Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail and Thunderbird

Subscriber Robin wrote from the UK recently to give a tip and to ask about a problem he was having with Outlook Express and Hotmail / Windows Live Mail.

Hi Terry
Your latest newsletter [April 20th issue - Terry] mentions problems with compacting folders in Outlook Express.

I found that when Outlook Express refuses to compact folders, you can overcome this without booting into safe mode. All that is needed is to open and then close all the Outlook Express folders. Compact All Folders will then work fine.

Incidentally, I recently read that from this June, Outlook Express will no longer be able to download Hotmail messages. From June, users will need to join Windows Live Mail if they want to download Hotmail messages.

I decided to join Windows Live Mail but I don’t like it – which may be because it is new and I did not understand it very much.

I therefore downloaded Thunderbird, which I am just getting used to although there does seem to be some glitches. I have not yet worked out how to download Hotmail with Thunderbird.

Also, after I set up Thunderbird, I copied its profiles to another partition and carried on experimenting. My experimenting meant that eventually I had messed up Thunderbird. I thought that it was a good job I had saved the profiles and copied the profiles back to the Thunderbird folder. Unfortunately, Thunderbird would not work at all after that, which is a worry. I then had to uninstall and reinstall and set up the profiles from fresh.

Any thoughts you have on these two problems would be appreciated.
Regards
Robin

I wrote back to Robin to thank Robin for the Outlook Express tip. I also guessed that he didn’t copy or copy back all the files, including his profile definitions from his older copy of Thunderbird.

The profiles would be stored in

   c:\Documents and Settings\[userID]\Application Data\Mozilla\Thunderbird\Profiles\[profile-name]

if I recall correctly. If it’s like the other Mozilla programs, it also stores some profile data in

   c:\Documents and Settings\[userID]\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Thunderbird\Profiles\[profile-name]

I also recommended that he take a look at the program MozBackup, which I wrote about in an earlier article

Regarding his plan to use Thunderbird to download his Hotmail emails, I doubt that he can. I think that the free download to Outlook Express download is specifically for OE (and now Windows Live Mail) — not for any POP3 email program.

Hotmail also offers (or, at least, at one time they offered) a paid POP3 download service for emails that would work with any POP3 email program. If you aren’t using OE, you may have to sign up for their paid service in order to download your emails.

Robin wrote back to say:

Hi Terry
Thanks for the reply.
You were right. The problem was that I had only saved the Thunderbird profile from one location.
Also, thanks for the tip regarding Mozbackup which I have now downloaded.

NB. Unfortunately, I can’t join your computer club as it is a bit to far away from Essex in England!!!!!!!!

Regards and not for the first time, thanks for your help.
Robin