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George
September 6th, 2016, 05:30 PM
Any email gurus here? I have some strange happenings and would love some advice if anyone knows what's going on and cares to share some knowledge.

Preface: I am very familiar with shared email boxes at work with MS Outlook, where everyone's changes are immediately visible to all. In short, that's my problem here - changes made on one computer aren't available on another - or a couple of others. This causing personal and professional problems for me.

First problem: Thunderbird at home vs. AOL website email at work. Laugh if you want, but I joined AOL some 20 years ago or more, back when they mailed every man, woman, and child 3.5" floppies once a week (later they switched to CDs) in an effort to get people to pay $9.95 per month for up to five hours of internet time. I still use that ancient AOL email address with friends, family, and non-professional things (meaning it's not on my resume). Several years ago, AOL email became free, so that sealed the deal. For almost all years until recently, I only ever logged into my AOL account on my one home computer. Personal email sites were blocked at work, so this was an easy practice to follow. I never liked the website email interface as compared to Outlook that I used at work, but free is free and I didn't complain.

Then three things happened:

1. I got laid off and stopped using a work computer for about six weeks.

2. Right around that time, I discovered and downloaded Mozilla Thunderbird on my Ubuntu computer and thought, Finally! A way to manage my personal email as I used to with Outlook at work in ways I never could using a website for email!.

3. I bought a new Windows computer and installed Thunderbird on it also. Yay! Life was good. I also stopped using the Ubuntu machine, for the most part. It still works, and I'm posting this from it since it's a laptop and I'm not down in the basement where the desktop machine is, but I haven't checked email on the Ubuntu computer since I got the new one.

Some time (couple of months) went by at my new job and I got settled in and up to speed with my duties and then I realized everybody surfs the web at work, and one person always seems to have a movie on Netflix going on one monitor, with headphones, while cranking out high volume production on the other monitor. Okay, then. I guess I can check my AOL email occasionally from there without getting an angry visit from personnel or IT or whoever the net police are at this new gig. So I did. I still haven't visited this site from work, but that's another story.

I emailed my mother a picture from my digital camera from home on Thunderbird. The next day, at work, I checked my email and there was one from Dad, asking if I could forward it to his address on his desktop PC because neither he nor Mom could figure out how to open the attachment on her new iPad. The email, which I knew I sent from home and he acknowledged receiving, was not in my Sent Items folder while on the AOL website at work. When I came home and launched Thunderbird, there is was in the Sent Items folder as it should have been.

Why was it only on one computer? And, more importantly, how do I make things I send from either computer be visible from either computer (or any computer)?

Second problem: My wife signed our son up for another season of flag football, and gave them my email address this time, since in the past she received all the emails about practice times and games and whatnot, and had to forward them all to me, since I'm the one who usually takes him to these events. Well, I received an email about a sign-up list for which parents will bring drinks and snacks to each game. I got this at work, and I emailed the lady who sent the invitation and told her that was the first email I had seen about the new season of football and if she had any other information, such as the coach's name, practice times, where games will be, etc.

It turns out she is the coach's wife and in mere minutes, the coach forwarded me a couple previous emails he had sent to all the players' parents, including me. I've been checking emails at work lately and not so much at home. I searched all my emails today at work and I was sure I did not receive his earlier emails. But, when I got home and launched Thunderbird, guess what? Yep, there are his emails. They went to my home computer but not my work computer. Now, I realize that's not exactly accurate. Emails don't go to "a computer", they go to an email address. But, the this computer vs. that computer comparison is how it seems to me, and that's why I mentioned a little history with points 1, 2, and 3 above. This is all happening very recently now that, for the first time, I am logging into email accounts on more than one computer.

Why did his first two emails go to my home computer but not my work computer? And, more importantly, how do I make things sent to my AOL email address available on both computers (or any computer)?

Third and final problem - sorry this is so long, but it seems necessary to describe three different problems: I use Thunderbird at work. Our work emails, while seeming to have a custom domain - if that's the right term - meaning they're @companyname.com - go through gmail. I was able to set up Thunderbird in no time at all for my direct email (myname@companyname.com) and one shared email box - let's call it questions@companyname.com.

