Outlook is part of Microsoft’s Office suite. It comes with a lot of extra features compared to Outlook Express, including time/event management, contact management, and Microsoft Exchange Server support to synchronize and share information.

Arguably, Outlook Express is a good enough tool for those who don’t expect a lot of flexibility from their software. But what if you want more without having to spend money? Which free alternatives to Outlook should you look into?

Thunderbird

What is it?

Thunderbird is Mozilla’s desktop eMail client. As such, it’s an open source application and supports various addons, which enhance its functionality.

Like Outlook, Thunderbird supports POP, IMAP, and SMTP. Using the Account Wizard, you also can subscribe to RSS News & Blogs, hook up to your Newsgroup account, and launch a quick Gmail setup.

What makes it a better alternative to Outlook?

Thunderbird is available not just for Windows, but also for Mac OS X and Linux. Localized versions of Thunderbird exist for dozens of the most common languages.

Thunderbird is much better than Outlook, in case you enjoy to customize your eMail client. There is a vast collection of themes and extensions available. These will also cover up for most features that are not integrated into Thunderbird by default.

MakeUseOf has dozens of articles regarding Thunderbird. Below is a small selection:

• Saikat wrote How to Set Up Mozilla Thunderbird to Send Mass Emails.
• Mark explained how to Synchronize Your Google Contacts, Calendar & RSS In Thunderbird.
• Kyle showed you how to Update Your Thunderbird Address Book with Address Crawler.
• I have written articles explaining How to Set Up Message Filters in Thunderbird, How To Integrate Google Calendar Into Thunderbird, and How To Recover Deleted eMails in Thunderbird.

Gmail

What is it?

Gmail or Google Mail is Google’s free webmail client.

Although it is only an online eMail application, Gmail is a very powerful tool that easily rivals most common desktop clients. Gmail supports POP and IMAP and it is fully integrated with the Google Apps suite.

What makes it better than Outlook?

The clear advantage of an online eMail client is its global availability. Wherever you go, whichever computer you use, your eMail is already there.

Gmail provides a complex selection of settings and features. Gmail tracks conversations and optionally compiles all eMails belonging to one conversation into a single thread. Within settings you can create filters, enable Google Mail Labs experimental features, manage multiple inboxes, and switch themes.

There are tons of Gmail hacks that provide interesting options. MakeUseOf has covered them extensively. Here are some of the highlights:

• Mark has compiled a list of Essential Shortcuts to Browse through Gmail faster.
• Saikat covered 5 Ways To Create Custom Multiple Signatures in GMail.
• David shared 7 Tips to Make Gmail The Best Free Email Service For Productive People.
• Sharninder explained How To Access & Use Gmail Offline.
• Karl wrote about How To Backup Your Gmail account To YOUR Hard Drive.
• Aibek revealed 1 Awesome Gmail tip You Didn’t Know about.

Angelina has written a series of posts on How To Turn Gmail Into a Multitasking Machine. In Part 1 she explains how to best configure Gmail, how to consolidate your eMail, and set up labels. In Part2 she provides tips for eMail filtering. Finally, in Part 3, Angelina explores options for the sidebar and the use of multiple inboxes.

Zimbra Desktop

What is it?

Yahoo’s Zimbra Desktop is a desktop eMail client that rivals Gmail, Thunderbird, and Outlook alike. Interestingly, it is powered by Mozilla.

What makes it a better alternative to Outlook?

Much like its Mozilla companion Thunderbird, Zimbra is available in 20 different language versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The design is sleek and Zimbra offers several more theme options. Best of all, it’s easy and intuitive to use with a ton of useful features.

Zimbra supports its own online webmail client Zimbra as well as Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Microsoft Live Hotmail, AOL Mail, Microsoft Exchange IMAP, IMAP, and POP.

Zimbra has a built-in calendar, contacts, task manager, documents, and briefcase.

Obviously, language integration is not yet perfect. Although I selected the US English language installation and confirmed this language preference within options, some tabs and menus are still displayed in the language of my operating system: German. This should not be an issue if you select the language of your operating system.

Zimbra synchronizes eMails, contacts, and calendars with Zimbra, Yahoo! Mail, and Gmail.

Like Gmail, Zimbra offers an optional conversation view, i.e. threaded conversations. It also comes with advanced tagging options.

Contacts can be grouped and tagged, you can add photos, and import/export via .csv files is supported.

Zimbra comes with great search features. You can quickly search your mailbox for all or specified item types or use the advanced search to add several search criteria, such as file size, date and time, tag, status, folder, and more. The best is that searches can be saved as virtual folders.

Zimbra extensions are called Zimlets.

For more details on how Zimbra compares to Outlook and Thunderbird, check out the Feature Comparison list.

Runners-Up

If none of the above alternatives seem entirely satisfying to you, please have a look at the following two clients:

IncrediMail was reviewed by Saikat: Have Some Fun With This Email Client (Windows).
Zenbe received a review from Sam: All Your Emails In One Place.

What is your favorite eMail client and what makes it valuable to you?

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• How To Access Hotmail Email Messages from Your Gmail Account [Part II] (10)
• How to Set Up Mozilla Thunderbird to Send Mass Emails (17)
• How to Email Smarter With Buit-In Time Zone Converters (8)
• MUO Polls: Do You Check Email Online or Use A Desktop Client? (37)
• How To Turn Gmail Into A Multitasking Machine (Part III) (12)

Here is the post that will shed light on how to recover deleted emails in Thunderbird. So if you have recently deleted an important eMail and accidentally emptied the Trash, you may still be able to recover it. Just don’t compact your folders, yet!

Before you start, close Thunderbird and best perform a backup. At least make a manual backup of the files you are going to work with!

Open your Thunderbird profile folder. Generally this folder can be found under C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR USER NAME\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles.

By default, the Application Data folder is hidden. To make it visible go to C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR USER NAME\ and click Tools > Folder Options and open the View tab. Scroll down to Hidden files and folders and check Show hidden files and folders. Click OK to save and you should be able to see the Application Data folder.

You should know under which account and to which folder the deleted eMail was originally delivered. Otherwise you will have to apply trial and error and search through different accounts and folders.

Let’s say we’re looking for an eMail that was delivered to the Inbox, subsequently deleted and emptied from the Trash. The traces of this eMail should still be found in the Inbox folder.

Go ahead and open the folder for the respective eMail account, then launch the Inbox file without the .msf file extension in a text editor, such as Notepad.

If you’re unsure, click on one of the files and expand the file details in the bottom left of the folder. For the correct file type it should just say “file”, rather than “MSF-file”.

Opening files can take a few seconds or a few minutes, depending on how many eMails have survived termination in that folder. Make sure the text editor you choose can handle large file sizes. Some of my files were up to 300MB!

For my example, I picked an eMail I received from Stumble Upon this morning. I had deleted it and before attempting to restore the eMail I also emptied the Trash for this account.

When I looked into the Inbox file I indeed found that eMail along with all details and contents in my Inbox text file.

To recover the eMail and make it reappear in its original folder, change the X-Mozilla-Status to 0. In the example pictured below it says “X-Mozilla-Status: 0009″. The result should say “X-Mozilla-Status: 0″.

Save the file, close it and launch your Thunderbird client.

Lo and behold, my test eMail magically reappeared in my inbox.

Now to everyone who have been getting rid of secret or compromising eMails simply by deleting them, there is no need to suffer from a nervous breakdown now.

There is a way to remove those eMails forever. Simply compact your folders. My previous post on How To Terminally Deleted eMails In Thunderbird by Compacting Folders thoroughly explains the steps you need to take.

Did I save your day? Your feedback is appreciated, please use the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• How to Set Up Mozilla Thunderbird to Send Mass Emails (17)
• How to Email Smarter With Buit-In Time Zone Converters (8)
• How To Access Hotmail Email Messages from Your Gmail Account [Part II] (10)
• 3 Best Free Alternatives To Microsoft Outlook (19)
• MUO Polls: Do You Check Email Online or Use A Desktop Client? (37)

If you have a 5 Megapixel camera, you may find your photo sizes being around 4-6MB each, if you want to email 5 photos to your friends, you can see that the email will be quite large around 25MB, and that is a bit big for an email. What happens if you have a bunch of photos to email, say 25, that will be 125 megabytes – which most people won’t be able to receive as it is too large.

So to reduce the email size, we first must resize the image for email. You may have another software that you use to compact the size of your images, but Microsoft Office Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird provides a handy tool that allows you to shrink the quality of the images automatically. You will now be able to turn your 125MB email to little over 1MB with hardly any effort.

