email question

[Gene Howe]

We have a desk top and a lap top wireless connected through a DSL router.
We use outlook for email. When emails come in, they either go to the desk top OR to the lap top. Never both. Is there any way to insure that both units receive the mail?

Thanks.

Gene

[Darius Ferlas]

Unless you use Exchange server (not cheap for home use) you'll have to use a third party package. The built-in Windows methods don't seem to be hassle free.

One such solutions can bee seen here (http://www.office-addins.com/-outlook-addins/mapilab-share-n-sync.html).
$50 per machine.

[Greg Peterson]

Sounds like your email clients are configured to remove the email from the server.

The first Outlook client to check for mail will take the email off your ISP's email server. You can configure your client to just take a copy of the email, leaving the 'original' on the server so that the next client to check will also get the email.

[David G Baker]

Gene,
I have had problems with Outlook and Outlook Express so many times I stopped using it. It is a great program but a pain when it causes problems. Several of my friends have had similar complaints and all of us started using Yahoo or Gmail and 99% of the problems disappeared.
There is a way to do what you want but it has been so long since I have used Outlook I don't remember what it is. Each of your computers has a network address (forgot what it is called) and each should receive the mail if it is sent to the same e-mail address.
If you don't get your answer here do a search Bing or Google and the answer will be there.

[JohnT Fitzgerald]

We have a desk top and a lap top wireless connected through a DSL router.
We use outlook for email. When emails come in, they either go to the desk top OR to the lap top. Never both. Is there any way to insure that both units receive the mail?

Thanks.

Gene

We use Outlook Express, and it is possible - not sure with regular Outlook though. Our ISP is Comcast. In your email account settings, there should be an option "leave message on server". Put this on the "auxiliary" system (in our case, a laptop we keep upstairs). I do not have that checked on the desktop in the office; I don't use email there a lot, so when I start it it will download all messages and then remove them from the server.

Not ideal, but it works.

[Horton Brasses]

Changing the e-mail format from POP to IMAP should do it. It won't remove the e-mail from the server until you actually download the entire e-mail and delete it (I think). With IMAP you only download the header when you hit "receive".

I would switch out of Outlook too. I use Thunderbird but am thinking of switching to Eudora. Thunderbird is great for low to medium volume e-mail users. I get a few hundred a day-mostly junk-plus another couple thousand that I get rid of at the server level.

[Greg Peterson]

Gene - Are you using Outlook or Outlook Express?

[Todd Willhoit]

I switched to free Hotmail accouts several years ago to avoid changing email addresses when I change ISPs. You didn't mention what type of email you are using, but if it is Hotmail, download Microsoft Office Connector. Once installed on each machine, Connector will allow Outlook to synchronize not only the mailbox, but also the calendar and contacts with the server.

As others have suggested, make sure your setup is leaving the original mail on the server.

Todd

[Jason Beam]

Gene,

As you've noticed - a lot of ways to either eliminate your problem altogether or find a way to accommodate the needs you have in some form or another by leaving email on the server.

I'm not a fan of web mail, so I will likely never give up my use of Outlook. Even though I write web applications all day long, I absolutely can't stand ones that try to behave like a full-on application - web mail is the worst offender of this little quirk of mine.

I'm also not a fan of leaving your mail on the server. Your ISP probably gives you a fair amount of storage space for your account but rest assured you will eventually hit their limit if you leave it on their servers. Then what? Download it all or delete it, that's about all you can do.

You might have noticed by now that there isn't a super simple solution to giving you what you're after. Outlook downloads mail to a file located on your computer - this is a .pst file. It's possible to use the same .pst file with multiple computers on a network but it's not for the faint of heart. The short description is you designate one of the machines keeper of your .pst file. Then you configure the other machines to use that .pst file for its email as well. This comes with several costs that may or may not be a deal breaker for you:

Firstly, you can't have Outlook open on both machines at the same time - it just won't let you. The file gets locked when one instance of Outlook is open and the other instances will give you an error when you try to open it.

Second, the machine you designate as your .pst keeper must be running when you try to check your email with any other machines.

Third, each of these other machines need to be able to "see" and access the .pst file on the keeper machine. This is tricky with laptops if you take them anywhere outside your network - like to the office, or library, or a park. Means you can't check your email even if you have internet connectivity since Outlook can't find your .pst file.

Fourth, it's a bit easier to goof this up and lose emails or corrupt your .pst file. If you have Outlook open and your network connection goes down in the middle of a critical operation, it can render your .pst file ruined which usually means lost email....


So ...

What to do, eh?

Well my solution at home is to only use one machine for email. I check email from the same machine all the time - it saves me that risk. It happens to be my laptop and so I can check email from anywhere in the house as long as I have my laptop with me. It's the least problematic and isn't terribly inconvenient for me since I really don't use my desktop for very much anymore.

Web-based email, if you can tolerate it, is probably the best way to see everything from any location without jumping through lots of network hoops with Outlook (or any other mail client, for that matter - it's not specific to Outlook).

[Gene Howe]

Thanks to all who responded. I think I have a solution. Thanks again.
Gene