Technology Tips – Published January 2021 in the Guide and Digest
By Don Trauger – Kennett
I’ve discovered that a large number of stored Comcast Inbox emails has a deleterious effect when using a separate email program such as MS Outlook, Windows Live Mail or Thunderbird.
I use Windows Live Mail so I can only verify what I’ve seen when connecting to the Comcast Email server. Over the last several months I had noticed that Windows Live Mail had slowed considerably when downloading Email. I blamed it on Comcast for having let their overall email load slow down their servers. Nothing was further from the truth. Actually what was happening was that Windows Live Mail (WLM) could not handle the load. Yes, it still downloaded only the current unread Emails but it took considerably extra time to do so. What I believe happened is that if you have 10,000 or more Emails in your Comcast Email Inbox, it puts a search load on WLM. Apparently WLM reads through all of the Comcast Inbox Email items before downloading the current unread Emails.
To correct this slowdown effect you need to make a new storage folder which you will use to move all of your older Inbox Emails into this new folder. All further incoming Emails will still be deposited in the Inbox as usual. A rough gauge that you can use is that if it takes longer than 5-10 seconds to download or Email you may want to check on the number of Emails you have stored in your Comcast Inbox.
Sign in to your Comcast Account using your browser. Click the Email envelope icon at the top. On the left side, your Inbox shows the number of emails that are stored up to 999. If you see a + sign next to 999 it means you have even more emails in your Inbox. The actual number of emails that is greater than 999 can be seen if you move your mouse to the blank area to the right of the 3 horizontal line icon. The number of emails are irrelevant when using a browser. However, when using a separate email program such as WLM it can make a big difference. In this blank area you will see the actual total. If it’s well into 4 digits you should make a new folder to offload the Inbox to improve the operation of Outlook, Windows Live Mail or any other separate Email program.
Below the normal Email folders you will see “My folders”. Right click it then click “Add new folder”. In the pop-up window type a name for your new folder. Archived is a good choice then click Add. You have just created a new folder named Archived under “My folders”. The next step is to download your email using your separate Email program. This will make your email program current with Comcast.
The last step is to move all of your Inbox emails to the new Archived folder. Right click the Inbox and click “Move all messages”. In the pop-up window, click the right pointing arrow next to “My folders”. Click on Archived, or whatever you named the new folder, then click on “Move all”. That’s it! Your Archived folder now looks like your Inbox did a few moments ago. Clicking the Inbox should indicate that it is Empty. The Inbox will continue to operate as it did before only faster for your separate email program.
Conceptually this procedure will also work for other Email providers to speed up the separate Email program you may be using. Again, this won’t help if you only use the browser for your Email.