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Need Advice about Switching Windows Email Program

Jake Page Icon Posted 2020-06-30 8:07 PM
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I'm using Outlook 2010, which is almost EOL, and I've got a PST file pushing 6GBs.

While OL's Calendar/Contacts are fine, the email is slow, buggy, and I worry about such a large PST.

I loved Outlook Express if only because it was always speedy and stored its email directories in much safer separate files, no matter how many you employed.

Is there a viable alternative to OL's email? (paid is fine, subscription not as attractive)

Don't need bells and whistles, just a vaguely easy pst-import process and safer storage than the lumbering PST for multiple email accounts.

Many thanks for any advice,
Jake
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C:Amie Page Icon Posted 2020-06-30 9:28 PM
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If mail is slow and buggy, I'd suspect your PST file to be the cause of that - unless you've never patched it. It was always rock solid for me. 6GB is too large for a safe PST size. Microsoft deprecated it in favour of OST in later releases.

Frankly, I'd grab yourself Office 2016 - non cloud - and just migrate up. Outlook is the nicest Windows mail experience.
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Jake Page Icon Posted 2020-06-30 9:44 PM
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Ahhh. Hadn't know about the switch to OST. It's still one file, though, correct? But more stable?

I can't abide the idea of everything in one file, that's just asking for disaster. I obviously back up the pst all the time, but still pine for the OL Express days when if something went wrong, it was with one directory/file not the whole shebang. I've even looked at getting Express revived on Win10, but that doesn't look tenable.

Jake
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C:Amie Page Icon Posted 2020-07-01 1:45 PM
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Yes, OST is still one file. Whether it is more stable or not... I've never lost email through a damaged OST - but I have seen damaged and unrecoverable OST's. With that said, used with a synchronised mail server these days: IMAP, MAPI, EAS. I'm not sure what Outlook 2019 uses with POP3. Given sync it's a lot harder to bork all your email.

A BLOB is a lot more file system efficient than individual files though and a hell of a lot faster to stream to backup. I am always surprised that Outlook for Mac doesn't use a BLOB store like the Windows version.

As much as Office annoys me, there really isn't a better mail client.

I had to touch Thunderbird again recently. It is still no better than it was 10 years ago. Clunky and lacking intelligent user friendly UI paradigms. So I really don't know what else to suggest unless you wanted to move to a cloud service and user a web interface with offline mode support.

I've used Outlook since version 1.0 in Outlook 97. I went through 98 and 2000, skipped XP and used Outlook Express for a while because of NNTP support that was never added to Outlook and went back to it towards the end of Outlook 2003's run ~2006 after newsgroups had died.
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Jake Page Icon Posted 2020-07-01 3:08 PM
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Thanks for the exploration, Chris. Concur absolutely about TB--I use it on Linux machines and every iteration is worse than the last. TB and OL are similar in that they both get too cute for their own good, then bury their options in the obscurest of places. I can see OL pushing new stuff since it's got a price, but TB is free, so why come out with poorly-built bells? Linux users are far less impressed with shiny objects., and I imagine TB is more prevalent on Linux than Windows.

From my research, one CAN get Outlook Express working on Win10 (there's a company that sells a patched version for $20). The rub is, every Win update removes it. And I dunno yet if that means the update blows out the save mail directories. That's a crazy road to journey, but I've got directories of received and sent mail, organized by month, back to 1995--that kind of organization is so much safer in individual files.

Jake
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Jake Page Icon Posted 2020-07-01 4:07 PM
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Now looking at this: https://www.oeclassic.com/

Seems to be an offshoot of OE. For testing, I set it up on Win10. Very familiar, very basic, and the user-made folders are indeed stored separately.

Jake

Edited by Jake 2020-07-01 4:07 PM
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Rich Hawley Page Icon Posted 2020-07-01 10:03 PM
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I've been using OE Classic for 2 years now. The free version. I love it. Plus you can hexedit it and replace that message that is appended to your emails to null characters so nothing shows up…or change it to your own website url.
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Jake Page Icon Posted 2020-07-01 11:12 PM
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Good to see you, man. Hey, can you tell me: is it possible to move IMAP mail to local folders? When I try it with AOL IMAP, my local folders are grayed-out.

Jake
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Jake Page Icon Posted 2020-07-02 2:17 AM
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Rich, OE Classic got back to me, and that is something they have not yet perfected, IMAP-wise.

Jake
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