tjr said:
I have an email account through Charter Communications that I have forwarded
to my Outlook. When I go out of town, can I get to my Outlook account
remotely? I can not go to Charter.net account as they have all been
forwarded out and the folders are empty.
You cannot forward e-mails to a client, only to a mail server. Outlook is a
client, not a server. Outlook can poll accounts at mail server to yank
e-mails to it. Your terminology is screwed up.
You don't mention when "out of town" if that means you will have your own
computer (laptop) to access your e-mail accounts or if you have to use
someone else's computer (Internet cafe, resort/hotel computer room, etc).
You also never mentioned if you are using POP, IMAP, or Exchange to access
your account(s). You left out all the details.
For POP, configure the account that you defined in Outlook to "leave
messages on server". That way, you can retrieve a copy of new e-mails using
other hosts using e-mail clients on them since those messages will still be
on the mail server. The default operation of POP is to RETR (retrieve)
followed by DELE (delete). "leave message on server" eliminates the DELE
command so the message remains on the mail server. The e-mail client will
retrieve new posts. The e-mail client keeps track of what e-mails it has
downloaded to decide what is "new" (this is not a function of the mail
server). So if you leave the e-mails on the server, a different e-mail
client will see it as new and download a copy. All e-mail clients used to
access your accounts must be similarly configured to "leave message on
server". Because you are leaving messages on the server, you will consume
your account's disk quota. Eventually you will consume it all and no more
e-mails can be received into your account. There's no room for them. So
you will have to use the webmail interface to your account to delete old
messages. Alternatively, use the "delete messages N days after retrieve"
option to have Outlook automatically clean out your mailbox. Just use a
value of N that ensures a long enough window for you to retrieve a copy
using e-mail clients on your other hosts, say 30 days.
For IMAP, each e-mail client will synchronize with the mail server so they
will all show what is on the server and also be synchronized to each other.
POP only understands the concept of a mailbox (which is the Inbox folder
when using the webmail client to your interface to your account). IMAP can
subscribe to several folders. The advantage of IMAP is that you can use
multiple e-mail clients (on the same or different hosts) and have them all
synchronized with your mail server.
If using Exchange, you will have to ask your IT folks how they have setup
external access to their mail server. They may require you to use VPN.
They may use special tokens that must be installed on your host to use that
VPN. They may permit external access to their Exchange server but that is
unlikely. They may only permit you access through OWA (Outlook Web Access)
which has you using your web browser to connect to their web server which
interfaces with their Exchange server. You'll have to ask them.
If you won't be lugging around a laptop and need to rely on using someone
else's host to access your e-mails, it is unlikely they would appreciate or
even allow you to install software on their hosts or to define e-mail
accounts in whatever e-mail client happens to be on their host (plus that
means you would have to delete those accounts before you leave the host to
prevent someone else from accessing and abusing your account). You'll need
to use the webmail interface to your e-mail account. In that case, make to
sure to DESELECT the option to remember your login credentials on their
login page to prevent the next person using that host from accessing your
account. Make sure you logout of your account, don't just exit the web
browser. And clear the TIF cache folder after logging out but before
exiting the web browser.
You can get some e-mail clients that are portable and can be put onto a USB
flash drive. Outlook won't work that way but some other e-mail clients
will. However, most public hosts will have the USB ports disabled for
security reasons so don't rely on the usability of your USB flash drive and
the e-mail client on it unless you know the hosts you will use will let you
use USB drives and also let you run software that is not on their whitelist.
