Harvard Explained?

Q: How can the joys of Harvard e-mail last for ever and ever?

A: To delete or not to delete: that is the (often-postponed) question. Seniors who have accumulated four-thousand-plus e-mails, rejoice. You can delay having to decide the fate of each semi-funny posting from mass e-mail lists simply by saving your inbox. Until July 15—the date on which access to your fas.harvard account expires—you and your fellow Internet packrats have the option of downloading your inboxes via SecureFX (Windows) or MacSFTP (Mac). After signing onto fas.harvard.edu, you will see a window displaying the contents of your fas account, including a “mail” folder and a “.inbox” file. Click and drag both of these into the desired folder on one’s local computer, and if asked for a transfer type, choose “Binary.” To read the downloaded Pine e-mail folders, refer to the Help files of whatever e-mail software you currently use. If you put off this task until after July 15, you can still use the FAS Account Archive Download tool to save your inbox as a Zip archive. Just visit http://www.fas.harvard.edu/computing/myaccount and detailed directions will prompt you. However, lest you feel too secure in your procrastination, remember: the latter option expires after October 1, when FAS Computer Services deletes all the accounts of June graduates. But then, that would solve all your decision-making problems, wouldn’t it?