Configuring multiple email addresses etc. Help!

boru05

Hey Folks,

Hope ye can help (and that this is the right forum - apologies if it's not).

I currently have 5 email addresses:

abc[at]gmail.com
abc[at]eircom.net
abc[at]tcd.ie
abc[at]companyx.com
abc[at]companyz.com

I've a laptop and a PC with XP and one with Vista. 2 of the email accs above (eircom.net and companyx.com) are serviced by MS Outlook 2007 (i.e. they download to one of my computers at the business). The other company one downloads to a separate Outlook on a different PC. The gmail and tcd.ie are accessed online. Both company emails are POP3 AFAIK but are with different hosts.

The situation is getting ridiculous as I can only download certain emails to certain computers (I know I set Outlook to download them all to one laptop/pc but then I'm tethered to using that laptop/pc and I often change machines depending on where I am).

My question is this - Is there a single program that exists that will allow me to receive, sort and send emails from all of the addresses above? I must be able to reply with all email addresses (e.g. I can't be limited to replying only with the gmail address). Preferably, this magic program would allow me to access all my emails online (i.e. removing the need to limit them to computers) but would still let me download them (for offline access) without deleting them from the server and is compatible with my iPhone (3gs).

Or is it a case of just tweaking a few settings here and there and I'm being retarded?

Apologies for the long-winded post but I've been struggling with this for the better part of a year now and last night I found myself driving over to work purely so that I could download a single email! (the business is very small and I setup the emails in the first place - I'm a victim of my own design).

Thanks again.

JDxtra

That magic program is GMail. Just get that to import your email from the other accounts. You can select the reply address too, but not sure if they still display that "on behalf of" message in the from field. Best try it out to see if it works for you as you need.

boru05

JDxtra wrote: »

That magic program is GMail. Just get that to import your email from the other accounts. You can select the reply address too, but not sure if they still display that "on behalf of" message in the from field. Best try it out to see if it works for you as you need.

Is it really that easy? Fantastic! Could you perhaps point me to a site/blog that explains what I want it to do?

Thanks for your help

Skrynesaver

The latest Thunderbird (3.0.1) has this as one of the available views of your mail also

brianwalshcork

I don't think that gmail will work as he wants... effectively that would be spoofing the non gmail addresses using the gmail account. Reverse dns lookups or spf checks by the receiving server will fail.

I don't think that there is any good solution to your problem.... I'm guessing that your a student or lecturer at UCD who is doing some work for company X and company Y. and have eircom broadband at home.

I'd keep Gmail for personal email and dump Eircom (or at least forward the email to gmail).

Do you really need company specific addresses?
Can you not forward both to tcd and reply from there? A business reply from a gmail address doesn't give a good impression, a reply from a tcd address doesn't give a bad impression.

boru05

brianwalshcork wrote: »

I don't think that gmail will work as he wants... effectively that would be spoofing the non gmail addresses using the gmail account. Reverse dns lookups or spf checks by the receiving server will fail.


Do you really need company specific addresses?

Yes, I definitely need company addresses and I can't dump eircom. What do reverse dns lookups and spf checks mean?

I took JDxtra's advice and now have 3 of the emails (as a test - eircom, tcd and companyx) downloading into my inbox and it seems to be working fine. Should I be worried about the dns/spf stuff?

Thanks again for your kind help.

none

I have about 30 email accounts for the last 10 years and use only Outlook Express. And I do use several computers to access them, most of the time 2. Sure, it takes time to set all the emails up for the first time on a new system but after that it's a breeze. If you choose to leave a copy on the server, your incoming mail will be downloaded on all computers that are authorised to access it. So no prob with incoming mail. Your outgoing mail, unfortunately, will be saved only in that instance of Outlook Express that sent it. It's when using SMPT. When using IMAP, you have instant access to all your folders, including Inbox and Sent, from any authorised computer. Hotmail used to offer HTTPMail access which was similar to IMAP but last year they discontinued it - that was a setback for me as most of my accounts are there. AIM and GMX do offer free accounts with IMAP, prabably GMail does it too but I heard it required some tweaking as it's supposed to be only for its US customers.
In short, any modern mail client will be able to handle multiple account, be it POP/SMPT or IMAP. With IMAP you keep all mails on the server while with POP/SMPT only incoming mail is stored server-side.

brianwalshcork

Boru5, I'm referring specifically to whether mail sent from gmail will appear as:

yourname@companyx.com
or
yourname@gmail.com (on behalf of companyx.com)

I think that it will be the second option - which is not what you want.


Mail servers used to accept emails from anyone and trust that they were from who the email address indicated that they were from. These days, there's too much spma to do this, so spam detection is used at the recipients end is to do a check some details of the computer sending the emails.

SPF stands for sender policy framework, gmail, tcd and eircom have publised DNS records that list all servers that are authorised to send email on behalf of their domains. (ComanyX and CompanyY may also have them).
the gmail mail servers will not be on that list.

If you send a mail from gmail to me that appears to be coming from yourname@companyx.com, then my server will ask companyx.com for a list of the authorised mail servers for the companyx domain. Since the gmail server isn't on the list, then the mail may be rejected.

Edit:
Forgot to mention... if your happy with having your sent items on different computrers, then None's solution above is probably your best bet.

... and I was also wrong to include the reverse dns lookup - a mail from yourname@companyx.com sent through gmail would pass a reverse dns lookup on the sending servers name.





as to whether you need to worry about SPF after taking JDxtra's advice.... I don't think so... that was what I'm trying to say in a very long winded way! I think that when you send an email from the gmail account it will always be sent from yourname@gmail.com..... it might include something like "onbehalf of yourname@companyx.com" ... send a test mail to of your other accounts and see what happens.