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From: LEICHTER@VENUS.YCC.YALE.EDU ("Jerry Leichter ", LEICHTER-JERRY@CS.YALE.EDU)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: re: an interesting [MAIL] problem I have....
Message-ID: <8712080300.AA06591@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Mon, 7-Dec-87 09:47:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8712080300.AA06591
Posted: Mon Dec  7 09:47:00 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 13-Dec-87 05:55:59 EST
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
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	I have a problem with VAX mail.....  It seems that every time I login,
	it tells me I have one new mail message, but when I get into mail, and
	type dir, it gives me the directory of my main folder. This seems to
	have been caused by my compressing the main mail file down when I
	received a mail message. Can someone tell me how to get rid of that
	outstanding mail message????  I've already tried to compress it down
	again, but it still hasn't gone away.

This is one of the most commonly-asked VMS questions, by beginners and expe-
rienced users alike.  While the answer IS in the MAIL documentation, it is
almost never noticed - partly because, it seems, MAIL is easy enough to use
that hardly anyone ever bothers to READ the documentation!

Anyhow:  Go into MAIL and type READ/NEW.  If you've actually got some new
mail, read it; when you've read it all, type READ/NEW again.  When READ/NEW
reports "No new messages", it also resets the new mail message counter to 0.

Note that there are several ways to get the new mail message counter out of
sync with the actual new messages.  The two most common are system crashes
and restoring the system disk from a backup (often related, of course).  I
don't think compressing your mail file will do this, but there could be some
odd timing window involved.
							-- Jerry