THE FAQ
QUESTION
- When I try to download pics or clips I get a message like 'Not authorised .......' or something about 'download limits'?ANSWER
- Yahoo Groups limits the amount of downloading that can be done. If that limit is reached, you may get an "Unauthorized" error or just a dead link. Yahoo seems to reset the limits several times a day. Try again in a few hours. When the group is busy you may have to try many times before being successful. Yes I know it sucks, but that's the price we have to pay for Yahoo's 'free' service.
Quoted from an old message by Mike Golliday, Yahoo! Groups engineer
There are two limits. There is a per user limit, which is on a rolling 4hr and 24hr timeline. That is, you have a max you can download every four hours, and a daily max as well. The same applies to a group as well, with both the rolling 4hr and 24hr limits, though the limits are much higher than for an individual user. Also, we don't start counting on the per user limit until you download from a group that has reached 50% of its daily limit. There are various factors that weigh into the daily max for a group, but I'm not going to disclose them, for obvious reasons. There's a hard max for a group anyway. Note that these limits apply to all groups on the service. There's also the matter of the 'access forbidden' message that some people get. That message is what IE calls a 'friendly HTTP error message'. If you want to see the real message, go to Tools --> Internet Options --> Advanced. Go to the 'Browsing' section and uncheck 'show friendly HTTP error messages'. That will display the correct error message. Mike
Note: Since Mike Golliday sent this message Yahoo have made a number of modifications to the group system but I believe that most of it is still correct.
QUESTION - I have downloaded video clips from the group but they will not run on my player?
ANSWER
- There can be many reasons for this but the most common is that you do not have the required codec installed on your machine. A codec is the software plug-in that your video clip player uses to de-code the compressed information contained within the video file. There are many different codec's but only a few seem to be in current net use. For AVI's the most popular codec is the DivX, and if your avi will not run you probably need the latest DivX codec. At the time of writing most codec's can be downloaded free (or with adware) but this may not last as some software companies have started to make them chargeable.
QUESTION
- I cannot download any of the pics which are attached to the messages.On August 21, 2003 Yahoo abolished the facility that allowed the archiving of group message attachments. This means that you can no longer go to the group messages area and download the pics attached to messages.
However Yahoo will continue to deliver all attachments sent via email. This means that you can still get the attached pics but only if they are delivered direct to your email box.
To change your e-mail settings you will need to go to the homepage and click on the EDIT MY MEMBERSHIP at the top right corner. Scroll down and pick whatever option suits your needs. You will need to check the individual e-mails box in order to have the messages with attachments delivered to you Email Box. If you do this you will need to empty your mail box on a regular basis because it will soon be filled to capacity and further incoming emails will be rejected.
QUESTION - What does "bouncing" mean?
If your email account ("jane_doe@isp.com") refuses to accept email from other accounts, then your account is said to "bounce" email. This usually means that if someone sends you an email, their message is returned to them with an error from your Internet service provider (ISP).
If Yahoo! Groups gets such an error back from your account after sending you a message, they consider your account to be "bouncing" email. The most common cause of "bouncing" is a full email box.