The Lemon Fool

I have used microsoft office 2010 outlook for many years, but I now have a new pc. I can't install Office 2010 on it as I have no cd. So I would like suggestions of what I now use to handle my emails. Have visited the MS website but it is very determined for me to sign up to 365 - I don't want to. Failing that it pushes Office 2021 - which doesn't offer MS outlook. The only other applications of the Office suite that I now use are Word and Excel
So suggestions please.

Thunderbird https://www.thunderbird.net

Does it deal with multiple email addresses? I use a different email address for financial stuff, shopping, etc

I had to give up on outlook and tried thunderbird but couldn't really get on with it.

I'm now using emclient and in fact just upgraded to pro so I can use it on 2 computers. I much prefer it to thunderbird (even though there's nothing wrong with it).

I still haven't found anything nearly as nice and clear to use as outlook express. Why is it so difficult to produce a good email client.

Another vote for Thunderbird.

Yes it handles as many email addresses as you have, you can view the received mails on a per account or combined basis. A really good piece of software.

granretire wrote:Does it deal with multiple email addresses? I use a different email address for financial stuff, shopping, etc

I think thunderbird will, and it's all free.

emclient will allow 2, unless you pay for pro then it's unlimited.

https://www.emclient.com/pricing?lang=en

I also support the suggestion of thunderbird but you could buy an external CD reader for about £25 if you wanted to.

Dod

Dod101 wrote:I also support the suggestion of thunderbird but you could buy an external CD reader for about £25 if you wanted to.

Dod

I was about to suggest an external USB CD player...

It might also be possible to copy the Outlook 2010 CD install files to a usb flash drive - I have vague memories of Breelander covering this topic before.

The built in Mail app. in W10 is fine as a basic email client - been using it for years. It will do multiple email accounts POP/IMAP but doesn't have the customisation control of Thunderbird (which is also multi OS compatible).

Thank you all for your replies - it seems that Thunderbird is go.
So I have tried to set up an account.
Full name - I can manage that
email address - I entered one of them
Password - entered the password for that email
Thunderbird found available configuration at ionos - which is correct
But when I clicked on 'Done' it informed me
'Unable to log in at server. Probably wrong configuration, username or password'
Well, I wasn't asked for a username, but that is my email address.
I am stuck. Can anyone help, please

It has probably tried to guess the correct server names and settings.

If you can tell us your email provider we can try to look it up. Or visit your email provider's support web pages and look up the correct email settings.

You need to know if you want to use IMAP (probably) or POP(becoming obsolete slowly). You need to find a server name and port number, though these are pretty standard.

You also need SMTP server settings in order to send mail

Ionos.
Having entered my name, one of the email addresses with its password, Thunderbird comes up with:
Available configuration
IMAP
Keep your folders and emails synchronised on your server
Incoming IMAP imap.ionos.co.uk No encryption
Outgoing SMTP smtp.ionos.co.uk No encryption
Username - the email that I entered

Then clicked Done
Which gave 'Unable to log in a server. Probably wrong configuration, username or password
(I did enter the correct password, and tried again)

granretire wrote:Does it deal with multiple email addresses? I use a different email address for financial stuff, shopping, etc

Do you mean multiple email accounts, or multiple email addresses within an account? In either case, the answer is yes.

E.g. I have <me>@hotmail.com, <me>@btinternet.com, <me>@gmail.com, <another-me>@gmail.com, etc, and I also have my own domain under which I have a single email account but with multiple incoming addresses, e.g. lemonfool@<mydomian.com>, barclays@<mydomian.com>, iweb@<mydomian.com>, etc, etc.

Thunderbird deals with all of those, and you can set up "Identities" under each email account which lets you specify the outgoing email addresses you want to use. And if you have the identity then if you receive a message that was sent to, e.g. lemonfool@etc then a Reply to that message will automatically go out from lemonfool@etc. If you don't want that you can change it on the click on a dropdown list while composing your reply, even being able to (if your SMTP server lets you) typing in any outgoing email address you want.