Resize Images For Email In Outlook 2007

Open up Outlook 2007 and create a new email. Attach your images be clicking on the Message tab, and click Attach File in the Include section as seen in the picture below. I have added 10 pictures that are around 4MB each, which makes the total size of the email 36MB.

In the picture, I have also circled another button. Click it and you will be shown a sidebar on the right hand side. Under Picture Options, select your picture size. I have chosen large.

If you want, you can tick the box that says Show when attaching files, so the Attachment Option side bar will automatically appear when you attach files to your email. All you have to do is write your email and click send for your images to be reduced. When you send your email, you will see that the largest file I sent is 191KB.

Resize Images For Email In Mozilla Thunderbird

If you use Mozilla Thunderbird, you first have to install a Add-on. Go and download the Auto resize JPEG images for Thunderbird add-on. Open up Thunderbird, click on Tools –> Add-ons and click on install.

Click on open when you have located the .xpi file and then click on Install Now when prompted. Then restart Thunderbird.

Once you have installed the Add-on, create a new email as you normally would. Click on Attach and add your images. Write the rest of your email, and when you are done, click send. You will be prompted with a message (unless you ticked the box saying Resize images automatically when sending).

Click on yes to send your email. Thunderbird will automatically reduce the attachments.

With the ten pictures that I emailed, I reduced the email size from 36 Megabytes to 1660KB which is 1.6MB.

What other methods do you use to reduce your email attachment sizes? Share it with us in the comments.

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• MUO Polls: Do You Check Email Online or Use A Desktop Client? (37)
• How to Email Smarter With Buit-In Time Zone Converters (8)
• How to Set Up Mozilla Thunderbird to Send Mass Emails (17)
• How To Send Personalized Mass Emails in Outlook (26)
• How to Send Big Files & Auto-open mailto Links in Gmail / Yahoo (4)

Thunderbird unites many advantages, including the flexibility we all know from Firefox. And if you have to rely on eMail accounts from different providers (e.g. work, GMail and Yahoo! Mail), a desktop eMail client like Thunderbird allows you to collect all your eMails in one place on your desktop.

One of the greatest joys for me is customizing Thunderbird’s look and feel, i.e. rearranging icons and trying new themes. Here are 10 of my favorite Mozilla Thunderbird themes.

2nd Classic

(2.0 – 2.0.0*)

2nd Classic is a light gray Mozilla Thunderbird theme with a few good contrasts, for example a different background for the sidebar. It also comes with custom icons for the Mail, Calendar and Tasks buttons, something that most skins are lacking.

If you’re wondering how I got those buttons there, check out my post How To Integrate Google Calendar Into Thunderbird and the secret should be lifted. It also works for iCalendar (ICS), CalDAV or Sun Java System Calendar Server (WCAP).

Aquabird Redone

(1.5 – 2.0.0.*)

I’m a great fan of light Mozilla Thunderbird themes with neat buttons and this skin definitely fits into my predatory pattern. The theme is also available in a dark version: Aquabird Black

Cobalt

(1.5 – 2.0.0.*)

This is the theme I’ve been using for the past few months. As I said, I have a soft spot for stylish light skins. Unfortunately, no custom Mail, Calendar and Tasks buttons.

iLeopard Mail

(2.0 – 3.1a1pre)

The color scheme of iLeopard here is very similar to 2nd Classic, but the icons are very different. I find them adorable, very Mac!

Modern Modoki

(2.0 – 2.0.0.*)

Most Mozilla Thunderbird themes are light. Modern Modoki’s blueish grey colored theme with the beautiful icons is different.

Nuvola

(2.0 – 3.1a1pre)

Nuvola is a more playful skin with colored icons on a light gray background. I like all the little details, especially the custom icons everywhere. Very well done!

OxyBird

(2.0 – 2.0.0.*)

OxyBird is another favorite light skin with pretty buttons. If you’re a fan of light skins, pay attention to the subtle differences in the icons. This theme isn’t monochrome, but integrates little bits of color, which makes it so interesting.

PitchDark

(0.8 – 2.0.0.*)

The only real dark Thunderbird skin I found and liked. The brownish grey / black combination is quite special, but will certainly find its fans. I like the clear borders. Overall it reminds of dark science fiction movies. Not sure where that comes from, though.

Silvermel

(1.5 – 3.1a1pre)

Silvermel has a light gray base with slightly colorful and novel icons.

Whitehart

(1.5 – 2.0.0.*)

Finally a light theme. Whitehart is very classy, with simple but stylish icons. Perfect if you need a low-key skin that’s easy on the eyes. My current favorite!

And Thunderbird can be a lot more than just pretty! As mentioned previously, Thunderbird supports extensions, just like Firefox. Here’s a small selection of custom settings we have covered on MakeUse Of:

Damien compiled a list of 10 Great Thunderbird Addons You Must Have.

Kyle wrote an article explaining how to Update Your Thunderbird Address Book With Address Crawler.

From Saikat you could learn How To Set Up Mozilla Thunderbird To Send Mass Emails.

And in case you’re being flooded with eMails, you will find my article about How To Set Up Message Filters In Thunderbird very useful.

What’s your favorite theme? Do you change your themes regularly? How many are currently installed for your Thunderbird? Yeah, we want to know it all!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• 15 Best Mozilla Firefox Skins To Customize Your Browser (40)
• MUO Polls: Do You Check Email Online or Use A Desktop Client? (37)
• How to Set Up Mozilla Thunderbird to Send Mass Emails (17)
• How To Resize Images for Email right in Thunderbird & Outlook (2)
• How To Recover Deleted eMails in Thunderbird (9)

But email didn’t evolve much. Sure, we can attach files, sort and store more emails. If you’re using Gmail, you’re probably in love with the threaded conversation view. But email is seriously lacking when you want to collaborate effectively, manage projects and share information across a team.

If you’re lucky, you’re probably getting 20-30 emails every day – work in any public facing environment and you can safely multiply that by 3. The problem is that important emails have a tendency to get lost in the everyday information noise: family, projects, work, friends. Setting up filters, labels and having a good ‘email hygiene’ helps, but you’re missing out on an web application that is built to enhance your productivity and help you collaborate effectively online with your peers: Zenbe’s Shareflow.

Shareflow can be everything for everyone. It’s built for managing projects and sharing information in work/office scenarios – a central hub that everyone can come to upload files, comment and post updates.

But the great thing about Shareflow is that it can scale. From a hockey team discussing their strategy for their next game, uploading sketches, laying out plans, even adding match dates and a maps, to a newsroom discussing article ideas – all editors and writers pitching in transparently; to freelance workers communicating with their clients, discussing aspects and revisions of creative work like web site design.

The Zenbe team has posted an article about their uses of Shareflow here which might help if you’re not sure what Shareflow can do for you.

Setting up and using Shareflow is a breeze when compared to other types of GTD (Getting Things Done) applications that have this kind of functionality (such as a private wiki).  Since it leverages the SaaS (Software as a Service) concept, all the end users or team manager has to do is pick an username, a password and a name for your team (which will appear as the header of every ‘flow’ page).

A ‘flow’ is used to represent a project or a specific activity. Once you’ve set up an account, you can create your first flow and invite peers. Any peer can upload files (documents, pictures, archives, etc.), post plaintext messages and comments, links, add events, maps and even add emails.

Shareflow also leverages the ‘freemium’ revenue model. The free plan includes 5 flows and 25MB of space, enough to work with if you’re not uploading a lot of material or managing an extensive number of projects. To get over the storage limitation you could simply upload the larger files to services like Dropbox or SkyDrive and post the link in the Shareflow interface.

The Basic plan includes 25 flows and 5GB of storage for $20/month which should satisfy the requirements of most people who plan on using this service for work. More plans are available from the Administrator Control Panel which can be accessed using the ‘admin’ link in the top right corner of the web page. From there you can also modify the team name, set the time zone, check quotas for each of the flows and delete unnecessary ones.

Another benefit of using Shareflow is that it keeps you focused. All the information you need to work with is in this sandbox that receives just relevant content.  Say goodbye to checking your email and realizing 3 hours later that you’ve been watching House on Hulu.

If you need a way how to collaborate effectively online, Shareflow is a good way to do it, and gets my recommendation.  If you’re looking for more ways to collaborate online, check out this category page and Sam also wrote about another Zenbe product called Zenbe Mail.

