It is taking me a while to get into this Vista machine.
On the Mac, I live in browsers (I generally have 4 running) and email. The browsers on Vista are pretty much the same as they are on the Mac but the email experience is very different.
The main choices I have for email client software are Thunderbird and Outlook 2007. I am using both for different email accounts and, frankly, I don’t like either!
Thunderbird has already crashed on me so it is not that stable and Outlook hangs from time to time, seemingly contemplating the task I have just asked it to do, before finally snapping to attention and displaying my mail.
Outlook also has an incredibly cluttered interface (seven panes) in comparison to the clean crisp interface of Apple’s Mail app. This can be very off-putting if you are not familiar with the program.
I also hate the way Outlook deals with IMAP. I like it as a protocol but it is unusable in Outlook (if I delete an email, I want it to disappear, not stay in my inbox with a line through it). I originally set up my mail account in Outlook 2007 as IMAP but when I realised Outlook still deals poorly with IMAP I decided to switch to POP.
This is where I hit another UI bug.
When I asked Outlook to remove the account it gave me the above error message which basicly says, “I know what you were trying to do but because you haven’t done it the exact way I mandate, I’m going to display this error message scolding you and make you do it again until you do it properly!”
Listen Microsoft, if the app is clever enough to know what I was trying to do, why not just do it, instead of forcing me to start all over again, the way Outlook wants me to do it?
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I’m pretty sure there’s an option to “Move deleted messages to Trash” in the later versions of Outlook. But by God it’s one of the most annoying ways of handling deleted messages I’ve ever come across. I don’t think I’ve come across *anyone* who uses it as a feature. It’s an illusory, yet strong argument _against_ IMAP, for users who are on Outlook Express and don’t want to change client.
View -> Arrange By - > Current View -> Hide Messages Marked for Deletion
D’oh!
thanks John - wasn’t aware of that (obviously!).
I don’t know about you guys but I quite liked the look of Outlook 2007.
The fact all the information was right in front of me was a handy feature. Although I’ve never used Apple’s Mail app so I can’t say how it compares up to Outlook. And yes I also hate Thunderbird.
You can also remove the right-hand pane by just clicking the close button Tom; todo and calendar items should appear in the homepage anyway. Personally I think the three pane (folders / messages / message) view is much more productive, although it does need a relatively large res. I certainly can’t do it on my lappie, although that only does 1024 anyway. As to IMAP, Outlook’s always been shite, the development team just can’t seem to get over the proprietary
PST and OST storage yokes. That’s why I switched to Thunderbird. How did it crash for you?
I’ve always detested Outlook. From its massive memory footprint in the early days to the unbelievably complex options menus where you can never ever find the setting you are looking for, it is pure kitchen sink software. Not 80:20 in terms of users/features. More like 99:1.
On the other hand I’ve always found TB to be solid as a rock, if a little light on features.
I’ve also growing tired of Outlooks weak implementation of IMAP. It hangs often during send/receives, which usually results in me having to restart Outlook.
In regards to the handling of deleted mails. Under “More Settings” in each mail account, there is an option to “Purge items when switching folders while online”. Enabling that will remove deleted mails from your IMAP folders when you switch away from them.
This works for hiding the deleted messages, but you can’t access them via another folder (ie, a ‘Trash’ folder), you’d need to unhide them again via the above option. I have yet to find a ‘Move deleted messages to Trash folder’ option for IMAP in Outlook 2007 (which is how I happened upon this blog!). Thunderbird, on the other hand, uses this option by default.
The scoring of deleted emails may be annoying, but IMAP’s overall features more than compensate for that. Most people who use Outlook have POP3 boxes set by default to ‘leave messages on server’, which usually causes the heartache of the .poplock. This sort of behavior is usually hand-in-hand with people using POP3 based webmails as well, which can lose emails after loading the entire POP3 ‘Inbox’ into memory.
And finally, Thunderbird crashing in Vista is probably due to Thunderbird/Vista compatibility issues, as opposed to Thunderbird just being generally unstable software. I use TBird on OS X and Ubuntu with nary an issue.
I use Thunderbird on Vista Daily. I am currently running the 2.0 pre beta builds but they are 100% stable on Vista.
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I have yet to find a ‘Move deleted messages to Trash folder’ option for IMAP in Outlook 2007 (which is how I happened upon this blog!). Thunderbird, on the other hand, uses this option by default.
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Hey I happen on this blog for the same reason
My problem is that Thunderbird actually ‘Move deleted messages to Trash folder’.
But with the lovely gmail that now handle imap, i want Thunderbird to Move deleted messages to gmail\Trash folder.
He can manage perfectly the draft, spam and sent but not the deleted.
snif :’(
Hey I happen on this blog for the same reason My problem is that Thunderbird actually ‘Move deleted messages to Trash folder’.
But with the lovely gmail that now handle imap, i want Thunderbird to Move deleted messages to gmail\Trash folder.
He can manage perfectly the draft, spam and sent but not the deleted.
snif :’(
hew really can deleted ? try on brows html and check all maybe an trash