Windows 7 I need a new email client

Traxan

New Member
As you know, Windows 7 comes without Outlook Express. I've been using Windows Live Mail but quite frankly I think it's shit. I've got it set to auto add people to the address book when I reply to them, but it doesn't do it. There are other problems but that one annoys me the most.

I tried Thunderbird and didn't like it either. I want something like OE. Is there an alternative?

TIA
 
I tried Thunderbird and didn't like it either.

And why didn't you like it? As far as I know Thunderbird is all what a mailclient is supposed to be. I don't see any difference between an OE or a thunderbird as it comes to sending and receiving mails.

You can also try Pegasus or The Bat or Eudora, I tried them all but in the end I choose Thunderbird anyway :)

Greetings,

Nic
 
i tried outlook express 2007 and its like a charm for me. i tried searching for other email progs but can't find any
 
I'd suggest Thunderbird.

Looks very similar to Windows Mail and its free

Link Removed - Invalid URL
 
As you know, Windows 7 comes without Outlook Express. I've been using Windows Live Mail but quite frankly I think it's shit. I've got it set to auto add people to the address book when I reply to them, but it doesn't do it. There are other problems but that one annoys me the most.

I tried Thunderbird and didn't like it either. I want something like OE. Is there an alternative?

TIA
I wish there was a simple and easy to understand program like Outlook Express. I agree with you that Windows Live Male is garbage. First, it creates 254 subfolders under whatever primary folder you choose. All your accounts are lumped into the primary folder, You cannot create seperate folders for each account. When I imported my Outlook Express e-mail the program could not find it.

To read my imported email, I had to first first use exployer to determine which folders were used for my new mail and which folders the imported mail was in. Second I had to move my imported mail to the folders for my new mail. With 254 subfolders and at least 7 inbox folders, and perhaps as many sent folders, to do all that, took hours for just one account. For the second account finding the proper folders for my imported mail was too confusing and far too difficult.

Furthermore, my imported sent mail listed me as both the sender and receiver (I was both to and from).

With Outlook Express, I had one folder for each account and they were not lumped together.

Thunderbird has a similar problem. It lumps the accounts together and only one would then work. I could send an receive mail from one account but not both. The name/password was invalid for the second account until I deleted the first account.

I don't need complicated with wistles and bells. I like simple. AND, I like seperate accounts; I don't want all my accounts lumped together like Windows Live Mail and Thunderbird do. Hotmail, Yahoo mail, and Gmail all allow seperate accounts. If only they could import all my messages from outlook express, I would use one of them.
 
Last edited:
As you know, Windows 7 comes without Outlook Express. I've been using Windows Live Mail but quite frankly I think it's shit. I've got it set to auto add people to the address book when I reply to them, but it doesn't do it. There are other problems but that one annoys me the most.

I tried Thunderbird and didn't like it either. I want something like OE. Is there an alternative?

TIA
Mine does, after three messages which for several reasons suits me rather than doing it for every reply. See 3rd.png)

"First, it creates 254 subfolders under whatever primary folder you choose. All your accounts are lumped into the primary folder, You cannot create seperate folders for each account. "

Not sure what you mean there? I have two main accounts set up for mail. Theye are both under separate headings and easy to access. The mail for both is collected simltaneously when I open Live mail. 27 subholders in all. (see 27.png)

When I first began using Livs, some time ago, I imorted succesfully all my messages from OE in XP. I don't remember any problems. (See import.png)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Mine does, after three messages which for several reasons suits me rather than doing it for every reply. See 3rd.png)

"First, it creates 254 subfolders under whatever primary folder you choose. All your accounts are lumped into the primary folder, You cannot create seperate folders for each account. "

Not sure what you mean there? I have two main accounts set up for mail. Theye are both under separate headings and easy to access. The mail for both is collected simltaneously when I open Live mail. 27 subholders in all. (see 27.png)

When I first began using Livs, some time ago, I imorted succesfully all my messages from OE in XP. I don't remember any problems. (See import.png)

You are not counting all the folders Live Mail creates. In Outlook Express, I created a folder D\E-Mail and 3 sub-folders: Personal, Public, and Garbage. That way whenever I wanted to backup and save all my e-mail, all I did save the folder "D:\E-Mail.