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• Top 5 Yahoo Mail Classic Tips & Tricks (22)
• Save Time with Gmail Email Templates using “Canned Responses” (20)
• Postbox: An Alternative Email Client For Mac (19)
• MUO Polls: Do You Check Email Online or Use A Desktop Client? (37)
• Make Gmail your Default Desktop Email Client (Windows) (25)

For instance, I need to send forth an email to a different time zone at 6 AM in the morning. The tireless way would be to wake with the birds and send it on the clock at 6 AM. The job’s done…but the smarter way would be to compose it the night before and schedule it for email delivery at 6 AM. The job’s done without me losing any sleep over it.

So why lose sleep when an email client like Outlook comes with a schedule delivery feature built right in. And till the day Gmail comes out with it, the desktop Outlook is the way to go.

The option was there in the earlier editions of Outlook too. A few simple settings and it makes Outlook work at the right time.

Let’s see how to set it up with Microsoft Outlook 2007.

• Start with a new email message.
• On the Message tab, click on the tiny Message Options arrow which gives out the Message Options dialog box.



• You can also access this dialog from the Options tab – More Options – Delay Delivery.



• Under Delivery Option, select and mark the box which says Do not deliver before. Click on the Calendar and Time dropdowns to select the exact day and time when you want the email to be delivered. Click on Close.



• When you click on Send, the message remains in the outbox till the time scheduled by you for emailing it. Of course, Outlook must remain open till that time.

There is no limit to the number of emails you can setup for scheduled delivery.

Unfortunately, there is no simple way to setup a recurring scheduled email. It would have been really handy for nagging you-owe-me emails to a thrifty friend. That’s a bit of a miss as it’s not possible to set up Microsoft Outlook to schedule recurring events like appointments and tasks. The recourse for recurring scheduled email is only through third party add-ins. I haven’t come across a freeware add-in so far, so my hunt is still on.

Read the official Microsoft Online page here.

The scheduling of my emails lets me fire and forget. It is a little used but invaluable tool for productivity. That is, if you don’t want to wake up at ungodly hours. Do you use this tool regularly, sporadically or not at all? Let us know the worth of this optional setup.

Image Credit: WorldIslandInfo.com

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• How To Send Personalized Mass Emails in Outlook (26)
• MS Outlook Tip: How to Automatically Organize Incoming Emails (11)
• How to Set Up Mozilla Thunderbird to Send Mass Emails (17)
• How to Restart or Shut Down Your Computer Remotely using Microsoft Outlook (12)
• How to Email Smarter With Buit-In Time Zone Converters (8)

Today I am going to show how I use Outlook rules to restart my computer remotely or to shut down my system if need be.

In all actuality I have created many rules over the years and would like to show them to you – who knows maybe they will be as helpful to you as they are to me.

First let’s look at creating a rule in Outlook:

Here you can see the rules window. You can get there by hitting Tools – Rules and Alerts.

If you already have any rules created they will be here. A rule is simply a law on your computer that states when a message arrives with a specific subject, comes from a specific account or any of the other rules, a specific action will be taken. People use these to setup auto-forwards or automated responses. I use these to take actions on my computer.

My first rule shuts down my system and the second one restarts the system. After you start creating the rule hit the Start from a blank rule radio box. This gives us the most flexibility.

Next select Check messages when they arrive. This will scan only incoming messages for your rules. Obviously if you want to be slick you can have things happen when other people send messages on your machine. You can really achieve automation with these rules!

To be on the safe side – ie: not have someone else send me a keyword and have my Outlook jump through hoops for them as well – we want to make sure that the rules are only processed if they come from my account that I have specified for this.

Next up I hit the specific keywords link and I specify my keyword(s). In this case I used the key word – SecretKeyWord. This is case sensitive and the email’s subject would have to have SecretKeyWord in the subject just like that. Then that will trigger our Action which you will see shortly.

Our action is going to run a batch file so we choose start an application. You will need to create a batch file for each action. For example to shutdown the computer your batch file (a text file saved with the .bat extension) would have this line and only this line in it:

shutdown –s –t 00

and to create the same rule that restarts the computer just use this command:

shutdown –r –t 00

When an email arrives with SecretKeyWord in the subject the batch file will be launched and the machine will be restarted – blamo just like that!

You can create any batch file or even start an application on your machine with parameters. The possibilities are endless! Let us know how you use rules in the comments!

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• How To Send Personalized Mass Emails in Outlook (26)
• How to Email Smarter With Buit-In Time Zone Converters (8)
• The 2 Easy Ways to Promote Your Latest Blog Post with an Email Signature (15)
• MUO Polls: Do You Check Email Online or Use A Desktop Client? (37)
• How to Set Up Mozilla Thunderbird to Send Mass Emails (17)

My default mail client is Gmail for online access and Thunderbird for offline. In this demonstration, I am going to use Mozilla Thunderbird, but the same principle can be used for other desktop clients such as Microsoft Outlook or Windows Live Mail.

Step 1: Download Install ThunderBird

To download Mozilla Thunderbird, just visit the Thunderbird Home Page and download the latest version for your operating system.

Step 2: Create your Gmail Account in Thunderbird

Once you have successfully installed Thunderbird, it is time to set up Gmail. When you first launch the ThunderBird after installing it, the below dialog box will appear. If you want to set up more accounts later, you can access it by going Tools –> Account Settings –> Add Account.

Click on the Google Mail or Gmail radio button and click Next. Then enter your name and Google email address. What you type in as Your Name field will appear as the sender when you send emails to other people.

Click Next, and do not click Download Emails now. We’ll download our emails later after we have checked the settings and set up our folders and filters. The setup should be now complete. In order to make sure the settings are correct and to alter the settings if we need, go to Tools –> Account Options. Under your email account, click on Server Settings and make sure you tick the box Leave Messages on Server. This allows you to check all of your emails online as well as offline after you have downloaded them. If you want, you can click the “Until I Delete Them” box.

Step 3: Managing Identities

Since we are in Account Settings, we can set up and manage our identities. Identities are a way we can send mail from other accounts. On the main Account Settings page, you’ll see a button that says Manage Identities. Click on that, and set up your identities for the accounts you are forwarding.

Then click on Add to add a new identity and to fill in the details of your other email accounts. You can change the settings in “Copies and Folders” so your sent mail is stored in another folder if you want.

Step 4: Create folders to sort your mail

Since mail from different email accounts are coming to this one account, we will first set up folders so we can sort mail so we know which email account we will send the email from. To do this, right click on your account and click New folder.

Create folders for all your email accounts that you are forwarding to this Gmail account.

Step 5: Automatically filter your mail from different accounts

Now we have to set up Mail Filters to sort our mail into correct folders. To access message filters, go to Tools –> Message Filters. You have to create a new filter for every email account you are forwarding that you want to go into its own separate folder. Click on the New button and give the filter an appropriate name. Select To from the first drop down box, Contains from the second and type the email address in the third. In the bottom half, select Move Message To and select the folder that you want to move the emails too.

Magnified view

Repeat the steps for every email account. Message Filters are great if you get a lot of mail from one address for example MySpace and Facebook, you can set message filters to your move all mail from those sites to different folders. The below screenshot is how I effectively sort all my MySpace and FaceBook messages into one folder.

Step 6: You are now done

By reading the Part 1, you should now be able to access your emails online in one simple location. By reading this part, you should now be able to access your emails offline. Combined these posts together and you will now be able to successfully managed your mail more efficiently and effectively. However, I do suggest that you check your other email accounts just in case there are some important emails filtered as Spam and that everything is still working correctly.

There are other ways to do this, but this is what I have been doing and it works great with my mail. Especially if you change your email addresses a lot. What do you think? Has this helped you to manage your email more efficiently?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• 3 Best Free Alternatives To Microsoft Outlook (19)
• How to Set Up Mozilla Thunderbird to Send Mass Emails (17)
• How to Email Smarter With Buit-In Time Zone Converters (8)
• MUO Polls: Do You Check Email Online or Use A Desktop Client? (37)
• How To Turn Gmail Into A Multitasking Machine (Part III) (12)

I expected this question after my previous post – How to Send Personalized Mass Emails in Outlook. So, let me continue where I left off and do a bit of Mozilla Thunderbird add-on hunting. After all, Mozilla’s rich add-on universe has a cure for every conceivable ‘problem’ except world hunger.

Yes, I found the answer in Mozdev.org. It’s the Mozilla developers’ community dedicated to open and free, quality applications and extensions – a perfect place to check out when you want to know how to set up Mozilla Thunderbird for anything.

Mail Tweak is a Thunderbird extension for Thunderbird ver. 2.0+. It’s a collection of enhancements and workarounds for the email client. The enhancements total around 36 (113KB) and one of them is called Personalize messages.

