Virgin Media Mail is an email service that our new customers already use, thanks to our partnership with Google. We’re now in the process of moving our existing blueyonder.co.uk email users over to Google so that they can also experience all the great new benefits, and we will begin to move ntlworld.com accounts early in 2010.
- What is Virgin Media Mail?
- When do I get it?
- How does the migration affect me?
- Why is Virgin Media Mail better?
- Your inbox
- Search
- Conversations
- Chat
- Labels
- Filters
- Check Spelling
- Attachments
- Mobile Access
- What if I don’t use webmail?
- Accessing Virgin Media Mail
- @virginmedia.com email addresses
- When will the addresses be available?
- How will the new email addresses be allocated?
- Who can have one of the new addresses?
- Do I have to change my email address?
What is Virgin Media Mail?
Virgin Media Mail is our brand new email service, built with our partners at Google.
Customers using Virgin Media Mail have access to 7000MB (7GB) mailboxes – loads more than they have today – as well as improved search features and chat functionality within our shiny new webmail interface.
When do I get it?
Anyone with a @virginmedia.com or a @virgin.net email address can already access Virgin Media Mail.
If you have an @ntlworld.com or @blueyonder.co.uk address, we’ll be in touch before your email is moved to the new Virgin Media Mail service with more information about how it works and when you’ll be able to use the great new features.
How does the migration affect me?
Your mailbox will be unavailable for a very short time while you are migrated to the Google system – we can’t say exactly how long in each case, but it will usually be well under 15 minutes.
We’ll send you an email before we move your mailbox, and another email to welcome you to the new system once your mailbox has been moved.
Webmail users will notice that the new interface looks quite different, and there is more information on this below.
Your settings in webmail will move over with you, although they will be stored in slightly different places. More information on settings can be found here.
Customers won’t be able to add or create any mailboxes while we move to the new service, but you will able to do so again as soon as your mailbox is moved over.
If you have a blueyonder.co.uk email address and have set up additional aliases on your mailbox, these aliases will also be moved with your mailbox. However on the Google system these will be known as 'nicknames' rather than as 'aliases'.
Why is Virgin Media Mail better?
There are a number of improvements with the new Virgin Media Mail. As with webmail now, you’ll be able to access your emails from any computer that’s connected to the internet – so why not give it a go?
Your inbox
Firstly, there’s an increase to the size of your inbox from the current 30MB to a massive 7000MB (7GB), which should be enough to store all your emails for a very long time!
Search
With Virgin Media Mail you can search your emails using Google’s search technology - a huge improvement over the current search tool in webmail. Using the search box in webmail means you can search for any email in your account (even archived mail), and you can also search the web on the same page.
In this example, you can see all emails sent or received containing the word “football”.
Conversations
Most webmail services will show your emails in the order they come in, which means that you need to wade through your inbox to follow a conversation.
With Virgin Media Mail things are different. All emails in the same conversation are grouped together in what is called a ‘thread’, making the conversation much easier to follow – particularly if you need to refer back to a previous email on the same subject.
The most recent email in the conversation is shown, but you can see all the messages by clicking on the ‘Expand all’ link to the right of the window.
Searching for a particular subject will also bring up entire conversations, not just the individual emails in the conversation.
We’re sure you’ll agree it’s much easier to use!
Chat
Another great feature is being able to chat with other users, using the ‘Chat’ section on the left hand side of Virgin Media Mail.
If you’ve previously emailed someone, there’ll be an option to add them to Chat. You can also use the ‘Add Contact’ link for someone you haven’t chatted with before.
Once the invite has been accepted, you can chat with them simply by clicking on their name in the Chat menu.
Labels
Rather than putting your email into folders, with Virgin Media Mail you can apply labels to your email message – which means that you can ‘tag’ them with more than one label.
To add a label, open the email you wish to tag and click on ‘Labels’ just above the message window. If you have a label that’s appropriate to your message already, you can just click on it.
If a suitable one isn’t already set up, you can create a new label for the message.
Once you’ve added a label to a conversation, you can then search for this label either by using the search box or clicking on the label in the links on the left hand side to open all messages that have this label.
If you had set up any folders in your old webmail, they will become labels as we move your mailbox across to the new Virgin Media Mail system. There’s no need for you to do anything – we‘ll do this automatically for you.
