# Need some Email Advice



## RikkFlohr (Dec 29, 2009)

My email needs to be brought under control.
I have a desktop, two laptops, one of which is a Macbook with dual boot (Mac and Win 7) and a Smartphone (Droid).
I have three email addresses under my ISP (mostly for the main family address, an old business addy that I still monitor and a personal Paypal)
Then I have multiple email addresses under my registered domains: (Three Domains total)
Then there is a Gmail, a couple of Live.com's and who knows what else:
Here's what I need: I need to be able to use the desktop as the repository of all emails inbound. I need access to the current emails when I am traveling on which ever laptop I happen to be carrying (both os's in the Macbook because I never know in which side I will be presenting). And I need stuff to get to my Droid. 
When I am out of the country for three weeks, I need to see what is coming in and respond to urgent items. When I get back, I want the entire pile to come into my desktop. Now the desktop might be used by my wife while I am gone and I don't want her accidental launch of outlook to screw me up on the road. I don't have time to log into 5 different web mails when traveling and often don't have the bandwidth to do so.
I am interested to know what others do with multiple layers of email and multiple points of access. I have been pruning down my email addresses for year but still end up with 5 domains that, for one compelling reason or another, I cannot cull any further. Any suggestions?


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## Steve Crane (Dec 29, 2009)

One solution might be to use gmail as a hub. Link all the other addresses to your gmail and only use the gmail web client on all your machines except for the main desktop where you could either use Outlook (or Thunderbird) with POP3 (I know this works) or IMAP4 (not sure if this works) to pull mail from the gmail account onto your local machine. I've also heard that fetchmail can be used to pull down local copies of your mail from gmail. The Droid should have no problem accessing gmail, being a Google Android device. One possible problem with this is if you need offline access to your mail on any of the machines you take on the road.


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## Replytoken (Dec 29, 2009)

Rikk,

My situation is not nearly as extensive as yours, but I feel like I am on the same road. I have yet to fully tackle this problem, but I think one of the first things I need to do is select an email client I am comfortable using with multiple accounts. My understanding is that if the account(s) will be downloaded on to separate devices, then the IMAP protocol is the way to go to keep all devices in sync (although I could be wrong here). I would agree with Steve that you could use one web-based account as a hub for others. I know that G-Mail will allow you reply form a "hub" account with the address of the feeding account, so that might hlep you in your consolidation. I am curious to know how you end up proceeding. Keep us posted if possible.

--Ken


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## RikkFlohr (Dec 29, 2009)

Part of my issue is that I am very comfortable in Outlook and like to maintain that. 

Right now, I have my desktop set to extract messages from the server. The three Laptop OS's are all set to leave copies on the server. As long as my desktop is latent, I have no problems. If I forget to close Outlook when I walk out the door, it wipes my messages clean every 15 minutes or so. Which means the Droid, syncing, gains and loses emails continually without my necessarily seeing them. 

Then there is the added problem of the replies made on remote devices not making it back to my master email catalog on the desktop. I don't see a solution.

I forgot to mention the "Reply from" address and how, if I forward to a hub, I can keep the addresses I need private-private and respond from the proper address. I will keep tweaking and see if I can come up with something.


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## Victoria Bampton (Dec 29, 2009)

Been there, done that. Conclusion I came - route everything through a single Gmail (or Google Apps in this case) account. That account collects mail from all of my old addresses, as well as my current main one, and allows me to send email from all of those addresses too. That account is then accessed via IMAP (Thunderbird, Outlook, Mac Mail, etc.) or web interface on 3 computers plus phone, and everything's archived on my desktop as well as on the gmail server. Works a treat for me.


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## clee01l (Dec 29, 2009)

I have the "Several" Computers issue too. I solved that by specifying in Outlook or my mail client to d/l the messages and LEAVE the messages on the server on every machine except the one I have designated as my primary. I can read my mail from anywhere and freely delete it on the secondary machines knowing that the primary machine will collect all mail. WHen I leave my primary machine for extended periods, I close Outlook on that machine

Now for email accounts, I have 1' including GMail, My ISP (AT&T) and the rest being a clee.org account. I have my iPhone pull mail from a separate clee.org account and only it and GMail show up on my iPhone. My primary email account can receive 1''-2'' emails and RSS Feeds overnight so I do not use it on my iPhone. If I need to check my primary email account from my iPhone, I do it from the browser interface mail client at my server. Olde email accounts that are dead are just that. I do not check email from any (like my Yahoo) which are not closed.


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## Steve Crane (Dec 29, 2009)

I'm not sure whether I've seen this in Outlook or Thunderbird (more likely as I haven't set up POP3 in Outlook for ages) but I seem to recall it had an option to retain messages on the server for some period after download. That might be the answer to your wife starting Outlook and thereby messing up your on the road experience.

Or an even simpler solution might be to simply not have Outlook start automatically on the machine and also not have any obvious shortcuts that start it, as it sounds like your wife is starting it accidentally rather than deliberately. Perhaps have the Outlook shortcut launch a batch file that requests a simple password and only starts Outlook if the correct password is given.


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## Victoria Bampton (Dec 29, 2009)

Only disadvantage with POP downloading to multiple machines is that you have to remember which emails you've already read (IMAP would mark them read on all machines) and you have to remember which machine you sent an email from if you want to go back to it.


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