This ‘productivity’ tweak sends each recipient an individual message using fields from the address book or a CSV (comma separated values) file.

1. Go to the installation page of Mail Tweak at Mozdev.org. Download the mailtweak-0.16.xpi file to your computer.
2. Open Thunderbird. Select Tools – Add-ons – Extensions. Browse to the location of your downloaded file and install. Restart the Thunderbird client to complete.
3. Open the Add-on window (from Tools – Add-on) and select the Mail Tweak extension. Click on Options.
4. Scroll down the entries in the Tweaks section and select Personalize messages. Click OK.
5. You can now compose a message by selecting Message – Personalize message from the menu toolbar.

   Add your recipients (or a recipients list) as you normally do. You can include the contacts in other ways, of course.

   • Click on Address Book on the menu. Select the bunch of names – right click and choose Personalize from the context menu.
   • Open a new message window from Message – Personalize. Select the Personalize button on the menu and pick up the mail addresses from a CSV file.
6. To send the messages, click on File – Personalize (or click the Personalize button on the toolbar). An alert pops up with the option of ‘Send now’ or ‘Leave unsent’. With the latter option, Mail Tweak saves the messages (as individual emails) in the Unsent folder. After reviewing them you can email them from File – Send Unsent Messages.

Further personalize your email using Mail Tweak…

To include other fields like address, city, work phone etc. from the address book, specify field attributes in the emails. For example, to include the first name of each individual recipient – place a %%firstName%% where needed.
(All available address book field names are the properties as given in the nsIAbCard file. This is where all address fields of a particular contact are stored as attributes. Check out all the attributes here.)

Here’s an example to illustrate – to include the home address and the city of the contacts, include %% homeAddress%% and %%homeCity%% in the appropriate place. Similarly, it can be worked out for the other fields.

Without turning this into a soup of geeky codes and syntax, let me direct you to the Mail Tweaks Personal Messages section for some more help.

Although, Mail Tweak is built for the latest version, it can also be installed in Thunderbird 1.5 and in Shredder (pre-release versions of Thunderbird 3) with limited functionality.

MozDev.org does put out this caution – Performance may be poor if you use this feature for large messages or many recipients, and you might see warning messages from Thunderbird. For bulk mailing, it is better to use a specialized bulk mailing program.

That’s a good advice but for a home user’s run-of-the-mill mass mailing needs using the Thunderbird client, Mail Tweaks is a good enough productivity solution.

So, how often do you use bulk mailing? Do you think this solution is workable for you? Let us know if you have any other freeware to lessen the load.

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• How To Send Personalized Mass Emails in Outlook (26)
• How To Access Hotmail Email Messages from Your Gmail Account [Part II] (10)
• 3 Best Free Alternatives To Microsoft Outlook (19)
• How To Terminally Delete eMails In Thunderbird By Compacting Folders (14)
• How To Recover Deleted eMails in Thunderbird (9)

Before I leap ahead, mail merge is used when we want to create several documents that are basically the same but where each document contains unique details. For example, a set of letters where the content is the same but the name, address or even the subject bits are unique for each. The best use I have found – use it as a job hunting application with custom details for each employer.

The mail merge feature uses two parts – a main constant document and the inconstant data source – and merges them. With Outlook being a part of the MS Office suite, one can use this feature to bulk send mail, each personalized for a different contact (it ain’t spamming, although I guess mail merge is mass mailing by another name).

So here’s how to send mass emails in Outlook and make emails look personal:

Select contacts
1. Open Outlook. Go to Contacts and select the people whom you want to mail by Ctrl – clicking the multiple names on your contact list. To effectively select the multiple names, opt for View – Arrange by – Categories.
2. Remember: Mail merge does not work with distribution lists.

Mail merge contacts

3. On the menu bar, go to Tools – Mail Merge. The Mail Merge Contacts dialog box opens up.
4. For the fields bulleted under Contacts, choose Only selected contacts.
5. At the bottom, for Merge options – Merge to; select Email from the drop down. A Message subject line field appears. Fill it with the common subject. Click OK.

The completed dialog box looks like this…



Compose the email in Word

6. When you click OK, MS Word starts up and opens in a new document with the focus on the Mailings tab. You can use the default document or any other template you desire.
7. The selection of recipients has already been done from within Outlook. So, we will use the Write & Insert Fields panel to insert our custom fields.
8. For the word of greeting, click on Greeting Line. Configure the greeting as you want it to appear.
9. To insert any other contact specific like a home address or a phone number, click on Insert Merge Field for a large drop down list.
10. Write the body of the email in the Word document.
11. Once you are finished with the fields you want to include, preview the final look by clicking on Preview Results and then moving through your recipients by clicking on the previous and next record buttons in the Preview Results panel.

    
    All that remains… Mail it!

12. Click on Finish & Merge – Send E-mail Messages. The Merge to E-mail dialog box opens up. Click on OK.

MS Word then does the job of automatically posting the emails in a flash. You can save the document you used for the mail merge, as it also saves the link with the data source i.e. the contacts.

Once you get the hang of it, the whole process takes barely a few minutes from start to finish. In the same time I would have earlier composed an email for just a single person; now, I did so for a group. So here’s how we managed to save on repetitive typing and save up on time.

Any other way to send personalized mass emails in Outlook? Do you use mail merge for email? Or the more common fields of carbon copy (cc) and the ‘anonymous’ blind carbon copy (bcc)? So, what are your productivity tips for Outlook? Share with them with us!

Image: ’smil

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• How to Set Up Mozilla Thunderbird to Send Mass Emails (17)
• How to Set Up Microsoft Outlook to Schedule Email Delivery (6)
• How to Restart or Shut Down Your Computer Remotely using Microsoft Outlook (12)
• How to Email Smarter With Buit-In Time Zone Converters (8)
• How To Access Hotmail Email Messages from Your Gmail Account [Part II] (10)

An email sent by me to a recipient across the globe takes a second to land in his inbox, but was it timed right? Especially if my contact receives a flood of emails daily, I would like my important email to land when he is most inclined to read and respond to it. An email arriving at midnight will get buried under others which reach the next morning. And don’t we all have a habit of skipping through emails when we have lots of them?

This is why I would want to know the exact time of the day for my recipient who is on the east coast of the United States while I send him an email from India. With that in mind, I am going to look at a few ways I can do that with time zone converter utilities in some of the email clients/services we normally like to use.

Sender Time Zone Converter in Gmail

A few months back, Gmail put out a new experimental lab feature called Sender Time Zone that might save you from waking up your girlfriend at the wrong hour of the night. Message headers usually include the dispatch time info and the time zone too. The Gmail just translates what’s Greek into user friendly icons. Varun covered this lab feature in his article What’s new in Gmail: Imports, Images, Previews, Translations and more.

1. Log in to your Gmail account and click on Settings – Labs (Alternatively, click on the little green flask icon on the top right.)
2. Scroll halfway down the page and enable the Sender Time Zone lab feature. Save your changes.

   

3. For each email, you will either see a little green phone icon or a red one. The green icons are for those senders who are probably awake (i.e. daylight time between 9:00AM to 6:00PM). The red ones are for those who could have gone out of office or could be unreachable.

   

4. But for more help click on the show details link located on the top right hand side of the email body. The email header opens up displaying the sender-time and the Current time there in his time zone.

   

If the time zone information isn’t included for an email, then the lab feature will not display the icons.

FoxClocks for Mozilla Thunderbird

Although this Mozilla Thunderbird add-on won’t give you the sender’s time zone for each individual email, the install does allow you to set up clocks for every part of the world and view it from the Thunderbird status bar. The best thing about this sort of time zone converter is that you can also give a unique color to each clock or have a clock change color during certain hours. For instance, set green for the right time to contact someone in the eastern coast of the U.S.

1. Install FoxClocks from the Mozilla Add-ons page. A detailed set of instructions is available at the FoxClocks developer website.
   
2. Use the Zone Picker to browse for and select time zones.

   

3. Use the Add as… button to select a time zone and customize it by giving it your own name. For instance, the name of your contact.
4. Double-clicking on the time zone/custom name in the Watchlist brings up the Location Properties window. Here, you can configure FoxClocks to display a different color for a particular period in that time zone. For instance, select green for the time range when you think the person can be contacted.

   

If you use Thunderbird, make sure to check out our Cheat Sheets!

Sender’s Time Zone for Microsoft Outlook

This helpful 1.2MB plug-in for Outlook does the job of reading the email timestamp for you and showing the difference compared to your local time. Once you open a message in Outlook, the plug-in displays the current local time of the sender, difference in your time zones and the time since the message was sent. This freeware plug-in installs in a jiffy and requires zero configuration. All you need to do is to decide whether it’s the right time to send a response.

