Eudora 7.1: Close replacement for Outlook Express?

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I’m buying a Windows 7 64-bit machine and need to find a mail client to replace Outlook Express. All I want is a PC e-mail client; I have no interest in cloud usage. My OE setup is fairly complex, with six identities, one with 4 POP accounts and 1 IMAP account, two others somewhat less complex, and three that are just archives with no e-mail accounts. Naturally, I’m hoping to migrate the whole thing without too much difficulty.

I’m talking about Eudora 7.1, which some people are still running on Win7 and not the later Eudora OSE (8) that is based on Thunderbird. I’ve already tried and not liked Thunderbird. Is it possible to find what I’m looking for in Eudora?

Thanks,
Ellen

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If you don’t like T’bird you might not find much more in Eudora to like as it is based on Thunderbird.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Eudora_OSE

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If you don’t like T’bird you might not find much more in Eudora to like as it is based on Thunderbird.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Eudora_OSE

Not true. 7.1 and earlier was a Qualcomm product. Subsequent development as done by Mozilla spinoff. 7.1 always had great reviews, and if you needed a powerful email program, Eudora was an excellent choice.

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I use 2009 WLM because it behaves quite like a modern OE, I have 7 accounts of all flavors aggregated there but I never got into identities.

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I use 2009 WLM because it behaves quite like a modern OE, I have 7 accounts of all flavors aggregated there but I never got into identities.

Does WLM 2009 have the option of creating different identities? And, must I install all the other “essentials” in the package along with the mail program? Also, does it run on XP? Whatever I settle on, I’d like to set it up and have it configured before I get the new computer.

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Just checked and it said identities are no longer used because user accounts provide better security and e-mail privacy. There is a identities import wizard that helps transfer account information and messages but no is the answer to using identities.

2009 WLM is fully compatible with XP, to get it to run on Windows 7 you need the standalone installer package (or it will automatically install 2012 with the ribbon) and you get a choice at the time of install as to what you want installed and what you don’t.

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One reason I keep different identities is to keep the application light for loading and functioning. Archives go in different identities. It doesn’t like keeping huge amounts of messages. Has that changed? Do you archive old messages?

Also — What about the whole syncing with the cloud thing — can you disable that?

And — Are you using WLM with an IMAP account that has 2-step verification?

Thanks,
Ellen

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I only put a few online purchase receipts in the storage folders so I don’t know about a larger amount. You can disable Windows Live ID sign in but if using any Microsoft email account you have to sign in anyway, it’s easy to ignore the calendar and any other sync feature (other than email of course) if it’s not set up. One can also disable the uploading of large pictures in the background.

I am not using any 2-step verification process; it’s a gmail account and it’s been sluggish lately so I’ll probably try converting it to a POP account soon because I don’t really need the IMAP features. The other accounts all respond quickly.

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I’m buying a Windows 7 64-bit machine and need to find a mail client to replace Outlook Express. All I want is a PC e-mail client; I have no interest in cloud usage. My OE setup is fairly complex, with six identities, one with 4 POP accounts and 1 IMAP account, two others somewhat less complex, and three that are just archives with no e-mail accounts. Naturally, I’m hoping to migrate the whole thing without too much difficulty.

I’m talking about Eudora 7.1, which some people are still running on Win7 and not the later Eudora OSE (8) that is based on Thunderbird. I’ve already tried and not liked Thunderbird. Is it possible to find what I’m looking for in Eudora?

Thanks,
Ellen

I have exactly the same setup as yourself, and I have been using Eudora 7.1 for years, including on my current Win 7 64-bit setup, without any difficulty at all.
Eudora 7.1 is NOT based on Thunderbird, as far as I am aware – that is Eudora OSE, as you say, which I think is, in any case, no longer available – perhaps I’m wrong in that.
I have several POP accounts, all of which can be dealt with by Eudora 7.1, and I have several identities also – all managed without difficulty by Eudora. I do not use an IMAP account, but I am sure that Eudora deals with that just as well.
So, if you are migrating your Eudora to Win 7, it should work perfectly well. The only problem I encountered at first was that Win 7 stores your data (mailboxes, etc) in a different place to where you might expect, even if you tell Eudora on installation to store it in the Program directory (as I always had it in Win XP) – it stores the data in Users[Username]AppDataRoamingQualcommEudora. You will not be able to see that in Windows Explorer unless you have “Show hidden files, folders and drives” set in Tools>Folder Options>View. But once you know where to look, you can (as I do) copy all your data, say, from one computer to another (I do this to my laptop before going away for any length of time, and copy everything back to my desktop computer when I return).
When you have your Win 7 setup installed, just install Eudora 7.1, then copy all your data (if you have already got Eudora 7.1) from your old computer to the folder mentioned above (AppData, etc.), and you are ready to go.
If you have not used Eudora before, you will need to import your mailboxes from Outlook Express in the first instance – I don’t know how to do that, as I never used Outlook Express, but I’m sure there must be some way to do it.
Best of luck!
Paul

