All emails delivered to either account

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ian
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Ian

I have set up 2 profiles for my pc but whenever I
send/receive from either, all emails are downloaded. Tried
setting rules to cope, but there does not seem to be "do
not download" like Outlook Express. Any ideas??
 
Ian said:
I have set up 2 profiles for my pc but whenever I
send/receive from either, all emails are downloaded. Tried
setting rules to cope, but there does not seem to be "do
not download" like Outlook Express. Any ideas??
Click to expand...

And exactly where in OE's options is this "do not download" option? I
see no option in OE6 with that exact text string to identify it.
However, I *do* see an option labelled, "Leave a copy of messages on the
server". Is that the actual option that are you talking about in OE?
If so, why is it you cannot find the same-named option in Outlook? In
both OE and Outlook, this option is a property of the e-mail account's
configuration.
 
Vanguardx said:
And exactly where in OE's options is this "do not download" option? I
see no option in OE6 with that exact text string to identify it.
Click to expand...

It's one of the rule actions. You can test a message and ignore it. I used
it to leave messages of a particular size on the server and not download
them. I then handled them on the server with a different client.
 
Ian said:
I have set up 2 profiles for my pc but whenever I
send/receive from either, all emails are downloaded. Tried
setting rules to cope, but there does not seem to be "do
not download" like Outlook Express. Any ideas??
Click to expand...

If you have two profiles, it doesn't make sense to reference the same
accounts in both profiles, which seems to be what you're doing. The other
thing I can conceive is that the two addresses aren't actually distinct, but
are aliases of each other, with all mail to both being sent to a single
mailbox at your ISP.

Your choices are, it would seem to me, to use a single profile, writing
rules that will sort the mail into specific folders based on receiving
address or to make sure each profile references only one account.
 
Brian Tillman said:
It's one of the rule actions. You can test a message and ignore it.
I used it to leave messages of a particular size on the server and
not download them. I then handled them on the server with a
different client.
Click to expand...

Okay, I see now. I just tested using a rule in OE with the "do not
download" action clause. The problem I see with using that rule is that
your mailbox will fill up with messages that exceed the user-specified
size threshold and eventually your account will go dead because all of
its disk quota gets consumed (unless you periodically use the webmail
interface to check your mailbox). Say you have a 10MB disk quota for
your mailbox, you get e-mails that total over 10MB, and now every
subsequent incoming e-mail gets rejected with a bounce-back NDR
(non-delivery report) e-mail sent to the sender. You don't have a clue
that your mailbox's disk quota got all used up and then wonder why you
get no new e-mails while all your sender's wonder why they can't reach
you via e-mail anymore.

Since you cannot see the pending message in your mailbox in OE if you
use the "do not download" action in a rule that triggers on a message,
and if you do not periodically use the webmail interface to check your
Inbox on the server, and since you never see an item show up in OE's
Inbox to alert you that there are messages using up your mailbox quota,
then using the "do not download" action in a rule is hazardous. Since
you'll never see the big messages in your account waiting to get
downloaded, why not just use the "delete from server" action? You
aren't going to see the message anyway and deleting it (instead of
hiding it) prevents the possibility of rendering your mailbox dead
because all its disk quota got consumed.

As you said, you had to handle big e-mails (that were not download and
thus never listed in OE) using a different e-mail client, but that
assumes you actually checked your mailbox periodically with that other
client because you wouldn't know it was there waiting in your mailbox
with OE and when using the "do not download" action in a rule that
triggered on that big message.

In Outlook, you can configure to only download headers. You still get
the headers so the e-mail will get listed in the message list pane, but
you'll then have to mark the message for download and then pull all the
download-marked messages.
 
Vanguardx said:
As you said, you had to handle big e-mails (that were not download and
thus never listed in OE) using a different e-mail client, but that
assumes you actually checked your mailbox periodically with that other
client because you wouldn't know it was there waiting in your mailbox
with OE and when using the "do not download" action in a rule that
triggered on that big message.
Click to expand...

Well, naturally I checked. Who wouldn't? People who use the "do not
download" action generally understand its implications for the message
store.
 
Brian Tillman said:
Well, naturally I checked. Who wouldn't? People who use the "do not
download" action generally understand its implications for the message
store.
Click to expand...

People "generally understand" something that they are not told (which
was that they will not be informed when there are new messages waiting)?
People "generally understand" something that is hidden from them (both
by no documentation and hiding the status of their mailbox)? Wow! You
must be a genius for knowing everything that you've never been told.

Note that the "do not download" action cannot even be triggered unless
the message headers actually DID get downloaded, so OE is throwing away
the headers that it already downloaded. Nothing got saved for the time
to download the headers or the bandwidth consumed to get them. The
download of headers is so quick that there is no point in not keeping
those that already got download (so you could actually test against them
using your rules AND know the status of your mailbox). Showing you the
headers for a pending message in your mailbox is NOT the same as
downloading the *body* of the message. You cannot avoid downloading the
headers for your messages. Your rules can't do anything without those
headers. Rules that test on the headers, well, obviously they need the
headers. Rules that test against the content of the body are also going
to end up downloading the headers.

Why would anyone *assume* that "do not download" also means "do not tell
me"? You claim users "in general" (which obviates a subset of users
based on some arbitrary minimim expertise level) will just instinctively
know that they need to employ some other e-mail client or interface to
their mailbox whenever they use a "do not download" rule. Not a
believable argument. Our experience of users are worlds apart. Most
users for whom I have handled support requests only use ONE e-mail
client; i.e., in my experience, few users employ more than one e-mail
client, know about or seldom use the webmail interface to their mailbox,
if one is provided, don't know about using telnet or know the POP3
commands, or use concurrent or substitute e-mail programs or monitoring
tools. They just use ONE e-mail client.
 
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