The freeware plug-in is compatible with Microsoft Outlook 2007, Outlook 2003, Outlook XP (2002) and Outlook 2000 and can be downloaded from here.

You can of course, forget about all this and calculate the senders’ local times in your head or turn to an online service to read the clock for you. It’s sure to become an inconvenient habit. The easier way could be to try out the services I’ve just listed.

Do you have a different way of estimating time difference for your email client? Do drop in a comment on how you do the math or even if you consider all this to be a waste of time.

Image credit: FJTU

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• MUO Polls: Do You Check Email Online or Use A Desktop Client? (37)
• How To Access Hotmail Email Messages from Your Gmail Account [Part II] (10)
• 3 Best Free Alternatives To Microsoft Outlook (19)
• How to Set Up Mozilla Thunderbird to Send Mass Emails (17)
• How To Send Personalized Mass Emails in Outlook (26)

Affixa integrates your Google Mail and Yahoo! Mail accounts into Windows but not through a desktop mail application. Instead, it will ask you which webmail service you would like to use to compose your email, then log in to the appropriate accounts online in your browser!

Furthermore, you can manage large email attachments using Affixa by the built-in file sharing with drop.io.

With the free version you can add one webmail account of your choice. If you need to manage several accounts, you can upgrade for £2 per year and add all of your email accounts, including the use of your desktop mail programs. This will come in handy for those of you who use the same computer, but different email accounts for work and play.

Affixa works in a very cool way. In order to fully understand how it handles your email, watch this video.

Now, that you get the drift of how it works, let me delve into one of its best features: drop.io integration.

Most providers put a limit on file type or size that can be sent with each email. If you frequently need to send large files that will crack this limit, you will love Affixa because it integrates file hosting.

Files will automatically be uploaded to drop.io and the link to your files will be pasted into the email you’re going to compose. From within Affixa, you define for how long your files will live after being uploaded or viewed for the last time.

Affixa comes with an attachments manager that is represented in the system tray by a green point. Here you can create baskets that will hold files you’re going to email. Fill up the basket throughout your day or project (drag and drop supported), save, edit, close and open (re-use) them as needed — you have nothing to worry about because once you decide to send a basket, the latest version of each file will be fetched from your system.

Before checking out and attaching the files to an email, you can shrink files by zipping them, resize photos or use drop.io by default. You can send a basket by clicking the Email button, which will launch your email service. The files will be automatically attached to the email.

I have previously reviewed gAttach , a similar Windows desktop application that would integrate Gmail into Windows, so you could make it your default desktop eMail client. This tool has since been discontinued, although you can still download it from Cnet.

Download Affixa and give it a whirl. You might end up leaving your desktop mail program.

Are you still using desktop mail programs or is it all webmail for you? Is POP mail passé? We’d love to hear your opinions in the comments!

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• MUO Polls: Do You Check Email Online or Use A Desktop Client? (37)
• Make Gmail your Default Desktop Email Client (Windows) (25)
• How To Resize Images for Email right in Thunderbird & Outlook (2)
• How to Email Smarter With Buit-In Time Zone Converters (8)
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RoundCube Webmail is a browser-based multilingual IMAP client packed with plenty of AJAX goodness. It comes with an application-like user interface and provides full functionality you expect from an email client, including MIME support, address book, folder manipulation, message searching and spell checking.

The best thing about RoundCube is that it is lightweight, simple to use and lightning fast. As long as your web host supports PHP 5 and MySQL, you will be able to install in your site and access it on your domain. A point to note here: while the installation is relatively easy (and fast), you will need to obtain the email server information from your web host and setup a database in your phpmyadmin before you can configure it to work.

You can configure your RoundCube account to access any of the email accounts out there as long as you have the IMAP configuration information. I am able to access my Gmail account and receive/send emails from the RoundCube inbox.

Once you have got it up and running, everything else will be a breeze. Just point to the designated URL and login with your email username and password.

The inbox is just like any of your email client, except that it is cleaner and neater. When you open a message, send a message, check new message, everything is achieved via AJAX interface which make it elegant and interactive. At the moment, the search function does not supports on-the-fly searching, but that doesn’t reduce any of its functionality.

RoundCube Preferences

Other than the basic inbox layout and management stuff, you won’t find too many superfluous features in RoundCube. Even so, it still comes with excellent management options such as creating of folders to store various mails, compact inbox on logout, daylight saving time etc. One useful feature that I found is the ability to create multiple identities. The identities allow you to send emails using different username (and email account) and signatures. This is useful if you are using RoundCube to manage several email accounts.

Skinning and Plugins

A software is not complete if it does not support skinning and plugins. The good news is, RoundCube supports both. The latest beta comes with a Plugin API that allows third party developers to create plugins for the software. RoundCube plugins can be found at the repository, though most of them are already included in the download package. You can also find and download some of the beautiful themes at the Roundcube forum, or simply searching for them in Google or Bing.

Conclusion

Is RoundCube Webmail for everyone? Most probably not, since not everyone owns a domain or have multiple email accounts to attend to. However, if you are one of the those Webmasters that are looking for a simpler and more elegant way to manage your emails, I am sure RoundCube Webmail will fit the bill well.

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• Speed Up Your WordPress Blog With PHP Speedy (17)
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How POP Peeper Can Make You More Productive

Think about all of the email accounts that you have. You likely have an email account with your ISP, but you probably also have one or more Gmail, Yahoo, AOL or Hotmail accounts. Some people have from 5 to 10 email accounts or more, and staying on top all of those accounts can be tedious and time consuming. This is where POP Peeper can save the day.

POP Peeper is a non-intrusive, free email notification service that runs in your windows taskbar and utilizes just a very small memory footprint. In many ways, it’s a lot like your standard email client, however you can set it up only as a notification service where it just checks all of your email accounts and alerts you to when and where an email comes in.

Setting up POP Peeper is a very quick and easy process. You can configure it to read your emails from a POP3, IMAP, or one of the many webmail accounts that’s supported.  In this guide I’ll cover the three scenerios that I use a lot, POP3, customized POP3 Gmail accounts, and a Yahoo webmail account.

POP3 Setup: Configuring a POP3 Account With POP Peeper

Setting up a POP3 email account on POP Peeper is just a matter of filling out two small screens worth of information, and you’re done.  You just insert the basic information for incoming and outgoing mail servers, such as below, where I’ve set up my POP3 account for RealityUncovered emails.

Obviously, you’ll need to know your POP3 server, login name and password, as well as whether the account is set up with SSL or not. If you don’t know those answers, check with the administrator who set up the email account for you. You’ll also notice a color box to the right of the account setup – this will color code all messages coming from this particular source.

Setting up SMTP outgoing allows you to reply to emails from within POP Peeper if you want to. HOwever, if you just want to use POP Peeper as an email notification service, this isn’t really necessary. But if you don’t want to bother opening up your email client or webmail account in order to reply, then you can insert your outgoing SMTP information here.

Gmail POP3: Configuring a Gmail Account With POP Peeper

When someone provides you with a customized Gmail account for an organization that you work for, it doesn’t really work like a standard Gmail account. These are customized accounts that you can access by enabling the POP3 setting within your Gmail mailbox. First, log into your Gmail account, click on “Settings,” and then “Forwarding and POP/IMAP.”  Within this section, you can enable the ability to access your mail via POP access.

Once you enable POP within your Gmail account, you can then set up your account in POP Peeper just like you would with a regular POP3 account.

For Gmail, the Incoming mail server is pop.gmail.com, and outgoing is smtp.gmail.com.  Make sure to use your full email address as your login name and you’re good to go.

Free Webmail Accounts: Setting Up Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail and others with POP Peeper

If you have a free webmail account (or several) like Yahoo, Hotmail and others, setting up access to those accounts through POP Peeper couldn’t be easier.  Access to a long list of free online email services is supported by this application.  All you need to do is select the service, enter your account details, and the software will immediately integrate with your online account.

Again, color code the source and you’re golden. It really doesn’t get any easier than this.

Configuring Notifications, Email Access and Other Features

Once you have POP Peeper set up to poll your long list of email accounts for you, all that’s left is to set up the application to behave as you’d like it to.  There are many features you can tweak, but the most important items you’ll want to configure if you want the app to run as efficiently as possible are storage settings, polling interval and notification options.

You can configure the application so that it only downloads the message headers and doesn’t store the message to disk. This is the best option if you just want notification and would rather not use the application as your mail client.

