BT Email vs. Microsoft Outlook 2007

[Headstone]

Gentlemen. Please excuse the length but I am a computer numpty and had people to sort this out when I was gainfully employed.

At home we have a computer with email provided with a BTINTERNET.COM address which my wife and I both use and it is displayed in BT YAHOO Classic when we go to our mail page. My wife recently bought a laptop which she occasionally connects to the internet and she managed to log into our email quite happily and nothing appeared amiss. She then bought, genuine I might add, Microsoft Office Professional 2007 as she does little odd jobs for the WI, local church and local play group and she thought it would make life easier. I installed the discs on her laptop and at the end of the installation it asked for the email account address which she gave. It then connected to the internet and the mail inbox was displayed in the microsoft office format which she actually preferred. All good so far. I went to our main computer and installed the Office Pro as we had bought 2 licences. It did not ask me for my email address but appeared to install OK. However when I went to the BT Yahoo email nothing was in the Mail In box. We then the noticed that on the BT Yahoo we had all the folders we had saved emails in but these did not appear in the Microsoft version on the laptop, which I suppose is logical. I tried to open microsoft outlook on the main computer but it shows an old Tiscali account we had a few years back (this is an old machine) and I can't see how to connect to the BT address rather than the Tiscali one.

So now if I log on the main computer I see new incoming emails but only until my wife logs onto her laptop and at which time it says downloading email and they are not on my BT Yahoo when I next log on.

In real numpty terms for a computer illiterate and if neccessary PM me what should I do.

Thanks

[MacBoero]

Microsoft Office Outlook (and I believe Outlook Express) are particularly nasty in having a setting, whereby emails are deleted from the POP3 server as they are downloaded, turned on by default.

If you are going to use multiple machines and/or offline email clients, you need to ensure that they are configured to leave emails on the POP3 server. Some clients will leave them there until deleted on the client, at which time it will delete them from the server as well.

Personally I set all my clients to leave the emails on the server untouched. BT give me enough email server space to not worry about having to delete emails for years. As it is though, I log into my email occasionally via webmail and delete large chunks of emails on a regular basis.

[Keef]

Two things are getting to you - and it's as MacBoero says.

1. Unless you adjust the settings, the first computer to connect will download all new mail and delete it from the server. The second computer will not see any of that mail.

2. Outlook has a nasty habit of storing everything in one stonking great file. If for any reason that file is damaged (and you don't have a backup) you just lost your address book, phone book, and all your stored mail. I learned this the hard way, and do not use Outlook (or its baby brother, Outlook Express) at all. Don't want to go there again!


There are all kinds of options you can take, such as:

A- leaving all the mail on the server, and clearing out once in a long while;
B- setting one machine as "master" that deletes the mail (the home PC, probably) while reading stuff on the portable while you're "on the road";
C- using Imap for the "fuller experience".

[mad_jock]

Also don't use POP3 its a pain in the arse.

why you might want to know?

It downloads everything from the server if you like it or not then either deletes it or leaves it. But you have no option but to get the whole lot including any attachments.

Now if you use IMAP its has numerous advantages.

Internet Message Access Protocol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Message_Access_Protocol)

I have had tons of problems with users with POP3 and that horrible crap email tool outlook. But many a happy camper using the old netscape messenger (rest its soul) hooked onto an IMAP server.

[BOAC]

Headstone - I only have Outlook 2003 but it is probably the same.

Tools/Email Accounts/View or change....
Select account
Change/More Settings/4th Tab Advanced 'Delivery' - tick the box 'leave a copy................' on the machine A on which you wish to download/read but not delete.

Work your way out with ok's and apply etc.

On the other B leave the box unticked.

Machine A will now let you download the messages but they will remain on the server until machine B downloads them when they will be deleted from the server.

[idgas]

I might be off topic but get a little gizzmo called Poppy.

Poppy for Windows (http://www.jsonline.nl/Content/Poppy/Poppy.htm)

Sits in the back ground, once set up, and will check your emails without downloading them. Works with XP and Win 7 (never tried Vista)
Cheers, :cool:

[Keef]

There's an e-mail philosophy to suit every taste, innit!

I don't want anything nasty to come within miles of my PC, so I filter incoming mail through Spamcop. The 99% of all my mail that is ads for Viagra, bodily enhancements, or the chance to acquire vast sums from Nigeria stops there and is zapped.

What's left goes to one or another mailbox on different servers. Some I download via POP because it's clean and attachments are kosher. Some I read via Imap because it's to the iPhone and I don't want that laden with vast amounts of stuff.

Some goes via POP onto the laptop when I'm away from home - but is not deleted from the server. I don't file stuff on the laptop.

All of it is accessible to and stored or deleted on the desktop PC, running Thunderbird - in my view by far the best free mailreader on offer.
Outlook is banned after it decided to delete my entire address/contacts book.

[Mushroom_2]

"Outlook is banned after it decided to delete my entire address/contacts book."

Would not a backup of the .pst file have solved that little dilemma? I ask because my wife has just started using Outlook 2007 and I need to be sure I have a backup that will work when it goes t*ts up.

[Keef]

It would have done, but neither my own "key data backup batchfile" nor the patent Microsoft backup feature picked the .pst file.

