Shared e-mail account

tbernstein · Joined: May 16, 2003 Posts: 1668 Location: London

My wife and I have our own log-ins to our PC ( Vista Home Premium).
We used to be able to share a joint e-mail address (after all,we are married!) in XP with Outlook Express by setting the message store folder to the same location, for whichever log-in was being used. i.e. If she logged in and collected the family e-mails I could log-in later and read the ones that she'd already seen.
How can we do this in Thunderbird? So far I've only managed to get Thunderbird to send to different inboxes for whoever has checked the mail (so the other user can't see them,or else I get a never ending "egg timer" and can send but not receive.
How can we share an e-mail address and both see the messages in our respective log-in?

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 1242

When you set up T-bird, did it ask you anything about if you wanted it to be for just you or for every user? - If so, you should have chosen "for every user"
If not, just install it once & copy a shortcut to the others desktop. You will be sharing the same TB files then.
Then in TB itself just set it up for a single account as normal.

Given vista's quirkiness, did you get any error messages? Such as anything about permissions?

Let me know if this helps.

tbernstein · Joined: May 16, 2003 Posts: 1668 Location: London

I struggled with Thunderbird for days. I looked through all the notes at Mozilla.
I got nowhere.
The shared folder always froze up.
Finally I tried switching off UAC
Magic!
Immediately the problem is resolved. Very Happy

The thing is, I switched to Thunderbird because I couldn't share any accounts in Windows Mail ( it wouldn't remember or accept the passwords).
So I wonder if that was also a UAC problem.
But I'm not going back! Wink

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 1242

OK, NOW I better understand your problems - dealing with M$'s WEIRD stuff! Shocked

It seem this wasn't directly YOUR problem but Windows mail & other online web mail severs are a unique bread. Where a "normal" server is usually POP3, these are usually, IMAP or some other type that MAY not be supported by most clients. (thinks proprietary) As for Windows mail, only the new windows mail client & outlook express (maybe outlook, too) will work right that I know of. ("out of the box"- so to speak)

For whatever reason (been a bad day for me anyway) I can't put my finger on what you mean by UAC but if it works, so be it! & yes, a simple thing as a setting CAN make a BIG difference.

Glad you got your mail working for you.

tbernstein · Joined: May 16, 2003 Posts: 1668 Location: London

More than just a setting: User Account Control.

Just don't go there!

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 2238 Location: Central FL, USA

If you (any 'you' ) will just look around the internet you'll see literally thousands of posts saying, in effect, "TURN OFF UAC".
((I just Googled "Turn Off UAC" and got 86,000+ hits! ))

There are even many different offerings of batch files, Visual Basic Scripts and RegEdit Scripts to do the job quickly and efficiently.

I use a .reg script, to shut OFF UAC.
I do it to every PC with Vista, that I set up or work on.
For the home computer user, it's an intolerable nuisance.
Sort of like a house fly buzzing around your head. Twisted Evil

Here's the .reg script:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
"EnableLUA"=dword:00000000

cut and paste those lines, in blue, into Notepad (not Wordpad) and save it with the .reg extension.

Or you can just download a self extracting version of the script Here.

Download the file and click it to start the unpacking process. The ready-to-run script will appear in the same folder with the download file.
If you use Firefox and have not changed the default download location, the downloaded file and the script will both be on your desktop.

Run the script (on Vista only) just once to shut off UAC, then put the file away for future use or share with friends who also have Vista.

People who set up or work on computers for other people, should take this script with them on their utilities CD, Flash Drive, etc.
I never leave home without it. Wink

Cheers Mates!
The Doctor Cool

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 1242

UAC = VISTA - looked it up, now have the FULL picture. SElinux is about the same thing. An "enhanced" security thing that, at times, can really get in the road. I used it in previous version of linux but ended up having to shut it off in this one for pretty much the same reason you shut off UAC.

It seems to me that it isn't much good if it is such a PITA it has to be off for anything to function correctly so it's like why have it in the first place?

BTW: I am finding out I NEED to get familiar with VISTA, whether I like it or not. Just to bad I have nothing to run it on.