Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!hpda!hplabs!ucbvax!VENUS.YCC.YALE.EDU!LEICHTER 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 Lines: 24 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