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I have exactly the same setup as yourself, and I have been using Eudora 7.1 for years, including on my current Win 7 64-bit setup, without any difficulty at all.
Eudora 7.1 is NOT based on Thunderbird, as far as I am aware – that is Eudora OSE, as you say, which I think is, in any case, no longer available – perhaps I’m wrong in that.
I have several POP accounts, all of which can be dealt with by Eudora 7.1, and I have several identities also – all managed without difficulty by Eudora. I do not use an IMAP account, but I am sure that Eudora deals with that just as well.
So, if you are migrating your Eudora to Win 7, it should work perfectly well. The only problem I encountered at first was that Win 7 stores your data (mailboxes, etc) in a different place to where you might expect, even if you tell Eudora on installation to store it in the Program directory (as I always had it in Win XP) – it stores the data in Users[Username]AppDataRoamingQualcommEudora. You will not be able to see that in Windows Explorer unless you have “Show hidden files, folders and drives” set in Tools>Folder Options>View. But once you know where to look, you can (as I do) copy all your data, say, from one computer to another (I do this to my laptop before going away for any length of time, and copy everything back to my desktop computer when I return).
When you have your Win 7 setup installed, just install Eudora 7.1, then copy all your data (if you have already got Eudora 7.1) from your old computer to the folder mentioned above (AppData, etc.), and you are ready to go.
If you have not used Eudora before, you will need to import your mailboxes from Outlook Express in the first instance – I don’t know how to do that, as I never used Outlook Express, but I’m sure there must be some way to do it.
Best of luck!
Paul

I have used Eudora since the late 90s and always have put the data folders in the program folder. When I updated to Windows 7 Pro x64 I copied the entire Qualcomm folder from Windows XP to Program Files (x86) including the data folders and the mailboxes. Then run the Eudora installer. It will pick up all of your settings and preferences just like previous Windows versions. On my Win 7 system no Qualcomm folder was created in the Roaming folder.

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I have used Eudora since the late 90s and always have put the data folders in the program folder. When I updated to Windows 7 Pro x64 I copied the entire Qualcomm folder from Windows XP to Program Files (x86) including the data folders and the mailboxes. Then run the Eudora installer. It will pick up all of your settings and preferences just like previous Windows versions. On my Win 7 system no Qualcomm folder was created in the Roaming folder.

Isn’t that strange? When I tried to install Eudora on my Win 7 Pro 64-bit setup, I asked it to install the mailboxes etc to the Program Files (X86) Qualcomm folder, then copied everything over from my Win XP machine to it, but it still insisted on using the folder in AppData. But then, I did it the other way round to you – I installed the program first, then copied the data across; perhaps if I had done it the same way round as yourself, I would not have had that problem.
Paul

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Isn’t that strange? When I tried to install Eudora on my Win 7 Pro 64-bit setup, I asked it to install the mailboxes etc to the Program Files (X86) Qualcomm folder, then copied everything over from my Win XP machine to it, but it still insisted on using the folder in AppData. But then, I did it the other way round to you – I installed the program first, then copied the data across; perhaps if I had done it the same way round as yourself, I would not have had that problem.
Paul

I first tried the copy then install after updating a pc from Win 95 to Win 98. Sometime in the late 90s I took over most IT services for my college research department (about 200 PCs) and always did it that way. Never a problem. I’ve found Eudora very reliable and easily customizable.

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One thing to be aware of: Eudora 7.1 does NOT do replies in HTML. We’ve been using it for company email for years and this is the single most frustrating thing about it. For instance, to reply to a customer with a copy of an invoice, we have to screenshot it and embed or attach it, otherwise it sends as mostly ugly unformatted text, and any actual text, comments, etc show up one… agonizing… letter… at a time after embedding an image. It’s frustrating sitting there and watching what you just typed take 20 seconds to get to the end of the sentence. Other than HTML issues (and the many hidden undocumented hot-keys you hit without knowing it) the functionality is pretty good. Multiple accounts, “personalities”, filtering, and so on are there. I’m pushing for adopting OSE, which seems to do things in a more modern fashion.