It took me a very long time to find where the .pst lives - they really couldn't bury it much deeper, could they!

I had about 30 backups, going back a couple of years, but none included a .pst.

The delight was that the fine MS routine went on to remove the same contacts list etc from the laptop and my telephone. I was SO pleased.
It took me about two days to ferret out most of them. I was saved by my Thunderbird address book, which is not messed about with by MS stuff. I had to e-mail quite a few people for their phone number and address.

[BOAC]

Mushroom - the 'wise virgins' include the data files from whichever prog they use in their REGULAR backups:)

[mad_jock]

Outlook is really designed to have an exchange server sitting behind it.

I really didn't like supporting it or having anything to do with exchange.

I only once restored a mail box on exchange in 1999 and it took nearly a day and 2 servers and was a complete ball ache. Didn't bother mentioning either product ever again in job interviews.

[Saab Dastard]

MJ,

Exchange really has come a long way since 1999. I started with Exchange 4.0 in 1996/7 and have worked with every release up to 2003. I can assure you that it hasn't been necessary for quite a while to have an offline duplicate of the mail system to restore a mailbox - although that certainly was the case way back then!

SD

[mad_jock]

All you exchange admins must be glad of that. I had got them up and running and intergrated before on rollouts but the day to day admin of them seemed a bit of a nightmare.

And at the time groupwise (I think that was the name of the novell one) was alot better but had its moments.

[Headstone]

Many thanks for all the responses - some food for thought there - I'll begin sorting out the solution.

[Spurlash2]

Keef

I run my life using Outlook on a desktop, laptop and a phone, and have never had a snag with it.

With about 5 mouse clicks you are able to backup your .pst from within Outlook. Takes less than a minute.
File-Import/Export,Export to a file, Personal Folder file(.pst),Personal folder.

Save to a location of your choice (USB drive or a different partition) and you're done. Importing is just as quick.

The snag with losing data from your laptop and phone sounds like you didn't set up the way the sync is done correctly.

[Keef]

Quite probably. Had I known that the software has such holes in it, I would have done so. There was no warning!

I just set it up as I went along. Outlook was on the PC, with a diary and an address book. When I bought and connected the laptop, it asked me what I wanted, and then synchronised itself with the desktop, so the same stuff was on both. Nifty, I thought.

Desktop and laptop ran the "Microsoft recommended" backup utility.
I also wrote a separate backup batchfile that copied all my "stuff" (drive D and up) to an external hard drive. That's been working flawlessly for years, and when drive D died a couple of years ago, I was able to recover all the stuff from the external.

I have never run separate "backups" from individual programs. I expect Microsoft to be competent to set up their software to do that, even though I am on the whole sceptical about MS. Anything not on Drive C I conclude is down to me to back up, and I do.

I then bought an iPaq (this was all years ago), connected that to the PC via ActiveSync, and it copied my contacts list and diary over to it. Very good. I could update stuff on one machine, and it would update the others next time I plugged in. That worked OK for several years.

The iPaq was retired, and an O2 XDA replaced it. That was set up the same way, and copied over the same stuff and continued like a good 'un.

A year or so later, the XDA was replaced by an Ignito, and stuff copied over again. That was five or more years since the iPaq arrived, and I was still happy. I'd even replaced the desktop PC and the laptop along the way, with no problems.

Then in one of those Microsoft "recommended updates", ActiveSync disappeared, replaced by a new name (now lost in infamy). The same processes still worked, and the three machines stayed synchronised.
I was always careful not to update on more than one device before synchronising, because the one time I did that, it got a bit stroppy with me and made me go through the changes and decide which one to keep.

A few weeks after "son of ActiveSync" arrived, I plugged in the Ignito - just to charge its battery, because I hadn't changed any data on any of the machines. The new "WMDC" software decided it would be a nifty idea to remove all the contacts and diary details from both the Ignito and the PC.

Muttering to myself, I thought "I'll copy from the laptop, then." I plugged the Ignito into the laptop, which asked me "Do you want to delete all the entries on this PC?" I replied NO, so it did.

That was when I discovered that Outlook uses one great big file called something.pst, that it isn't backed up by MS's own backup routine, and that there's no "history" or "rollback" facility in it.

The "recovery" process took a long time (just when I didn't need to take a couple of days out to do it), and convinced me of a few things.

There is a very long thread on another website that shows that I was by no means the only person to suffer from this fine achievement by MS. A year after it happened to me, MS was still blaming the mobile phone manufacturers for using the "wrong" version of Windows Mobile. I called O2 umpteen times, and each time they assured me I had the latest version.

In the end, I "retired" the Ignito early, bought an iPhone, and the problem is gone for ever. I don't use Outlook on the PC or the laptop any more. Nor will I ever.

I learned from that what "WMDC" stands for. Not "Windows Mobile Device Center" (sic), but something more akin to George Bush's "WMD".

[Frelon]

If it is any help I use GMail for my email and then pick it up locally using Outlook 2003 (Office 2007 is sooo......complicated, I do not have the time for the steep learning curve!!)

GMail is portable and you can use it with any ISP (so no more sending out emails when you change your email address).

BUT (if you so choose) there is always a copy of your email stuff and addresses out there in Google land, always accessible (we hope) in the event of a major crisis locally.