You have just received your academic credentials and are opening the Convergence webmail for the first time at the address courrier.ac-bordeaux.fr. The interface displays a list of folders on the left, messages in the center, and you don’t know where to start. This guide details the folders of Convergence Bordeaux webmail, their specific roles, and the habits to adopt to keep your inbox readable throughout the school year.
Maintenance Windows and Night Synchronization
Before even discussing folders, a point rarely addressed: nighttime is a frequent unavailability window for academic webmail. If you try to check your messages late at night or very early in the morning, a connection error does not necessarily mean a password issue.
This constraint also affects synchronization. An email client configured with IMAP on your computer or phone may fail to retrieve new messages during these periods. Instead of changing your settings in a panic, wait until the maintenance window is over and restart the synchronization.
Knowing how to use Convergence Bordeaux webmail means dealing with these scheduled interruptions, which helps avoid unnecessary tickets to the Amerana support platform.
Default Convergence Folders: Specific Role of Each
Upon first login, five folders appear in the left sidebar. Each has a distinct technical function, not just a storage role.
- Inbox: all incoming messages that have not been filtered elsewhere arrive here. This is the only folder most users check, but it is not the only one that deserves attention.
- Drafts: a message started and then closed without being sent is automatically saved in this folder. Check it regularly, as an email you thought you sent may be there.
- Sent Items: a copy of every sent message. Useful for finding an attachment sent to a colleague without having to search for it in your local files.
- Trash: deleted messages remain here temporarily. After a period defined by the academy, they are permanently purged. Don’t rely on the trash as storage space.
- Spam: messages detected as suspicious by the academic spam filter land here. A legitimate email may slip in, especially the first communications from a new institutional sender.
Have you ever noticed that an expected message never arrives in your inbox? The spam folder is the first place to check. Check the spam folder at least once a week to avoid missing a professional message mistakenly filtered out.
Creating Custom Folders to Sort Your Messages
The five default folders are not enough once the volume of messages increases. Convergence allows you to create custom folders directly from the left sidebar, via a right-click or a dedicated button depending on the version of the interface.
Naming a Folder in a Usable Way
A folder named “Miscellaneous” or “To See” quickly becomes a second catch-all. Prefer names related to a project, a period, or a specific contact: “School-Council-2026”, “DSDEN-33”, “Project-PE-cycle3”.
An explicit folder name reduces search time by several minutes per week. It may seem trivial, but over a school year, the gain is significant.
Associating an Automatic Filter with a Folder
Creating a folder without a filter requires manually moving each message. Convergence offers a filtering system (sometimes called “sorting rules”) accessible from the email settings. The principle: you define a condition (sender, subject containing a specific word) and an action (move to the chosen folder).
For example, all messages whose subject contains “ARENA” can be automatically redirected to a folder “Business-Applications”. Filters transform a passive inbox into an active sorting system.
IMAP Connection on Mobile: Common Protocol Errors
Configuring Convergence on a phone involves using the IMAP protocol for receiving and SMTP for sending. Two errors frequently occur among users of the Bordeaux academy.
The first concerns SSL/TLS encryption. If the mobile email client is not configured with the correct type of security, the connection to the server fails silently. There is no explicit error message: emails simply stop synchronizing.
The second error relates to the “username” field. Some clients require the full address ([email protected]), while others only need the short username. Using the wrong format blocks authentication for no apparent reason.
Before contacting Amerana support (reachable by phone at 05 16 526 686 during the week), check these two points. They resolve the majority of mobile connection issues.
Storage Quota and Archiving Messages
The academic email system allocates a limited storage space to each account. When this quota is reached, new messages are no longer delivered to the inbox. The sender then receives an error message, but you are not notified on your end.
To avoid this situation, two practical habits work well:
- Delete large messages (heavy attachments) that you have already saved locally.
- Regularly empty the trash and spam folder, which consume quota just like the inbox.
- Archive important exchanges in a local folder of your IMAP client rather than on the academic server.
A local folder stores messages on your machine, not on the server. It thus frees up space without losing messages. The distinction between remote folder (on the server) and local folder (on your machine) is the most useful technical point to understand for managing your quota in the long term.
Convergence Bordeaux webmail remains a simple tool, without frills. Its use relies more on understanding the logic of folders and filters than on hidden features. An initial setup of ten minutes (named folders, active filters, verified mobile protocol) is enough to not have to revisit it throughout the year.
