Message filters with multiple email accounts
Hi,
I just migrated all my mails and accounts from Windows Live Mail to Thunderbird. Almost everything works well, I have some problems with messages for multiple email accounts and message filters that seems to work different in contrast with Windows Live Mail. From my ISP I have a email account which is the main account. On this email account the ISP have made several alliasses for my wife and two children. In Windows Live Mail I need to add all these accounts so I could receive/send mails from all these addresses. I created in Windows Live Mail under my inbox account a folder for each of the alliasses and a message rule I could configure "If mail is to "alias X" move to folder "alias x"". I want to do the same in Thunderbird but sometimes the mail get delivered twice. One time in the folder under my inbox and in the inbox of the alias itself. When a message is send to me and my wife the email only get delivered to me. In Windows Live Mail there was a mail in my inbox and a mail in the folder of my wife. Also when I was on vacation I could create a rule when "the message is send to me do not download from server". I can't find this rule in Thunderbird. If these two issues could get fixed, I would be happy.
PS. The check box "Leave a message on the server" is unchecked for all of the accounts.
All Replies (2)
I've never had to struggle with an email provider who uses aliases. In all the systems I have used, each user has their own email address with its own username and its own password, and of course its own Inbox.
Sure, all of these are in some respect "subsidiary" to the main bill-payer's account, in that they don't confer admin privileges to the internet supply and connection account, but none the less, they are discrete and individual email accounts in their own right.
Are you saying that messages addressed to other people all come to your own Inbox? What a dreadful system. I can see some advantages where you might want or need to monitor an account, such as one for a young child. But I'd see if I could set these up as free-standing email accounts for other adults.
Thunderbird uses regular POP, IMAP and SMTP protocols. In order to process a message, it has to download the message first. If you have had the ability to preview and decline messages addressed to others, then I'd suggest that was made possible by an extension of the regular standard email protocols and is supported by a non-standard protocol being used between a Microsoft server and a compatible client, possibly using MAPI.
I really can't comment on why you might receive one or two copies of the same messages, as this alias-based system seems pretty nonsensical to me. Sorry.
I'd have to add that after many years of using email, and a few less trying to help others, I have come to the point of view that it's a very bad idea to actually use the "free" email service that comes with the ISP deal.
Often, the ISP email is actually farmed out to someone else (very likely Yahoo) and when you get troubles, you fall between the cracks and no-one knows quite what to do about it. Go to someone like gmail or gmx, or a separate pay-for email service, and each user can have a distinct and separate email account, you can keep your addresses if you change providers and when there is trouble, it's so much easier to work out who to talk to about it.
The one reason to keep the "free" account working is that your ISP might want to use it to communicate with you, but even then, most would be prepared to take whatever email address you gave them.