Next, set up how often you want the application to go out and poll all of your email accounts.  Another option is that you can “Enable Time Scheduling,” meaning you can set the application to only go out and poll your accounts at specific times during the day. Check your email only at lunchtime? Set up POP Peeper to go out and pull down all of your emails around that time.

My favorite feature of POP Peeper is the ability to configure how it notifies you when you have new emails. You can have it play a sound file, flash the Scroll Lock light, pop up a balloon from the tray icon and open up the application automatically. You set the level of notification you want that you won’t find too annoying while you’re trying to work.

Your Email Control Center

Using POP Peeper is pretty cool, once you have all of your accounts set up from around the web. This is the best way to consolidate those dozens of email accounts that you’re constantly forgetting to check. Now you’ll never miss another email again.

The cool thing about this “control center” for all of your email accounts is that you can either view all of your emails in one place, color coded by account, or you can select a particular account that you want to focus on. The option is yours. However you use it, POP Peeper will make sure that you’re instantly aware the moment anyone ever sends you another email to that obscure email account that you hardly ever use any more. Now you can keep track of everything in one convenient place.

Do you have your own methods of managing your many email accounts? Share your techniques in the comments section below.

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• How to Set Up Mozilla Thunderbird to Send Mass Emails (17)
• How To Send Personalized Mass Emails in Outlook (26)
• How To Access Hotmail Email Messages from Your Gmail Account [Part II] (10)
• 3 Best Free Alternatives To Microsoft Outlook (19)
• Zenbe – All Your Emails In One Place (20)

As fun as it is to reinstall and then tweak your browsers and mail programs to just the way you like them, and then retrieve all your messages from backup files, it would be way easier to backup all those settings and messages in a few simple steps.

That’s where the free MailBrowserBackup comes in. It comes in a ZIP file and requires no installation; Just run the program from within the uncompressed folder.

To test MailBrowserBackup, I created a new Windows user profile with a freshly installed Firefox profile and then used MBB to backup, and restore my own Firefox profile to the new user. The process is as simple as selecting the location of the archive files.

Once you have your MBB files, you can move them to a USB portable drive, for example, or email them to yourself. You only have to run the program again, this time hitting the “Restore” button.

The current version can only backup the settings and profiles of a few select programs: the Firefox and Chrome browsers, the Thunderbird, Windows Mail, and IncrediMail email clients, the FTP program FileZilla, and file-sharing program eMule. The author promises support for all the major browsers in the near future so this is definately a utility to keep an eye on.

On the subject of backups, here are five ways to backup your email, and another program, KLS, that backs up both mail and browser profiles. Please let us know in the comments section what your favorite browser and email backup tools are.  Cheap is good but free is much better!

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For those whose preferred email client is Microsoft Outlook 2007 on a standalone machine, here are five ways to backup your Microsoft Outlook data, avoid stress and save your data. Please note that the following applies to data files only and not to toolbar settings, signature files and profile entries.

1. Manually copy your Outlook file

   • The default location for XP is C:/Documents and Settings/%username%/Local Settings/Application Data/Microsoft/Outlook/
   • The default location for Vista is C:/Users/%username%/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Outlook/

Outlook stores all mail information in a single file with an extension ‘.pst’. A ‘personal storage table’ file stores all account data like mails, contacts, journal, notes and calendar entries.

The PST file can also be accessed by following File – Data File Management – Select the Data File tab. Select your personal folder(s) and click on Open Folder…

After locating the file backing it up to any secure space like a different drive, a CD-ROM or a USB Drive is a simple process of copy-paste.

To restore the data, go to File – Open – Outlook Data File – Browse to the backup location and select the file. In case of an error, right-click and deselect the Read only attribute in the PST file’s Properties tab.

2. Relocate your Outlook file

   In the same way we keep our other precious files from harm’s way by saving it in a different partition, we can also change the default location of the Outlook PST file. Here’s a walkthrough…

   1. Close Outlook
   2. Locate the PST file through the default path as mentioned before.
   3. Copy it to another partition.

   (As a precaution rename the PST file in the old location. For instance, change Outlook.pst to Outlook.old. In case something fails, you can return to the old file.)

   4. Restart Outlook – when the prompt comes up use the browse button to direct Outlook to the new location.
   5. Update any Wizard rules you might have customized with the new path.

3. Import and Export helps out

   It is a 5-Step process which exports your mail folders to any designated location. Import and Export in Outlook 2007 allows you to export the entire Personal folder or selected folders to another location (or partition).

   1. Click on File – Import and Export…

   

   2. Choose Export to a file

   

   3. Choose Personal Folder File (.pst)

   

   4. Select the folder to export from – e.g. Personal Folder. Check Include Subfolders if you want to include all subfolders (like contacts) within the Personal Folder. You can set up a selective backup through a Filter to export specific messages.

   

   5. Choose a safe location to store the exported file. A press of the Finish button ends the job.

   

To restore the data, similarly follow the wizard starting with File – Import and Export…- Import from another program or file – Personal Folder File (.pst) – browse to backup location and click finish.

Note: The Import and Export way is not sacrosanct because it does not backup user set settings (i.e. the folder design properties) like view options, forms, permissions, rules and alerts or auto-archive settings.

4. The Personal Folders Backup Add-In to the rescue

The earlier steps might send the work-shy among us into a slumber. The help of a Microsoft Outlook Add-in – ‘Personal Folders Backup’ saves us a few mouse clicks. It simply creates backup copies of the PST files at regular intervals to a designated location.

With the 159KB download installed, browse to File – Backup. The Options setting in the tool lets you select the frequency of backups, the files to backup and the location to backup to.



The Personal Folders Backup Add-In is supported by Outlook 2007, 2003 and 2002.

5. Go for a Third Party software

Here at MakeUseOf, we have covered a lot of ground talking about third party software’s. You can find a post on 5 Ways to Keep Your Emails backed Up and one on the Amic Email Backup tool.

Third party software is warranted in situations where you have to deal with multiple clients. In my humble opinion, if you are only looking to backup Microsoft Outlook data, the above enumerated solutions can be effective safety nets.

Have you backed up your Microsoft Outlook 2007 emails yet? Do you think taking these proactive steps now will save you some heartburn later? Let us know…

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• How to Set Up Microsoft Outlook to Schedule Email Delivery (6)
• How To Send Personalized Mass Emails in Outlook (26)
• Shrink your Outlook PST by Removing Your Email Attachments (9)
• MUO Polls: Do You Check Email Online or Use A Desktop Client? (37)
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But how does it compare with Apple’s Mail client?

I’ve managed to get hold of the latest beta version (beta five) of Postbox and I’m taking it for a spin. Before we begin, I should state for the record that the only email manager I’ve used is Apple Mail and I’m going to use that as the yardstick on which Postbox shall be judged.

So, as that age-old saying goes – without further adieu, I give you Postbox.

Even though it is still in its beta stages of development, it launches very quickly. Compared to Apple Mail, this thing fires up like a rocket! The general view is pretty decent. Everything is sort of laid out nicely. Actually, to be brutally honest, the interface does look a bit like Apple Mail. There are several new additions, though.

One of them is the built-in Inspector on the bottom-right hand corner. It displays all inline links and attachments (if any). Although, I don’t quite see the point of having the Inspector – if there are any links within the email, I would know to click on them. I don’t need to be shown the links again. I know they’re there. Same goes with the attachments. Moving on.

Open in new tab

Another new addition which catches my eye is the tab bar along the top. Double-clicking on an email opens it in a new tab. This gives the email client a browser-y feel. One could say that it feels slightly cumbersome. I would rather prefer for it to pop-up in a new window.

On the right side of the tab bar are shortcuts for quick searching. Attachments, Images, Links and Contacts will bring about separate new tabs to show you all of the said items. I’ll cover these views in slightly more detail as we move along.

I was set up!

Setting up my IMAP GMail account was a piece of cake compared to Apple Mail. Postbox only asked me for the type of account (GMail POP, IMAP; Yahoo Plus or MobileMe), my name and email address. Then as it logged into my account, it asked for my password.  Then boom, it showed me all of my mail.

Here’s where it differs from Apple Mail. Apple Mail will automatically download and store all of my mail for offline reading as soon as it manages to log into my account. It doesn’t care if there are 3,000 or 30,000 messages, it will download everything by default.

In Postbox, I get to choose which mailboxes get downloaded for offline viewing, if any. To be fair, Apple Mail only does that to improve searching through the messages. That said, it is the same scenario in Postbox – it can only index messages which have been downloaded.

