This has been weighing on my mind for a while now, so I thought I'd ask for advice.
I use Outlook Express for mail. As contemptible/foolish/hilarious as many of you will doubtless find that, I generally like it. It does the trick, doubles as a Usenet reader, I don't have to think about it too much. But I'm wondering if it's the best option for long-term storage of emails.
I have emails dating back to 1999 - before then it never occurred to me to want to save emails, so they got lost when I rebuilt my PC. I have them categorised by year, with a sub-folder in each for Sent emails; plus, other folders containing eBay correspondence, or pertaining to my web-site, that sort of thing.
As you probably know, these folders are represented in the chosen location of your mailbox store on your PC as database files, .mbx or .idx extension, something like that. The more folders and sub-folders there are, the more of these files there will be; they're easily backed-up, but restoring them to a wiped version of OE usually requires going in and creating the folder tree from scratch and then pointing it to your message store location.
(in addition, I don't like these proprietary database types; I still have a Novell GroupWise archive file from an old job, containing mainly all the messages between my wife and I when we both worked for that company. But it's useless, no other program will read it and even GroupWise doesn't like opening an archive file from another account.)
So what are my options? A co-worker suggests Outlook because it's quite good at handling large numbers of folders, and contains all the data in one easily-archivable .pst file; ironically I started out using Outlook before changing to OE. . . Any other suggestions?
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
I have e-mail through hotmail and "killer webmail" at my NEW @MalnurturedSnay.net address
I don't really archive though.
BUT! I have a bunch of e-mail addies I'm not using. If you need an e-mail, send me a PM, I'll try ta' hook ya' up.
Posted by Charles Capps (Member # 9) on :
Check out Thunderbird, Lee.
Unlike OE, it stores everything, including preferences and mail, in a single folder tree, which makes for easy backup and transplant.
Mails are stored in "industry standard" mbox files instead of some backasswards binary format like OE and Outlook, which makes it easy to migrate elsewhere.
You might also want to look at an IMAP account somewhere, so you can store all of your mail on the server itself, then just use any old IMAP-supporting mail client.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
The thing I was afraid of just happened. OE decided to Compact my folders and wiped the contents of most of them in the process. That's all my email from the past year gone. This is a total disaster. . . Well, maybe not. I mean, I don't think there was anything there my life depended on, but, it was my life, you know? Lots of family stuff gone. So I no longer trust OE. I need an alternative email program, and probably a news reader as well.
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
Thunderbird does both.
Posted by Balaam Xumucane (Member # 419) on :
Thunderbird crashes when I try to import my mail from Eudora. To be fair, there is a lot. Also I find the interface for sorting the fields while importing your Address Book more than a little clunky. Still the main program does seem pretty nice. If I could get all my mail in, I'd probably switch. Eudora has been pretty good to me, but lately I've been having soem problems where it's unresponsive while downloading new messages. Plus Thunderbird is free and open source. (and the icon is, like, 2000X cooler)
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
So if you compact your inbox - you lose your earlier e-mails!?!
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Well, it's one way to compact.
Last time I reinstalled Windows, I forgot about my mail-folder. Stupid, and I lost a few years of mail.
For general backing-upping of files, SyncBack works like a charm.
Posted by Balaam Xumucane (Member # 419) on :
So, er, does the custom notification sound feature in T-bird work? Don't get me wrong, I love the program, but it'd be nice to my "Mail Muthafucka" (Eurotrip) sound working. Especially for mail from certain senders. Eudora will let you do this with filters and such. I didn't see any options other than the "When new messages arrive;" set. Maybe there's an extension or something that you clever gents know of...
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
The battery was about to go on my laptop and I was frantically trying to shut down. Fucking useless hell of a time for OE to decide to conduct a mail compaction for the first time ever. I've been able to recover most of the really important emails from other family mailboxes, and really most of my mail isn't that important anyway, I just keep it for posterity's sake. I still haven't decided on a replacement program. . . I'm a bit uneasy about both Thunderbird and Outlook.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
So, I thought "fuck it" and decided to try Thunderbird. It imported my mail and settings nicely, no problems there. After the fun I had with Firefox's Download Manager being set to retain everything I ever downloaded, I've trawled through the settings and I think I have everything configured nicely.
There's just one problem - I can't actually send mail. It lets you put in your POP3 account name and password fine; it'll even admit that you'll need sn SMTP server specified to send anything. But nowhere is there an option to input a username and password to do that! I tried sending a mail and it asked me for my password, which I entered. But it still failed. So I looked in Password Manager and the server and password were shown there - but the username field was blank. There is no option to set a username for outgoing mail. I've looked. So at the moment it's useless.
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