I was the only person using questions@companyname.com for a couple months. I work with one other person, but he has been doing different things for the most part. One day last week, I came in on deadline day and started sending third and even fourth requests to a couple of notoriously unresponsive managers who seemingly refuse to email approvals for certain things for employees who report to them. Not one but three of them replied with more than a little bit of annoyance, claiming they had sent in what they needed to the day before. Nope, didn't happen, I maintained.

I mentioned it to the guy I work with, who came in early that day, and he casually replied that he had done the work and moved the emails out of the Inbox and into the appropriate folders. Turned out he was right. He did it on the web using gmail, but his changes were not reflected in my Thunderbird.

Why? And, more importantly, how do I change this so I can see his changes? I already know he can see changes I make in Thunderbird when he's logged in through gmail - such as me moving an email from the Inbox to a sub-folder, but how do we make that work both ways?

Whew. Sorry for the extreme length here. Thanks for any suggestions.

Signed,

A guy who thought he was proficient with email who just had his world turned upside-down :eek:

George
September 6th, 2016, 06:51 PM
P.S. My thread title is wrong. It's Thunderbird on two computers (home and work) vs. AOL on my work computer and gmail on someone else's computer at work.

Yw-slayer
September 7th, 2016, 03:09 AM
I didn't read the whole thing, but from skimming it, it's probably something to do with whether it's setup for IMAP or POP3.

For your work problems, you should ask your IT support at work to help. That may actually help you get to grips with your home email problems (or perhaps slip in a few carefully placed questions here and there without ACTUALLY stating that you are asking about your home email problems).

Tom Servo
September 7th, 2016, 07:26 AM
It could also be that Thunderbird is set up to remove/delete messages from the server once it downloads them. There's usually an option for that, but I'd be surprised to find out it's set to do so by default.

For the third situation, it's because standard email clients poll for information, they don't get anything pushed to them (at least as far as I know, I'm not super up on IMAP). Outlook, or using Gmail's native apps, sync everything. Thunderbird is most likely set up to only pull down things from the Inbox, does it every X minutes, and doesn't do it when your laptop is closed/computer is off. So, if the other employee moved items out of the Inbox and into other folders in between when they arrived and the next time Thunderbird checked for updates, Thunderbird wouldn't get them.

I'll second what Yw-slayer said - ask IT support. It's really hard to tell what's going on without actually being able to poke through all the settings.

mk
September 7th, 2016, 10:12 AM
Nope, didn't happen, I maintained.
This seems to be POP3.


I already know he can see changes I make
This seems to be IMAP.

George
September 7th, 2016, 05:01 PM
Thanks, all. I'll have to make the dreaded call to the remote IT group and have them open a ticket and then wait for some help.

I'm sure their first question will be "why aren't you using Outlook that we pay for, like everyone else in the company?" And that's a fair question.

I guess the obvious culprit here is Thunderbird, since everything used to work when it was all-web or all-Outlook. I'll try to get it fixed, though, since I prefer T-bird to Outlook 2016. I liked previous versions of Outlook just fine, but the latest version of Outlook (and Excel too, as long as I'm on my soapbox) does not please me.

Heading out to google POP3 and IMAP. The latter is a type of movie theatre, right? :D

Yw-slayer
September 7th, 2016, 05:17 PM
Outlook is fine. 2016 is even better. Get used to it.

George
September 7th, 2016, 05:35 PM
No. You are wrong, as usual. :D

Outlook used to be fine. Then they got rid of "labels", so I can no longer change emails to things like Complete, Waiting For Reply, and five or six other labels of my choosing. ONE label? Why bother?

Additionally, they've white-washed the "frames", for lack of a better word, so I can't see where my list o' mail stops and the preview screen of the email I'm reading or writing starts. Sure, I can choose death-metal black or equally depressing tropical storm grey, but I don't see those as pleasing options. At least we can turn off the crazy tattoo-like patterns in the upper corners, but that's about the only thing I can say good about it.

Where Thunderbird really wins is in how closely together they pack together sub-folders over on the left in the folder list area. I use a ton of sub-folders, and T-bird lets me see...for example, not exactly, since I'm not at work now to do an exact comparison...letters A through L perhaps, while Outlook only shows me maybe A through F before I have to scroll down to see more. Not the best for quick dragging and dropping of emails from such a high-production Sector 7-G drone as I. :)

Yw-slayer
September 7th, 2016, 09:00 PM
ok.