You’ve got mail

When composing new mail, I noticed several nice implementations.

To the right of the Compose window, there are five interesting icons: Find Attachments, Find Images, Find Links, Find Places and Find References (plainly a dictionary).

The first three are pretty useful. It allows you to search for attachments, images and links used in previous messages and import them into the one currently being composed. Find Places is a neat addition – it lets you input a destination and attach that into the message. The recipient can then click on it, which brings up Google Maps and is able to find driving directions to that place.

The Crown Jewel

One of the many key features which makes Postbox so anticipated is its ability to manage media i.e. attachments and images. Let’s head back to the tab bar which plays host to the quick searches.

Attachments, quick search. Clicking on this will bring up the attachments viewer. It’s just a list of all the attachments in every email, provided all the messages have been indexed.

This is even more impressive – the images viewer.  It lays out all of the images in every email as thumbnails, allowing quick browsing of all the pictures and photos that have been sent and received. At the moment of writing, the images viewer doesn’t live refresh even after new images are indexed. The viewer has to be closed and reopened in order to be refreshed.

Next, the links viewer. Postbox grabs all the links from all my messages and displays them as a list with a short excerpt of the message body.

And finally, the contacts viewer. Postbox collects all of the email addresses from the mails which have been sent and received and lists them out like a contact sheet. The context menu within the contact viewer is the unsung hero, really. Right-click on any contact and you’ll be able to bring up all of their messages, attachments, images and links in separate tabs. That’s miles quicker than searching in Apple Mail.

Speaking of context menus, right-clicking a highlighted part of any email message brings up a very different and rather sophisticated menu.

As you can see, you can easily share the highlighted text on Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed; or search on a variety of search engines and Wikipedia. In my opinion, it’s not as much a necessity as it is an accessibility.

Now, what I don’t like about Postbox

It’s too complicated. Is it a browser? Or is it an email client with an identity crisis? A simpler application that works well will be heaps and bounds better than a complicated one which does everything mediocrely.

The Inspector shows previews of images but not documents. Maybe it’s something the developers overlooked and hopefully they implement it in the final version.

At a certain speed, scrolling through messages becomes very jerky. Also, there isn’t a unified mailbox which shows all of my mail. That’s very possibly a deal-breaker since I have 5 email accounts to deal with on a daily basis.

Lastly and surely the most saddening – my beautiful email signature cannot be used with Postbox. It only accepts text signatures.

Spring finally comes

I’m willing to overlook most of the shortcomings of Postbox since I’m only testing out a beta version of this application. I hope that the final product is not as disappointing (email signatures, please) and at the same time, is less complicated and more to the point.

Postbox will be available for Windows and Mac starting February 9th as they launch their public beta. Sign up on their website to be notified when the public beta is ready. You can also get to see some higher-resolution screenshots over there.

Impressed with Postbox? Are you eager to try it out? What do you think – will it ruffle some of Apple Mail’s feathers? Comment it out.

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• MUO Polls: Do You Check Email Online or Use A Desktop Client? (37)
• Make Gmail your Default Desktop Email Client (Windows) (25)
• IncrediMail – Have Some Fun With This Email Client (Windows) (24)
• How To Use A Facebook Badge As Your Email Signature [Mac] (4)
• How to Set Up Mozilla Thunderbird to Send Mass Emails (17)

For people like me who had hundreds of emails in our Yahoo inboxes (and no money in our pockets) that was a sad day. Letting Yahoo take care of our emails and not having access to important emails when we wanted them was a big disappointment. I lived with the fear of losing my emails for a long time and then one day I came across this wonderful utility called YahooPOPs!

YPOPs lets you use an offline email client to download and send emails from your Yahoo account, just as it used to be. In other words, YPOPs acts as a POP3 and SMTP proxy for your Yahoo mail account.

To get started, download the YPOPs installer and install it on your Windows machine. The installer will ask you if you want YPOPs to start automatically when Windows starts. If you want that option, say yes or leave it alone. I like to leave programs out of the start up routine, so I’ll pass on this one. I’ll manually start YPOPs when I want to.

Now, comes the configuration part.

YPOPs, when started, will quietly settle down in the task bar and to configure it, you’ll just have to right click the icon and click on “configure”.

You can leave pretty much all the settings as it is except the Network settings.

The only thing in the Network settings that I had to change for YPOPs to work on my box were the POP3 and SMTP ports. For some reason, YPOPs refused to work with the default POP and SMTP ports, so I changed the POP3 port to 5110 and the SMTP port to 5125. That’s it!

To read emails offline, I use the excellent open source program called Thunderbird.

When you start Thunderbird for the first time, it’ll ask you to set up an email account to work with. Move along, enter your name and the email address that you want to work with <username@yahoo.com> and enter localhost as the POP server and localhost as the SMTP server name. Click next and finish.

When you’re finished, Thunderbird will offer to download emails from the account that you just started. If you let it download emails right now, Thunderbird will fail with an error saying it couldn’t connect to the server or something to that effect. This is normal since, by default, Thunderbird would have chosen port 110 for POP3 and port 25 for SMTP, which is not what we set in YPOPs.

To change the port settings for Thunderbird, go to Tools -> Account Settings, and under Server Settings, change the port to 5110 from the default of 110.

To change the SMTP port, on the same window, go to Outgoing Server (SMTP) and click on Edit and change the SMTP port to 5125 from the default of 25.

That’s it. Go back to the main Thunderbird window and click on Send/Receive. You should now be able to send and receive all your Yahoo email from within Thunderbird and no one will ever come to know the difference. Plus, you never have to see those ugly advertisements on the Yahoo mail website

You don’t even have to use Thunderbird to use YPOPs. You can continue using your favorite emailing client and add a second account to be used for Yahoo mail. Just make sure that you change the POP3 and SMTP ports to match the ones you set in the YPOPs configuration window.

If you have any problems setting it up, leave a question in the comments and we’ll try and help you out.

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• Technology Explained: How Does An Email Server Work? (14)
• IncrediMail – Have Some Fun With This Email Client (Windows) (24)
• How to Send Big Files & Auto-open mailto Links in Gmail / Yahoo (4)
• Top 5 Yahoo Mail Classic Tips & Tricks (22)
• Postbox: An Alternative Email Client For Mac (19)

Choose which of these applications benefits you the most and begin to simplify your email usage.

(1) SimpleMail (Firefox Extension)

The first email application is called SimpleMail. It’s a Firefox extension that will simplify your POP3, IMAP and SMTP emailing needs all through the use of Firefox. You’ll be able to turn Firefox into a simple yet handy easy email sender client.

Managing Email

Once you’ve installed it, you’ll be able to manage your mailbox as if it were another tab in Firefox. This extension can be used with POP3, SMTP and IMAP email accounts. You won’t have email assistance as other email clients may have. However, the fact that you’re able to check your webmail with the click of a button (literally) supersedes what SimpleMail lacks in that department.

Added Features & Usability

SimpleMail allows you to set up as many email accounts as you’d like. You’re able to check your messages, reply to them, view any attached files or images, and you can send emails using its rich text editor.

Although you can add an address book, this program was meant to be a straightforward email client therefore it lacks the option to insert signatures and spam filters.

OS Compatibility: Win98/98SE/Me/2000/XP/Vista

(2) Gmail Notifier Beta (Desktop App)

With Gmail Notifier you can check your messages without having to open your browser to the Gmail webpage. You’re able to check email from the system tray, eliminating a visit to Gmail’s webpage.

This application is quite useful. However it falls short of expectancy in some areas such as you’re only able to check one account at a time, and the notifier only checks for new messages when you tell it to.

Gmail Notifier shows you a snippet of every email that enters your mailbox. That way you can decide if it would be worth opening your browser to read it.

This is the Gmail Notifier Button with the options listed:

The notifier takes you to your Gmail account once you’ve clicked on the specified snippet of the email.

OS Compatibility: Win2000, NT, XP, Vista

(3) GmailAssistant (Desktop App)

This is a very useful app because unlike Gmail Notifier, you’re able to automatically check various email accounts at one time. With GmailAssistant you don’t have to constantly log into your Gmail accounts just to check and see if there’s new mail, because this program checks emails automatically for you and briefly displays a snippet of them right above your windows tool bar.

Travis wrote an in-depth review of GmailAssistant here.

Features & Configuration

GmailAssistant can be easily configured and it connects to your Gmail account using IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) for a safe connection. You must have IMAP access enabled in order for this application to check for new messages. This is how you enable IMAP access once you’ve logged into your Gmail account: Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP > IMAP Access.

