How can you determine if a message has been downloaded?

[Brian Ekins]

I'm in the process of switching over to Vista on my primary computer. I soon
found out that Outlook Express has been replaced by Windows Mail. I only
used OE for newsgroups. After getting it configured and my sent messages
migrated over everything seems to be working fine except for one thing. The
icon for the messages is the same regardless of whether the message has been
downloaded or not. I depended on this heavily when using OE so I could
easily determine which messages I had already read. I only mark a message as
being read when I don't want to see it anymore. In OE it showed a blank
sheet icon when the heard was downloaded and then a sheet with contents when
the message was downloaded. Is there any way to determine if a message has
been downloaded in Windows Mail. Thanks for any help.

 

[Steve Cochran]

I don't know of any way to accomplish this in WinMail. I think the general
practice is to unbold the bold font in the message list when a message has
been read.

steve

 

[Brian Ekins]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your answer. Maybe there's a better approach to reading mail
than what I'm using and am open to suggestions.

I monitor and respond to issues being posted in a newsgroup. I have my
filter set to hide all read messages. I also have turned off the switch to
automatically flag them as being read. I use the read state to indicate that
I've finished with that thread and don't want to see it anymore.

I use the unread state to indicate that it's still an open issue I need to
address. In OE I could tell when new postings had come in because only the
header was downloaded, not the message, and the icon indicated this. In
Windows Mail the icon is the same regardless of whether the message is
downloaded.

 

[Gary VanderMolen]

To me, the bold attribute of the message header in the message list
pane indicates that a message is new (unread).
I don't pay any attention to whether only the header is downloaded or
the entire message body. I'm not sure why the distinction matters?
If I click on an unread header, the message body appears faster than
I can read it, so why make a distinction?

 

[Brian Ekins]

I'm using the fact that the message hasn't been downloaded to indicate if
I've read that message before. I don't like to use the bolding of a message
being read or not because I don't want to see all of the read messages, but
only the messages that I'm still actively working on answering.

What worked for me in Outlook Express was:

Only header downloaded - New unread message.
Header downloaded - read message.
Read message - Don't want to see it anymore. I have the display set up to
not display read messages.

The distinction between read and unread is important because there may be
several threads that I'm still working on and I need to be able to tell if
there have been new posts in any of the threads that I haven't read since the
last time I looked.

As I said before, maybe there's a entirely different approach that will work
much better than what I've been doing. This is just something that was
working for me in OE.

 

[mac]

I'm using the fact that the message hasn't been downloaded to indicate if
I've read that message before. I don't like to use the bolding of a
message
being read or not because I don't want to see all of the read messages,
but
only the messages that I'm still actively working on answering.

What worked for me in Outlook Express was:

Only header downloaded - New unread message.
Header downloaded - read message.
Read message - Don't want to see it anymore. I have the display set up to
not display read messages.

The distinction between read and unread is important because there may be
several threads that I'm still working on and I need to be able to tell if
there have been new posts in any of the threads that I haven't read since
the
last time I looked.

As I said before, maybe there's a entirely different approach that will
work
much better than what I've been doing. This is just something that was
working for me in OE.

Too much waffle in this

Pray tell us if you used OE for newsgroups previously, then why are you not
using WM for newsgroups?

You have posted via X-Newsreader: Microsoft CDO for Windows 2000 on the web.

Please try Ctrl+H, on the selected news server & see if that gives you what
you want?

HTH?

 

[Brian Ekins]

Hi Mac,

I am trying to use WM for newsgroups but because of this difference in
behavior it's not as efficient for me as was OE.

The bottom line is that for what I do with the newsgroups I really need 3
states for a post; unread, read, and processed. I could do that with OE by
using header only downloaded as unread, message downloaded as read, and
marked as read as processed.

I don't know how to get the equivalent in WM since it doesn't distinguish
between the first two.

 

[mac]

Hi Mac,

I am trying to use WM for newsgroups but because of this difference in
behavior it's not as efficient for me as was OE.

The bottom line is that for what I do with the newsgroups I really need 3
states for a post; unread, read, and processed. I could do that with OE
by
using header only downloaded as unread, message downloaded as read, and
marked as read as processed.

I don't know how to get the equivalent in WM since it doesn't distinguish
between the first two.

Sounds to me like you used Message Rules to achieve what you had in OE?

Or the options available in View menu>current view?

OE & WM are EXACTLY the same newsreader, they do the same things, (just that
OE seemed it did them better).

Did you try Ctrl+H as suggested while reading a newsgroup?

What is the problem with downloading all messages, are you on dial up
connection?

 

[Steve Cochran]

I'm not sure how you could do this. You might be able to use message rules
to do something similar or to color certain messages or you might try
flagging or watching them, but I'm not sure how you'd go about it to ensure
the same results. The icon is clearly the same so you can't use that.

steve

 

[Brian Ekins]

Steve, thanks for getting back to me. I had decided I was just going to have
to live with the different behavior and then was reading a newsgroup and
noticed that the icons actually are different. When only a header is
downloaded it's a partial sheet. When the message is loaded it's a full
sheet. It's difficult to see, especially compared to the OE icons, but now
that I know what to look for it will work.

-Brian

 

[Steve Cochran]

I didn't see any difference on my machine, but I'm glad you could detect it.

cheers,

steve