I tried to do the same thing for Windows Live Mail, It created about 250 folders under D:\E-Mail\Personal. When I created my Mail for 'Public" and directed Live Mail to save my 'Public' account in D:\E-Mail\Public all folders for D:\E-Mail\Private were switched to D:\E-Mail\Public a total of 254 subfolders in D:\E-Mail\Public.

Live Mail will not allow you to designate and NAME more than one primary folder. Perhaps in some sub-sub-subfolders, Live Mail creates folders for each account. However, they will be folders created and NAMED by Live Mail. You will not be able to name the folders, nor will you be able to create seperate primary folders such as C:\Bob and C:\Mary. If you created and designate your e-mail for Bob to be in C:/Bob and then create an account for Mary and tell Windows live to use C:\Mary, the mail for both Bob and Mary will be stored in C:\Mary.

Futhermore, when you right click on C:\Mary and click Properties it will tell you that you have 250 + folders. Most of the folders will be empty and some of the folders will be full of Government properganda and lots of other junk you don't want and didn't ask for. And, Live Mail will not give you the option of not receiving all that Junk.

Have you never heard of the term KISS? A single folder that you can name for an email account is forty times better than 250 folders.
 
The folder you are looking at in my Attachment, is the folder I havecreated on a separate partition, The entire contents are what Live mail has created. I have deleted nothing. It contains thtree separate accounts, plus news items etc.

Other than that, I must confess that I am not clear what you are saying, so will leave suggestions to an Email "whizz".!!
 
Mine does, after three messages which for several reasons suits me rather than doing it for every reply. See 3rd.png)

"First, it creates 254 subfolders under whatever primary folder you choose. All your accounts are lumped into the primary folder, You cannot create seperate folders for each account. "

Not sure what you mean there? I have two main accounts set up for mail. Theye are both under separate headings and easy to access. The mail for both is collected simltaneously when I open Live mail. 27 subholders in all. (see 27.png)

When I first began using Livs, some time ago, I imorted succesfully all my messages from OE in XP. I don't remember any problems. (See import.png)
i don't know what you're complaining about. i use windows mail, and it separates my email accounts, and only creates a few standard sub-folders. make sure your windows is updated, perhaps it's a problem that has been ironed out by the time i installed windows. are you using the release candidate or a beta version?
 
The problem with Live, aside from not adding addresses even though I tell it to, is it won't import mail. I have all these folders full of .EML files I can't import. It's a bit frustrating.

Could I copy OE from an old XP machine into a separate folder and use it?
 
Give the email client built into SeaMonkey a try. I like it very well. SeaMonkey is the continuation of the old Netscape Communicator 7.2 suite, with browser, email client and chat client all built in. You won't hardly be able to tell the difference from Netscape 7.2 except for the security updates and a few small features that have been added. I use SeaMonkey for my POP3 email client, however it also works with IMAP.
 
The problem with Live, aside from not adding addresses even though I tell it to, is it won't import mail. I have all these folders full of .EML files I can't import. It's a bit frustrating.

Could I copy OE from an old XP machine into a separate folder and use it?
don't know, sorry!
 
Hi there

There are a number of solutions to this

1) If you have MS Office you could use MS OUTLOOK.

2) You CAN get Vista's mail program to work on W7 - there's posts in this forum on how to do that -- I posted the method about 2 - 3 weeks ago

3) Windows Live Mail CAN import messages from Outlook express -- Ensure however if you do this that on your XP system you change the message store to something acessible on your W7 system such as D:\messages (on a shared disk) so you can import them. (Same as Windows Mail from Vista -- use same methodology)

(Windows Mail on Vista can also import OUTLOOK EXPRESS messages).

Note however if you want to USE Live Mail you CAN'T retrieve your mail directly from OUTLOOK (strange but it's true).
In this case use OUTLOOK EXPRESS on an XP system to import your OUTLOOK messages and then IMPORT those into Windows live mail.