Adding a New Gmail Account:

OS Compatibility: Win200/XP/2003/Vista

(4) Gmail Backup (Desktop App)

Backing up your email may not be at the top of your priority list but it can sure save you lots of headaches in the future if something bad and unforeseen were to happen to your email account.

Dreadful possibilities for backing up your email include being locked out of your Gmail account or even accidentally deleting emails yourself. Gmail Backup can be used for any reason you’d like, even though it only has one purpose; to backup your Gmail account messages.

Karl did a write-up of Gmail Backup here.

You’re going to be asked to enter your Gmail details.

Then the app immediately backs up and downloads your Gmail email onto your computer once you’ve directed it too.

Downloaded Emails

The email that has been backed up and downloaded to your computer will show in the folder you specified. You will be able to open the emails in the default email client you have installed onto your pc (i.e. Outlook, Windows Mail and more), in my case it’s Windows Email therefore it appears as this:

Gmail Backup is very easy and simple to use because it allows you to specify dates you want it to back up your email. You can choose any destination folder within your directory and, as stated above, emails can be read through Outlook, Windows Email, or any sort of text reader as well.

OS Compatibility: Win XP/Vista

(5) eCipher (Secure Emails) (Desktop App)

eCipher is a tool that encrypts email messages which can be sent through an easy-to-use desktop interface and shown to be originating from the email client of your choice (i.e. Gmail, Yahoo!, MSN, Outlook, Windows Mail and more).   This ensures the privacy of the content your email messages contains.

This app works as an independent email tool that utilizes your email server settings to send messages through the SMTP port.

Compose

You can choose to compose an email once you’ve clicked on the settings button and added an email account.

Protection

Your emails are protected and encrypted with a 256-bit AES and 2048-bit RSA encryption algorithms. The recipient must also have eCipher in order to read your emails; otherwise they will not be able to open them.

Sent encrypted email received by a recipient who does not have eCipher and/or the correct de-ciphering key

Same email received downloaded and opened with eCipher by the correct recipient

Compatibility

eCipher is compatible with several email clients such as Outlook and Thunderbird.

OS Compatibility: Win 2000/XP/2003/Vista

Please feel free to leave your comments and suggestions! Do you use any of these? Do you know of any better ones?

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• Ultimate GMail Collection: over 80 Tools and Tips (80)
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Its reputation doesn’t suffer because it is able and free too…though an adware. The ads come in two modes – as a single line of animated self promoting ad in the outgoing mails and as a small banner ad in the status window. There is a paid version with extra features and without the ads.

The email application has existed for some time. But it stands out from others of its ilk because it offers a rich graphical experience as opposed to its plain Jane cousins. A single line intro would say that IncrediMail Xe is an ad supported email client for Windows allowing the use of emoticons, e-cards, email backgrounds, sounds, animations, 3D effects and handwritten signatures in emails.

Here’s a walkthrough of the ‘merry’ features in the free version of this mail client -

• 60 email backgrounds to add color to your mail.
• Use the vast gallery of emoticons to add emotion to your words.
• Cool animations to lighten your emails.
• Notifiers – the animated characters announce the arrival of new mail. There’s a Jeeves-like caricature too!
• Add the personal touch with the Handwritten signature creator.
• See your emails bouncing and flying around with some cool 3D Effects.
• Background wav files add sound elements to your email. An accompanying clickety click sound effect as you type gives a feel of a typewriter.
• Peek into your mails with a multimedia attachment preview.

Thankfully, IncrediMail goes beyond being just a sugar coated email application. Under the hood are the qualities of a regular email client. The program supports the defacto POP3 and IMAP4 mail protocols. It is matched with leading email services like Gmail, Yahoo, and AOL. The interface mirrors that of Outlook Express and this probably will help the user ease into the software.

All the bells and whistles of a regular email client like handling messages; importing, exporting and managing the address book; and creating message rules are present. Automatic replies along with ‘request read receipts’ are always helpful.  Spam defense is through a rudimentary junk filter which works on the basis of a manual blocked senders list and message rules. An automatic image blocker disallows outside graphics. The user can block unwanted messages and if you want to show that you never received a message in the first place, there’s a ‘bounce’ feature accompanying that too. A more sophisticated junk filter is available in the paid version. A spellchecker and a Babylon based translator engine are the other close at hand aids. The mails might be graphic heavy, but I could send them in a jiffy.

You get the best bang for the buck when you send across your emails to another IncrediMail user because every email client has its own idiosyncrasies when it comes to handling graphics and sound. Outlook for example will display a static in place of the animated emoticon. Online Gmail, Yahoo and AOL do the latter but without the email background.

Yes, it is a good free email client. But a finicky user like me just has to find some of the rough spots. And there are some I must mention.

• The address book is simple and lacks the ability to store multiple email addresses under a single name. For a ‘multimedia’ rich application, the lack of a contact picture in the address book is a put off.
• The approved list based junk filter is pretty basic.
• You have to use third party software to export your messages to a common format for import by other email clients. This is a problem if you want to uninstall and move to another email program.
• Though IncrediMail does allow you to set your IMAP account, IMAP folder synchronization is absent. Copies of mail messages can be left on the server for access by other connected IMAP accounts.
• Some objections have been cited over the heavy use bandwidth because of the HTML plus multimedia use in IncrediMail. (But hey! This is the age of Web 2.0!)
• Being an ad supported software; their privacy policy mentions the use of ‘Non- Personally Identifiable Information’ for advertisement purposes.

IncrediMail may be what an emailer with a funny bone would look at. The kids or the kid in you could certainly give it a whirl. A serious emailer might look for more advanced mail management features and without the attached ads. I would recommend you use it for fun but just don’t send your next CV with it.

Today, email itself is unremarkable stuff. But IncrediMail does allow us to add a bit of playfulness in the midst of the mundane.

IncrediMail Xe is a 10.33MB sized Windows (98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista) only application. It is available in 11 languages.

Do you find IncrediMail incredible? Share your user experiences with us.

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• Technology Explained: How Does An Email Server Work? (14)
• How to Download Yahoo Email using Desktop Email Client (43)
• Postbox: An Alternative Email Client For Mac (19)
• MUO Polls: Do You Check Email Online or Use A Desktop Client? (37)
• Make Gmail your Default Desktop Email Client (Windows) (25)

One issue that any web-based eMail program faces is accessibility. Although this may not sound right, it will become clear in a second. Imagine you didn’t use a desktop Mail program and clicked onto an eMail hotlink in a document or on a website. What would happen? Of course your computer would not not launch your web-based eMail program, instead it would launch something like Outlook and since you’d not be using it, it would not work in the first place. If this isn’t fiction to you, but rather sounds like a scenario that keeps annoying you, stay tuned because if you’re using Gmail, there is a solution.

gAttach! is a Windows desktop application that solves the above described issue. It installs to your computer as a mail application, but in reality it links to your Gmail account. It does require .Net Framework 2.0 and a few more steps to work, but after some initial effort it will work flawlessly.

You must make gAttach! your default mail application to make Gmail your default email client, else it’s not going to work. The options window opens automatically once the installation is completed. You can either let gAttach! log you in automatically by providing your username and password or decide to give your details via the browser once you would like to compose an eMail. The latter approach can come in handy in case you’re using more than one Gmail account or if you don’t trust the application. You can also share your Google Apps account domain, in case you’re using one.

If gAttach! doesn’t work properly from the start, maybe some of the preferences aren’t right for what you expect it to do. With the above shown settings, gAttach will only copy the eMail address to your Gmail drafts folder, but it will not launch Gmail (first option).

The first time gAttach launches your browser to open Gmail, it will install an extension, at least that’s what it did for Firefox. For the attachment to work you first have to restart the browser, but from there the whole thing works like a charm and you will never want to return. All mailto links opened in Gmail.

Now you can comfortably send files to eMail or Mail Recipient or click on eMail hotlinks in almost any Windows application.

Definitely a very handy application for Gmail fans who want to keep all of their mail, including drafts and sent mail in one central location without giving up the one obvious comfort of a desktop mail application: local accessibility. Do you agree?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• MUO Polls: Do You Check Email Online or Use A Desktop Client? (37)
• How to Send Big Files & Auto-open mailto Links in Gmail / Yahoo (4)
• How to Email Smarter With Buit-In Time Zone Converters (8)
• How To Access Hotmail Email Messages from Your Gmail Account [Part II] (10)
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Since most MakeUseOf readers are likely to have tried different email programs and desktop clients the resuts should be rather interesting. So make sure to vote!

Why do you prefer checking your email online or on the desktop ? Let us know in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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