To read email I have been using my ISPs webmail interface rather than Outlook Express. However, I would like to start using Outlook Express again as it seems to be faster than webmail. When I open Outlook Express and click on the “Send/Receive” button there are 194 messages waiting, all of which I have already read on webmail. I cannot delete these messages without reading them, which involves downloading all the messages. However, I cannot download all the messages as my connection drops out long before all have downloaded. The computer is running Windows XP.

From your question it seems that you are experiencing several different problems, so it would be prudent to deal with each issue. First, the reason that Outlook Express is attempting to download all messages is because when you view email through the webmail interface, the emails are stored (and remain stored) on your ISPs email server. This is required when using a webmail based interface because that method of accessing email is entirely server-based and therefore the email needs to be stored somewhere so you can read the messages. In this case, they are stored on the server. By contrast, an email client on your computer such as Outlook Express is usually configured to use an email system (better known as protocol) called POP3 (post office protocol version 3). Email read through an email client using POP3 is downloaded from the server to your local computer and then deleted from the server. This is allowed because unlike when using webmail, the email can be downloaded and stored on your local computer and then read from your local computer after the download has been completed. Therefore, the copies on the server are just duplicate, redundant copies of the same message which are taking up storage space on the server and can be deleted. The reason that Outlook Express needs to download all the email messages which you have already read through webmail is because it sees those messages on the email server and assumes that they are new and have not yet been read, and therefore the messages need to be downloaded. The easy way around this issue to prevent Outlook Express from downloading the already read messages, is to logon to webmail and delete the messages through the webmail interface. This will delete the messages directly off the server and Outlook Express will never know that the messages existed and therefore not download them. However, this has the consequence that you will lose all these messages, never to be seen again. I often like to keep email messages which I receive and file them away, so before selecting and deleting all messages I suggest that you review the messages to ensure there are none that you wish to keep. Should you wish to keep certain messages, don’t delete those messages and when you open Outlook Express they will be downloaded.

Your statement about moving between webmail and a local email client (such as Outlook Express) raises some interesting broad questions about whether you should use webmail or an email client. This greatly depends on your needs and how you will be using email. If you primarily only use one computer then most people find using an email client much more convenient as they often offer functionality which lacks in webmail (such as formatting of email messages, filtering capabilities, organisation of email messages into folder structures, etc.). Additionally, because the messages are kept locally you can access all your email messages when not connected to the internet. Finally, if you like to keep all your email messages then being able to store the email locally means that you will not run into space restrictions generally imposed by ISPs on the size of customer email boxes. The limit is usually around 20 MB (but varies between ISPs). This means once your email box exceeds 20 MB in size your ISP will take corrective action, such as stopping new messages arriving until you get back under quota. While quotas of around 20 MB may seem plenty, with the proliferation of broadband and people sending large attachments to emails you will likely find that quota reached rather quickly.

Of course, the disadvantage of using a local email client (storing your emails locally) is that you can only access your email from that one computer. If you need to access your email from many different computers, then webmail could be a good option since the email is stored on the server and therefore not tied to any particular computer – so long as you have internet access to that webmail server then you can access all the email stored on the server. Even so, you could potentially run into problems in the longer-term with storage space and also find that webmail has reduced functionality compared with a local email client.

The best of both worlds approach is to use a local email client with server based email storage. You may recall that earlier we discussed the POP3 protocol which is commonly used. This approach will cause your email client to download messages from the email server and then delete those messages from the server. There is another protocol called IMAP (internet message access protocol). This will allow a local email client to read email stored on a remote server, rather than download the messages to the local computer and delete them from the server. Furthermore, many IMAP email clients allow you to locally cache the messages which you read, meaning that even though the messages are stored on a remote server, you can still read the cached copy of the message when you are not online or the server is unreachable. The downsides of this approach are that your ISP may not support IMAP-based email on your email box and, assuming that you have a relatively small quota on your email, you could still run into problems with storage. However, if you have more advanced IMAP setup on your computer then it is possible to also have local storage within your email client, in addition to the server storage on your email server. This means that you can individually drag messages off the server onto local storage on your computer. While these messages which you drag off the server onto local storage are only accessible on that particular computer (as they are stored on that particular computer) this does mean that large emails can be taken off the server, just leaving essential emails you wish to access from multiple locations on the server, alleviating storage contention issues. If you are interested in looking at IMAP then I would recommend that you use Mozilla Thunderbird (www.mozilla.com/thunderbird) as your email client. This has much greater and more flexible support for IMAP than other email clients such as Outlook Express and Windows Mail.

Dealing with the last identified issue in your question, you mention that the internet connection drops out before you have downloaded all the messages. This obviously should not be occurring so I would be interested to find out why your connection is dropping. Broadband connections are much more stable than traditional dial-up connections so if you are using broadband then you should get in touch with your ISP to see if they can help troubleshoot the connection, as there could be several factors at play (such as ADSL line related problems or router problems). On the other hand, if you are using a dial-up connection then it is less surprising that you have having drop-outs, but nevertheless these should not be occurring. If you do need additional advice on preventing dial-up drop outs then please contact me for further advice.