I agree with you that Windows Live Mail seems to create a LOT of entries in its mail folder unlike OUTLOOK express or Windows mail. (Vista)


Having used Windows Live mail for a while I'm going to "Bin it" and go back to using either OUTLOOK 2007 ( I don't actually like Office 2010 BTW currently --but it's still only in preview stage) or my "Hacked" version of Vista windows mail on W7

I'm not a great lover of Firefox / Mozilla etc so am a bit wary of using email clients that are bound up with the browser. I prefer a separate stand alone email client in any case and it should be small -- just inbox, outbox, sent mail, and maybe a user separate folder. I don't need zillions of separate folders/contacts/calendars etc etc. They just get in the way and are a dog to maintain.

If you need "Collaborative Software" for work email is not the way to do it --there are a load of better solutions available.

Cheers
jimbo
 
Last edited:
After spending a week trying to set up Windows Live Mail, I gotta say that it doesn't work very well. To begin with, message rules don't work well. "From" based filters on domains don't seem to work at all. Importing mail from Outlook Express results in stored folders that cannot be associated with particular email accounts. You have to laboriously create a new folder, copy the contents, then delete the old folder. Something about having multiple "servers", one for each account.

If I wanted complicated, I'd buy Outlook.

Tried Thunderbird, and found much of the same problem. It seems that MS has decided to copy Thunderbird and abandoned it's incredibly successful Outlook Express. It's as though they forget what a breakthrough OE was back in 1997, when the Netscape email program had to be restarted for each email account. People didn't switch from Netscape to MS for the browser.

One suspects that MS wants to funnel everyone into their LIVE space. I thought that the captive-gateway strategy died years ago. Oh, well.

It is almost enough to go back to XP over. Certainly enough to warn people about.
 
All done with TB

And why didn't you like it? As far as I know Thunderbird is all what a mailclient is supposed to be. I don't see any difference between an OE or a thunderbird as it comes to sending and receiving mails.

TB locks up the user profile all too often, won't start and you quickly risk losing your email archives in profile problems.

I am sick and tired of it and am all done with TB.

Webmail seems more secure only you get thrown off after a little while by small time managers making too big decisions about log on time allowed.

What I need is stable and secure relating to archived mail. I never seem to have a TB mail older than 3 months.
 
I agree with the OP - I have been using Outlook Express to categorize my email in custom folders I created and named for 10 years now. I don't want to lose that saved email - I never know when I will need it.

It sounds like paying $99 for Outlook Express 2007 is the only choice (you can download it at microsoft.com - sorry I don't have the URL).

Thanks for mentioning the problems with thunderbird, I was considering it.
 
I'd suggest Thunderbird.

Looks very similar to Windows Mail and its free
Since I have Office 2007 small business edition I use Outlook 2007, I am beta testing Office 2010 and I really like the Outlook 2010. I hope they sell it as a stand alone. I do not see that much of a change in the other programs in Office 2010 from 2007
 
I made a mistake - you can download and buy Outlook 2007, not Outlook Express. I was completely happy with OE and I dislike Windows Live.

There is a lot about Windows 7 I like, and a lot that is a hassle. Why must they obsolesce perfectly got programs - just for the sake of trying to capture you as a web customer. I don't want a HotMail account, or to automatically log in to Windows Messenger (or whatever that chat program is).
 
....

Thunderbird has a similar problem. It lumps the accounts together and only one would then work. I could send an receive mail from one account but not both. The name/password was invalid for the second account until I deleted the first account.

...


Then you gotta accounts config problem - running here 5 accounts (including Gmail) in Thunderbird and all is well and working fine. Thunderbird is a bit of get-used-to but once learned it is as easy as OE but much more powerful.
 
And why didn't you like it? As far as I know Thunderbird is all what a mailclient is supposed to be. I don't see any difference between an OE or a thunderbird as it comes to sending and receiving mails.

You can also try Pegasus or The Bat or Eudora, I tried them all but in the end I choose Thunderbird anyway :)

Greetings,

Nic
I've used Tbird for years, but I cannot reliably control the font size or line spacing in Tbird 38. And I can sometimes copy-and-paste an equation from Word 2010 into an email message and sometimes not. I'm an editor and this makes me look very unprofessional.
 
Back
Top