Move to BT Mail

'Later this year you will move to BT Mail'. Well, it is later this year and I'm still on Yahoo. And if BT don't improve their Homepage and kill the stupid adverts/stories they'll have a mass exodus to Outlook or similar.

Most people (inclduing me) suggest using Gmail or similar as main mail and only using ISP email where absolutely necessary (sometimes required to mail ISP itself, and a few sites won't accept free public email addresses). That makes it much easier when you need to change ISP. BE didn't even offer email services when they were my ISP.

Open a GMail account and forward your BT/Yahoo mail there.

Why do you rely on webmail?

Install an email client and everything will be there on your PC - no need to login, no adverts, no ridiculous stories ... you can keep the mail on the server as a back up or in case you are without your PC.

Or avoid the public email address issue by getting your own domain name for a few quid a year and pointing it at gmail (or similar).

And then if you want to move mail provider you can without having to tell everyone your new email address.

+1

Sensible advice! Why do so many rely on slow inefficient webmail? Cuz their ISPs give them just a webmail URL for their ISP email addy? Also Windows these days does not come with a mail client as standard and they can't be bothered to look for one? Bring back OE bundled in Windows .

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

Bring back OE bundled in Windows .

+1

OE Express?

Only if you need a MAC Code to migrate it to TB Bird!

Oh Fisons! How right you are.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

Bring back OE bundled in Windows .

Totally agree.

It was a simple plain product, ideal for most home users with a reasonable level of features and could deal with multiple accounts and identities. Easy to configure, use and back up as well as having a route to full Outlook.

Yeah, it's all you need, a nice simple GUI front-end to the Telnet CLI of POP3/IMAP. Beats Browser + HTML + Webmail + Adverts hands down.

And you can have your own emails under your control, not out in the 'Cloud' where ISPs can lose or even stop supporting them as EE, at least, is prone to do but their users can't see it .

Edited by XRaySpeX (Fri 14-Nov-14 03:18:45)

Another benefit of using an email client (with IMAP) is that you have backup of old emails should your provider pull the plug on you, either on purpose or by mistake. Use of an email client is (almost) an orthogonal issue as to which email provider to use.

I use Thunderbird, not perfect but quite simple and very effective. I have tried others in the past (including Outlook Express or Windows Mail or whatever it is called this week); several were quite OK as well but they all had some detailed niggle that have made me stick to Thunderbird.

And the email are there ... so when your connection is down you still have them; when travelling on an aircraft you have them (yes you can connect, if you can afford another mortgage), &c

I use Outlook via my Microsoft account most of the time. This now has two-step verification (password plus texted code) which I find very secure. But the POP feature is quite basic. I go to the BT webmail page occasionally as I need to check my Junk folder and haven't found a way to download that to Outlook. And as we're now told to change the password once a month or so, the only way is via the web interface. And to add a sub-account, same thing.

I presume you are referring to the Outlook portal, rather than the Outlook client?


If so, you can remove te junk filtering and download everything to your inbox and allow local spam/junk filters to work.

In reply to a post by MHC:

I presume you are referring to the Outlook portal, rather than the Outlook client?

If so, you can remove te junk filtering and download everything to your inbox and allow local spam/junk filters to work.

Are you talking about Outlook.com?

If so, there is no option to disable junk filtering, as per this screen capture: http://s27.postimg.org/oi45ss1cz/junk.png

There certainly is:

Screenshot


Select Options which should give the MAIL options set

Subsection ACCOUNTS

Select Block or Allow

Then at the top is an option to auto filter Junk Mail.

In reply to a post by MHC:

There certainly is:

Screenshot

Is this a corporate account?

Consumer (free) Outlook.com accounts usually exist in the url *.mail.live.com. In the consumer version there is no framed options menu, it looks like this: http://s29.postimg.org/yrluwq0uf/outlook.png

Standard BT business provided

In reply to a post by MHC:

Standard BT business provided

Right. Definitely appears to have more options than consumer Outlook.com accounts (to be expected I suppose).

If I was using a server that intercepted junk mail and put it into a folder without either letting me automatically download the folder or having a choice of non-interception I would be a little annoyed.

I have the filtering/interception turned off - deliberately as I found it would often catch legitimate messages and unless I checked daily I would never see them and as the criteria are always changing anything can get caught.

+1

I believe the general concept seems to be to force POP3 customers to periodically have to visit webmail (and eyeball some adverts) so that they can check for false positives in the spam folder. Google Mail is the same. Since your email (presumably) has no adverts, and (presumably) is funded by BT via your subscriptions, there's no need for them to do to do this on your account.

The spam folder can be made visible in the email client by utilising IMAP, though. Personally I prefer POP3, so I fully agree with your sentiments that email services should all have an "off" button for junk filtering.