You can find out more about labels here.
Filters
Using the powerful filters on Virgin Media Mail, you can apply labels, archive or even delete emails as they come in without you needing to manually do so once you’re in your Inbox.
You can find out more about filters here.
Check Spelling
You can now also check the spelling of words as you write an email using the ‘Check Spelling’ link above the message window. Words that might be mis-spelt are highlighted in red – if you click on the word, suggested corrections will appear. If you want to accept one of the suggestions, you can just click on it.
Attachments
For security reasons, certain file formats are not allowed as attachments in our new mail service, as they are very often used to distribute viruses or other malicious software.
A full list of these can be found here, and we advise customers to back up any of these attachments they may want to keep, as they will not be moved to the new service when your mailbox is moved.
Mobile Access
You can now also access Virgin Media Mail from your internet-enabled mobile phone – just enter http://email.virginmedia.com in your phone's web browser, or save this address as a bookmark to make it even easier. More information on using Virgin Media Mail on your mobile can be found here.
What if I don’t use webmail?
If you use email software like Outlook Express, your mailbox will still be moved over to our new service, and will also benefit from a much larger mailbox, but you’ll only be able to access all the other great features like Chat and Search if you also log in to webmail through the Virgin Media website.
Remember that with webmail you can also access your email on any computer with an internet connection, for example accessing your home e-mail when you’re at work.
Accessing Virgin Media Mail
You can access Virgin Media Mail by going to www.virginmedia.com and logging in to My Virgin Media with your username and password.
Logging in to My Virgin Media is a ‘single sign-on’, which means that you are then signed in to all other Virgin Media online services (apart from eBilling) without needing to re-enter your username and password. My Virgin Media is the gateway to all your online Virgin Media services.
My Virgin Media also gives you access to other great services like free V Stuff online storage, free PCguard online security, and webspace. If you’re on a shared computer, make sure you’ve logged out once you’ve finished.
You can now also access Virgin Media Mail from your internet-enabled mobile phone – just enter http://email.virginmedia.com in your phone's web browser. More information on using Virgin Media Mail on your mobile can be found here.
@virginmedia.com email addresses
At present @virginmedia.com email addresses are only available to new customers, but once all our existing customers’ mailboxes are moved to our new service, we will be able to offer all customers an @virginmedia.com email address.
When will the addresses be available?
The new @virginmedia.com email addresses will be available to existing customers once we have completed the upgrade of all of our email services - @virgin.net, @blueyonder.co.uk and @ntlworld.com.
There are millions of mailboxes to move, so this will take some time. We will contact our customers when the new addresses are available, which we expect to be in 2010.
How will the new email addresses be allocated?
@virginmedia.com email addresses are currently being allocated to new Virgin Media customers, who are able to choose the email address they‘d like when they set up their broadband service.
However, they can’t choose an email name that already exists in any of our existing email services.
For example, if richard.branson@virgin.net already exists, new customers can’t get richard.branson@virginmedia.com. This is reserved for the original customer, who will have the opportunity to change to the new email address if they want to.
When the new email addresses become available, we would contact richard.branson@virgin.net and ask him if he wanted to change to the new @virginmedia.com address – but only if he wanted to of course.
If the email address exists in more than one place, e.g. if there is a richard.branson@blueyonder.co.uk as well, then we will contact all the customers affected with details of who can get the @virginmedia.com address and what they need to do to set it up.
Once your mailbox is moved to our new service, any new mailboxes you create in My Virgin Media are created as @virginmedia.com email addresses. We will contact you once your mailbox(es) have been moved, so you will know when this becomes available.
Who can have one of the new addresses?
Any users of Virgin Media Mail will be able to set up new @virginmedia.com addresses. That means that anyone who uses one of our email addresses - @ntlworld.com, @blueyonder.co.uk or @virgin.net – can get a new @virginmedia.com email address once all of our mail users have been moved to our new service.
Do have to change my email address?
There are no current plans to make existing customers change to the new @virginmedia.com email address format, as we know that people may be fond of their existing email address. However, the opportunity to change will be there if you want to.
If you want to change your address to an @virginmedia.com address, we will still forward any email sent to your old address on to your new mailbox, so that no messages are lost if anyone sends email to your old address. More information on this will be made available closer to the time when they become available.
