Tag: organising

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Organising and tidying-up – Part 3: Email – 10 Jan 2019

Boot-up
Monty Cohen – funeral Jan 25th
DupeGuru -how did it go?
Browser and Google – OK now?
Ways that Google can track you
How to test your PC for failing hardware
News
TV manufacturers play ball with Apple
Google Maps and CarPlay
Email – clients and accounts
Email doesn’t need to be accessed from a URL using your browser, or to a browser via an icon on your desktop, it can be linked to a mail application. Email is the classic example of a client/server application, where the client (the browser, or an application) makes requests of a remote server. Until the request is made, the information remains unread and unseen on the server. When using a mail application (rather than a browser), the act of opening the application usually starts the download of messages.
Popular clients for Windows – probably Mail for Windows, but if you’ve got Office 365 – you could use Outlook – but it’s probably more geared towards business users and provides more features than you really want, or need (a bit like Microsoft Word and Excel are overkill for us “third-agers”). If you don’t want to use a Microsoft product you could try Mailbird, or if you like using Firefox as a browser, you might want to consider using it’s email partner – Thunderbird.
Popular clients for Mac – probably a no-brainer – Apple Mail because it integrates well with your Mac, but if you want to look at alternatives, you could read this review.
Popular clients (apps) for iOS (iPhone and iPad) – well there’s nothing wrong with the Mail app, but you could try the Gmail app, or the Outlook app (particularly if you’re using Outlook on your laptop, or desktop machine)
Popular clients (apps) for Android – they come with their own email app, so there will be a Sony mail app, and Samsung mail etc. etc. But they will also almost certainly come with a Gmail app as well, so there’s probably no real reason to opt for anything different if you’re using Gmail.
There are other alternatives for your mobile device but I will just focus on Mail (iOS) and Gmail (Android and iOS).
Why would you want to use an email app rather than use a browser-based client. Well …

  1. You can easily combine multiple email accounts into one place
  2. You can store all your mail locally for archive purposes
  3. You can setup your mail so that it sends out email from a different email address using different SMTP servers
  4. You can create multiple email boxes for different purposes, easily apply filters to help you organise your mail
  5. … and probably many more.

What do you need to know?
Your email service is usually provided “free” as part of your internet/broadband package from your ISP (Internet Service Provider). This could be VirginMedia, BTinternet, TalkTalk etc. etc. However it is possible to get a free email service from elsewhere and Yahoo! and Google are examples of such service providers.
There are very good reasons to have a Google account and use Gmail, Google Contacts and Google Calendar, but I’ll leave that for another day. There are less good reasons for having Yahoo! mail and if you rely on that for your email service provision, I would suggest you might consider changing, or at least start using an alternative as well.
How does it all work? Well … email is delivered to your client in one of two methods (protocols) – POP3 (where the message is essentially downloaded to your device) and IMAP (where only an index and a header are initially downloaded, and then if you want to read the message it will be recalled from the server.
Essentially with POP3, the message will normally be deleted from the server after you’ve downloaded it – POP stands for Post Office Protocol and you can see why – it’s very like a Sorting Office. With IMAP the reverse happens, the message will be stored on the server and you actively have to mark it for deletion. This can cause confusion because often you feel you’ve deleted the message on your phone or tablet, but it’s still there when you go to look at your mail on your laptop/desktop. You should therefore remember to mark a setting in your mail app on your phone/tablet to delete the message from the server when you delete it from the phone/tablet. Here’s an article that explains the difference between POP3 and IMAP.
Then your outgoing mail is delivered using a different protocol (or method) called SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) which transfers the message back to your mail provider for ongoing transmission to the recipient.
So … to set up a mail client on a device you need to obtain some information about the POP3 or IMAP address to fetch the mail, and the SMTP address to send the mail. You will also need the username (usually your email address) and password for the mail service you are using. Here’s an example from a self-hosted email service that I use for my websites, this would be an example of  the most difficult configuration you’d ever be likely to encounter.


For some services you may need to set up the client in a browser linked to your mail provider service, but most of the common ones have been set up in the client to do the connections automatically.
For BTinternet …… but be careful …
… and when you go to Settings …

I much prefer Gmail which allows you to do so much more …


Live Demonstration!!! 
iPhone (Mail and Gmail), and then Instructions for Windows Mail [which are provided here].

Here is a link describing how to forward Yahoo mail (NOT BTYahoo! unfortunately) using Classic Yahoo mail interface. You have to go back to the older version to do this.
… and here are the POP and IMAP settings for common email systems (from Microsoft) …
To create (or delete) folders in Mail for Windows, look at this article. If you don’t see the + sign against All Folders, go to the Troubleshooting section at the bottom of that page – the advice is to Close Mail, wait 30secs, then re-open!!!