Why do local programs not see all the messages in the webmail inbox?

[Ciarán Ó Duibhín]

I'm sure this must be a common question, but I'm stumped!

I'm just moved to a new Vista machine from a machine running a very old
version of Windows, and I see a big change (for the worse) in how my email
is being handled.

My way of working with email is to run a local program MailWasher, which
lists (without downloading) all the messages in the server's inbox - the
same messages you see through webmail - and offers easy ways of filtering
and deleting them, so you can go on to download what's left to another local
program, Outlook Express. That's how it worked on my old computer, no
problems.

On my new machine, however, MailWasher and also Windows Mail don't see ALL
the messages in the webmail inbox. Just now, for example, they are see 14
messages, whereas webmail is seeing about 120 in the inbox. The server has
marked some of the 120 messages in the inbox as spam, but there is no
correlation between this marking and their invisibility to local programs.

My first question is: what is causing programs on my new machine not to see
all the messages in the server's inbox? There are several differences from
the old machine - the OS (Vista vs an old Windows version), the connection
(broadband vs dialup), there could be pre-installed apps on my new machine
that I haven't yet discovered, etc.

My second question is: how do I keep the invisible messages from
accumulating and clogging the server's inbox? I know I can delete them in
webmail, but I would much prefer to use a local app like MailWasher, but it
can't see them!

Thanks for any idea,
Ciarán Ó Duibhín.

 

[Steve Cochran]

Try removing your mail account, close and reopen WinMail and then add your
mail account back again and then see how many messages it sees on the
server. Also see point 3 here: www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#3

steve

 

[Ciarán Ó Duibhín]

Thanks to everyone who responded. I held off replying until I had something
more to say.

Well, the problem was caused by the way I set up my account on the two
machines. My ISP gives out email accounts of the form
(e-mail address removed) . Where Windows Mail on my new Vista machine (to
take one program as an example) has "Account/Properties/Servers/Incoming
Mail Server/E-mail username" I had (e-mail address removed) , whereas the
corresponding thing on my old (Win95, I'll admit it!) machine was just set
to surname.isp.com. Result: on Vista all the messages arriving for
(e-mail address removed) went missing - they were mostly spam.
But they are visible on my webmail inbox, and kept accumulating there until
things ground to a halt. Remove the "firstname@" on the Vista username and
everything is fine, all emails arrive at Windows Mail (actually I look at
them first with MailWasher and remove the spam). For some unknown reason
(but I'm not complaining!) the change also clears up problems of timeouts in
Windows Mail or MailWasher contacting the POP3 server.

I believe I followed my ISP's instructions in the way I had set things up on
the Vista machine, and I am querying that.

Thanks again,
Ciarán Ó Duibhín.

 

[Gary VanderMolen]

Thanks for reporting back.