I have a a number of email addresses of the form:
shop@granretire.me.uk
finance@granretire.me.uk
utilities@granretire.me.uk
(not my genuine email addresses, but close)
All maintained under ionos. As you will see, I am now having problems setting up just one under thunderbird

granretire wrote:Ionos.
Having entered my name, one of the email addresses with its password, Thunderbird comes up with:
Available configuration
IMAP
Keep your folders and emails synchronised on your server
Incoming IMAP imap.ionos.co.uk No encryption
Outgoing SMTP smtp.ionos.co.uk No encryption
Username - the email that I entered

Then clicked Done
Which gave 'Unable to log in a server. Probably wrong configuration, username or password
(I did enter the correct password, and tried again)

Try the settings here, best to use the "for SSL" ports: https://www.ionos.co.uk/help/email/general-topics/settings-for-your-email-programs-imap-pop3/

If that's not clear then (assuming you still have it) copy the settings from Outlook on your old PC.

Well, I got there in the end! I have managed to get emails appearing in thunderbird. Now I am trying to work out how to get the outlook address book over.
Many thanks for all your help

granretire wrote:I have a a number of email addresses of the form:
shop@granretire.me.uk
finance@granretire.me.uk
utilities@granretire.me.uk
(not my genuine email addresses, but close)
All maintained under ionos. As you will see, I am now having problems setting up just one under thunderbird

Ok, but are those separate email accounts, or aliases (forwarders) under a single email account? I.e. do you have one single Inbox that receives messages sent to all three or three separate Inboxes, one for each?

granretire wrote:Well, I got there in the end! I have managed to get emails appearing in thunderbird. Now I am trying to work out how to get the outlook address book over.

If your Outlook setup is on the same system TB can import them directly, but as yours isn't see: https://www.stellaroutlooktools.com/blog/import-outlook-contacts-to-thunderbird/

These are separate email a/cs.
I tried stellaoutlooktools - which I thought explained things very clearly - but unfortunately I couldn't get it to work. When I looked at the exported file from MS Outlook, it just had a single entry - which didn't correspond to my list of addresses. And TB was not impressed it either when I tried to import it.

Often people confuse outlook's address book and autocomplete entries. The two things are different. If the contacts are not in the outlook contacts list, I bet they were just autocomplete entries, which are not stored as contacts in outlook.

There is a tool here that should let you read and export these entries from outlook:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/outlook_nk2_edit.html

I haven't tried, but I think you will then have a list of text email addresses that you could import into the tb address book.

granretire wrote:These are separate email a/cs.
I tried stellaoutlooktools - which I thought explained things very clearly - but unfortunately I couldn't get it to work. When I looked at the exported file from MS Outlook, it just had a single entry - which didn't correspond to my list of addresses. And TB was not impressed it either when I tried to import it.

Hmmmm....I don't have a working Outlook to try it out myself but you should be able to get your contacts out from Outlook into a CSV file, which TB should be able to read ... does this help? https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/export-contacts-from-outlook-10f09abd-643c-4495-bb80-543714eca73f

On another TB matter, I too, like a previous poster, was a long time fan of Outlook Express, and so I've tried to make my TB look like it (and Outlook Express looked pretty much like the mail part of Outlook, you know, without all the "office" stuff, like tasks and calendar, etc), and to that end I've found the following add-ons useful, which you may want to take a look at (after investigating the View menu first ):

changeQuote, Compact Headers, Get/Send Button, Manually sort folders, Phoenity Icons, ReplyWithHeader, Send Later.

On the last one, by default when you're composing a message and click the "Send" button TB sends the message straight away. There is a menu option, File->Send Later, which instead puts the message in the Outbox, which I prefer as I have a habit of writing all my outgoing messages/replies, and then, before sending them, going back to reread them in the Outbox to see if I've spouted any nonsense.

There used to be a Send Later Button add on, that simply did just that, added a button that did the same as the File->Send Later, but now all that seems to be available is a much more complex Send Later scheduler add-on, but that does at least allow one to just click "Put in Outbox"....

Thanks. Will look at your suggestions tomorrow.