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As the title says I'm considering a new email client as Outlook Express is one of the few security liabilities I think I have left. However, while I am very impressed with the performance of Firefox (thank you SD.net ) I recently got a chance to try Thunderbird and that wasn't so impressive.

So I need a client that will do the following things:

1. Basic email. As in Send/Recive and attachments.
2. Filter out messages based on the "to:" field. I share an email account with my family and want to filter their mail out.
3. Import the email I have from Outlook Express. Preferbly all of them at once. I have a few I'd hate to lose.
4. No auto excecution of any file.

So far I've only been able to find 1 and 4 in Thunderbird. Can it do the other two?

For importing, try http://support.real-time.com/tbird/outlook_import.html

As for filtering, that's a basic feature that any client is supposed to support- can't help you since I don't use Thunderbird (used Ximian Evolution (Linux only) for a while, now using web based Gmail, since I prefer accessibility anywhere).

Yahoo is pretty good. I haven't really tried its capabilities much-- it does have a fairly effective spam filter, and 100MB memory is quite respectable. If you try subscription, you can get up to 2 gig memory, plus features. I use the free myself-- have for 1.5yr, pretty happy with it.

I've been using the regular Mozilla Messenger, and filtering works just fine. But I haven't used Outlook Express for about three years now, so I don't know how its import functions are. Mozilla Messenger for Linux only supports importing from Netscape 4.x, I'll have to check the Windows version.

BTW, backing up your whole collection of mail is very simple under Mozilla. Just make a backup of the moz profile directory.

I've tinkered around a bit an so far I can get it to import now. That's 3 of 4 down. But I can't seem to make it leave the filtered messages on the server, which is what I need to make it do so my parents can get their mail without having it pass by me first.

Any suggestions? Maybe a good extension I'm missing?

McNum wrote:I've tinkered around a bit an so far I can get it to import now. That's 3 of 4 down. But I can't seem to make it leave the filtered messages on the server, which is what I need to make it do so my parents can get their mail without having it pass by me first.

Any suggestions? Maybe a good extension I'm missing?

Hm... I don't know about leaving mail on the server. Anyway POP3 really isn't intended for that- you should be using IMAP or webmail.

See here though:
http://www.cae.wisc.edu/fsg/info/thunderbird_pop.html

I think I may have found a way, but this seems awfully backwards compared to Outlook Express. It seems I have to make an account for each of the undesired mail adresses and set them to never download mail. While this may be a workaround, it seems odd.

If this works I'll be at 4 of 4 on Thunderbird, which will make it the new default mail client. Here goes nothing...

EDIT: No dice. That wasn't the way to do it. I still got all of the mail that way. This is annoying... There must be a way to tweak this. I can't possibly be the only one with this problem.

I'm sure you're not the only one with that problem, but the underlying problem is that E-mail just wasn't created to do what you want it to do.

If your parents want mail separate from your mail, then they should have their own E-mail accounts. One (or more) e-mail account per person, basically.

Using filters to divert E-mail to different people is at best a workaround and at worst a hack. I really would suggest moving away from that mindset.

Yeah. Make a yahoo account and then dl yahoo pops or see about getting another adress with your isp. It just isn't feasible to do what you want to do and you won't be able to do it with any client that I know of.

darthdavid wrote:Yeah. Make a yahoo account and then dl yahoo pops or see about getting another adress with your isp. It just isn't feasible to do what you want to do and you won't be able to do it with any client that I know of.

Well I could do that, if it weren't that this mail adress wasn't already very established as my current one. BTW, one client allows for this kind of filtering... Outlook Express. I was kind of hoping Thunderbird could do it, too. I know it's not the optimal solution, and we do have some minor troubles with it from time to time. But on a daily basis it works. As long as we keep the filters tuned right in Outlook Express that is.

I'm actually kind of surprised that I found something useful that Outlook Express can do, but not Thunderbird. Well, maybe 0.8 will do this... 0.7 sadly can't cover the most important of my needs.

Not sure if this will work, but maybe you can try this. Go to "Account Settings" and check "Leave messages on server," then set up a filter option to "Delete from POP server" for the specific account that's using Thunderbird at the time. You might have tried this already, actually...

McNum wrote:So I need a client that will do the following things:

1. Basic email. As in Send/Recive and attachments.
2. Filter out messages based on the "to:" field. I share an email account with my family and want to filter their mail out.
3. Import the email I have from Outlook Express. Preferbly all of them at once. I have a few I'd hate to lose.
4. No auto excecution of any file.

So far I've only been able to find 1 and 4 in Thunderbird. Can it do the other two?

It can, if your mailserver supports IMAP. With IMAP, you can leave the mail on the server and use a filter to make it transfer messages to a certain address into a local folder (or a different folder on the server). You can also upload mail from Outlook Express back to your mailserver and from there, transfer it to any client you want with Drag 'N Drop.

Seriously, POP3 sucks.

You know, I haven't checked if the mailserver can do IMAP. I guess my computer knowledge has a few blank spots. It is one of the largest internet providers in Denmark, so maybe it can. Of course big doesn't always mean good.


After a quick search it would seem that IMAP isn't an option. They only list a POP3 server and an SMTP server. Time to either get creative or to get me a non shared mailbox, preferebly at the same adress, if I can pull that off...

After an evening of messing around with this I'm beginning to see why exactly it is that POP3 sucks. It can do the basics, but if you want to get just a little fancy it won't work...