My wife and I both have Hotmail premium accounts that we use a "hubs" only to
check mail from other accounts and to store our messages in a central
location. So in other words, we keep our Hotmail addresses private and never
send mail directly from them.



Hotmail handles this fairly well. We can set up accounts to send and receive
mail from and choose which is the "default" account to send from. Sent
messages are all stored in the same "sent items" folder regardless of which
account is used, and Hotmail even seems to do a good job of correctly
choosing which address to send from when replying.

Windows Live Mail, on the other hand, is a completely different beast all
together. The way it clumsily handles sending from third party addresses
makes it a complete non-starter for us.

First off, it offers no easy way to configure accounts to send from like
Hotmail does -- you have to set up accounts seperately and remember to
uncheck the option to check for new mail. Apparently you can't configure
which account to send from by default (except by making it a blanket default
account for everything which has its own consequences). It always tries to
send from your Hotmail account -- and given we don't want anyone to see that,
sucks if we forget to change it manually for each message we send.

Here's the most absurd part -- for those accounts you set up JUST to send
mail from, it keeps separate mail folders for each and there is no way to
merge or reroute them to your Hotmail folders. So if I send mail from another
account, it gets placed in that accounts sent folder instead of my main one.
So it stays separate and local, and thus never gets synced with Hotmail. I
have to remember to manually drag every message I send into the correct sent
folder to do so.

Things like this that seem like such a no-brainer to me and yet are
completely neglected by a supposedly mature piece of software make me so
frustrated. Am I just missing something before I uninstall Live Mail for good?

On Sun, 7 Jun 2009 08:40:01 -0700, BooYaKaSha wrote:

> My wife and I both have Hotmail premium accounts that we use a "hubs" only to
> check mail from other accounts and to store our messages in a central
> location. So in other words, we keep our Hotmail addresses private and never
> send mail directly from them.
>
> Hotmail handles this fairly well. We can set up accounts to send and receive
> mail from and choose which is the "default" account to send from. Sent
> messages are all stored in the same "sent items" folder regardless of which
> account is used, and Hotmail even seems to do a good job of correctly
> choosing which address to send from when replying.
>
> Windows Live Mail, on the other hand, is a completely different beast all
> together. The way it clumsily handles sending from third party addresses
> makes it a complete non-starter for us.

Windows Live Mail is a single user application, designed around the premise
that a single user will likely have single accounts. Even a more capable
email program, like Pegasus Mail, which is my default email handler, can't
do what you want easily. Unlike Windows Live Mail, which doesn't understand
the concept of "Identities", or even MS Outlook Express, which only
understands the concept of "Identities" in a fashion more like Pegasus
Mail's "User Profiles", I can use "Identities" in Pegasus Mail; but I must
still properly select the appropriate "Identity" manually before proceeding.

> First off, it offers no easy way to configure accounts to send from like
> Hotmail does -- you have to set up accounts seperately and remember to
> uncheck the option to check for new mail. Apparently you can't configure
> which account to send from by default (except by making it a blanket default
> account for everything which has its own consequences). It always tries to
> send from your Hotmail account -- and given we don't want anyone to see that,
> sucks if we forget to change it manually for each message we send.

Windows Live Mail always sends new mail from the configured default account;
and replies from the account which received the email. Even Pegasus Mail
will send "From:" the default "Identity"; unless the user manually selects
the proper "Identity" associated with a given email address.

> Here's the most absurd part -- for those accounts you set up JUST to send
> mail from, it keeps separate mail folders for each and there is no way to
> merge or reroute them to your Hotmail folders. So if I send mail from another
> account, it gets placed in that accounts sent folder instead of my main one.
> So it stays separate and local, and thus never gets synced with Hotmail. I
> have to remember to manually drag every message I send into the correct sent
> folder to do so.

With MS Outlook Express, all POP3 email was dumped into global account
storage folders. This lead a certain subset of users to complain that email
to different POP3 accounts was aggregated in a single folder.

With Windows Live Mail, all POP3 email is segregated in unique folders per
account. This leads a certain subset of users to complain that email to
different POP3 accounts is not aggregated in a single folder.

Damned if they do, damned if they don't. The only logical solution would be
a user selectable option to have, nor not have global email folders. Maybe
they will see the light in another iteration of the application.

> Things like this that seem like such a no-brainer to me and yet are
> completely neglected by a supposedly mature piece of software make me so
> frustrated. Am I just missing something before I uninstall Live Mail for good?

What you are missing is that Windows Live Mail won't do things the way you
want; and I don't know of a competing application that will. Not even
Mozilla Thunderbird will do it without setting up Profiles, which then
require manually selecting which Profile to use with which "From:" email
address. I am pretty sure it isn't automatic.

--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum

"BooYaKaSha" <BooYaKaSha@xxxxxx> wrote in message news:2F2DC25C-F256-4BFF-A4AA-0DCEEC80112F@xxxxxx

> My wife and I both have Hotmail premium accounts that we use a "hubs" only to
> check mail from other accounts and to store our messages in a central
> location. So in other words, we keep our Hotmail addresses private and never
> send mail directly from them.
>
> Hotmail handles this fairly well. We can set up accounts to send and receive
> mail from and choose which is the "default" account to send from. Sent
> messages are all stored in the same "sent items" folder regardless of which
> account is used, and Hotmail even seems to do a good job of correctly
> choosing which address to send from when replying.
>
> Windows Live Mail, on the other hand, is a completely different beast all
> together. The way it clumsily handles sending from third party addresses
> makes it a complete non-starter for us.
>
> First off, it offers no easy way to configure accounts to send from like
> Hotmail does -- you have to set up accounts seperately and remember to
> uncheck the option to check for new mail. Apparently you can't configure
> which account to send from by default (except by making it a blanket default
> account for everything which has its own consequences). It always tries to
> send from your Hotmail account -- and given we don't want anyone to see that,
> sucks if we forget to change it manually for each message we send.
>
> Here's the most absurd part -- for those accounts you set up JUST to send
> mail from, it keeps separate mail folders for each and there is no way to
> merge or reroute them to your Hotmail folders. So if I send mail from another
> account, it gets placed in that accounts sent folder instead of my main one.
> So it stays separate and local, and thus never gets synced with Hotmail. I
> have to remember to manually drag every message I send into the correct sent
> folder to do so.
>
> Things like this that seem like such a no-brainer to me and yet are
> completely neglected by a supposedly mature piece of software make me so
> frustrated. Am I just missing something before I uninstall Live Mail for good?

"mature piece of software"? <snicker/>
I don't think it is even deserving of the term "Work in progress" (WIP).


---