail when you login using a third party client (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc) or webmail (http://webmail.compuserve.com).
To set-up using IMAP:
1. Set the hostname to imap.csi.com
2. Set the port to 110
2. Use your full email address (e.g. username@compuserve.com) as the username
3. Use the password you created as part of the migration as the password
4. If you need to configure your send settings, use the following - hostname = smtp.csi.com ; port = 587.
5. You will use the same username and password that you used to configure the IMAP settings.
Thanks,
Rohit
Posted at 12:43PM on May 26th 2009 by Rohit
79. JW,
There is no way to change your email address. You can always set-up a new one at http://www.tunome.com/registerDomain?domain=compuserve.com.
Thanks,
Rohit
Posted at 12:45PM on May 26th 2009 by Rohit
80. Andy & Mike S. re my various posts on 'missing mails' and bounced mails had some joy in the 'old' Compuserve Support forum (seems the Sysops are still alive there, unlike here!) Go to;
http://community.compuserve.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?webtag=ws-cssoftware
Look at Recent Discussions and check out the various topics threads if you have the patience... one pointed me to this;
http://postmaster.aol.com/errors/
http://postmaster.aol.com/errors/554rtrbb.html
Seems the bounced mails are not down to AOL but the servers people send them from being blacklisted!!! So apprently not AOL's problem...
er how come they worked and these mails got thru before the migration then and other ISP's I use will accept mail from these dodgy peoples I know servers!
Seems like AOL is absolving responsibility in the interests of spam detection and we have stalemate! Looks like a migartion to another isp from AOL is looming...
Posted at 2:40PM on May 26th 2009 by johnhollingdale