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One thing to be aware of: Eudora 7.1 does NOT do replies in HTML. We’ve been using it for company email for years and this is the single most frustrating thing about it. For instance, to reply to a customer with a copy of an invoice, we have to screenshot it and embed or attach it, otherwise it sends as mostly ugly unformatted text, and any actual text, comments, etc show up one… agonizing… letter… at a time after embedding an image. It’s frustrating sitting there and watching what you just typed take 20 seconds to get to the end of the sentence. Other than HTML issues (and the many hidden undocumented hot-keys you hit without knowing it) the functionality is pretty good. Multiple accounts, “personalities”, filtering, and so on are there. I’m pushing for adopting OSE, which seems to do things in a more modern fashion.

I’m not sure what the problem here is. We run an online shop which produces invoices in HTML, which can then be sent in an email, even using Eudora 7.1, by means of a link in the email; or the invoice can be copied from our ecommerce software into a message in Eudora, and it is sent in an acceptable way, if not exactly as it looks on the web page.
Paul

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I used Eudora for many years before switching over to Outlook (full version). It is a superb client and will do everything you specified. The only downside is that it is open-source and there’s no formal support. But there is plenty of “user community” information and help, and the software itself is very robust and reliable. As long as you don’t need too much handholding, you’ll be very happy with it.

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I have used Eudora 7.1 since it was first issued, and have found it better than any other email client I have tried (outlook, express, t’bird, Pamela, OSE). I run 21 personalities (I do a lot of international travel) and about 100 mailboxes/folders. Excellent indexing, search, storage, relaying, easiest install to new machine of any program (copy whole folder and install over the top – magic). Eudora has worked well in every Windows version, now on 8 where it works fine. Only negatives from my point of view are its limited ability to handle fonts and lack of effective autocorrect. In every other way, it is near 100%, IMO. Most users give it five stars – unusual, see http://email.about.com/u/r/cs/winclientreviews/gr/eudora.htm. What a pity Qualcomm stopped development when they did – big mistake.

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I am just now trying out outlook 2007 since I just got Msoffice 2007.
But have been using Outlook Express with Win Xp. I have tried out a few since I know I will have to find something when I change from win xp. Been a fan of OE for years.
I can tell you the closest thing to it. It’s actually just like it and a little better.
OECLASSIC
Tried it at a friend’s house and just as easy, simple and fast as the original OE. Looks just like it. Try the free version but I think you have to pay for a version with more than 2 accounts.
Since I paid for office with outlook I am going to see if I can get use to that first before I use the oeclassic myself.
Main thing I see with outlook is it does not work as fast as my old outlook express. And I really just need something simple.

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Having tried Outlook and Outlook Express and a couple of others, and always finding some limitations, I started using Eudora since version 3 or 4, now on 7.1. I love it because it has more capabilities. As I recall (it’s been along time since I started with it) I like:

* Its super-flexible filtering capabilities
* The ability for a filter to trigger an action, like sending a specific file back, running a program (and much more)
* Emails are stored in text format so recovery is far easier than packed files that can be corrupted and lose everything. In Eudora, just skip over copying the corrupted section.
* Tabbed & windowed mailboxes
* Configurable toolbars

You can read more features here: http://www.eudora.com/email/features/windows/

Mail server setup is a little convoluted to me, but other than that, all is good.
I’ve used it on everything thru Win7. Haven’t tried it on Win8, but I haven’t started using my Win8 machine. I have worked a fair amount on Win8, and I think you should have not problem running it.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at richard (at) mail-xpress (.com). I’m pretty demanding in my needs because I’ve been a system admin for 20 years.

Edit: HTML coming in reads fine, and pasting good HTML into an email works too. The problem is when you forward, the new message elements look like a list, rather than preserviing the original layout.

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If a person really liked Outlook Express, then they should use it’s big brother…..Windows Mail.
In Vista, it worked just fine, but in the later OS’s, it’s been disabled by MS. Why is anyone’s guess.
It sets up just like O.E.6, looks like O.E. and will import all the address book and email from O.E.

It takes a little bit of slight of hand to re-Activate it in Win-7, Win-8 or Win-8.1, but, it’s all together do’able.
We’ve discussed the technique for doing that in other threads. I won’t repeat it here.

I do it all the time, for myself and my customers who are upgrading their OS from Windows XP to whatever.

There’s NO reason at all, for anyone to have to go through a learning curve on a totally new program.

I’ve tried a few myself, like Thunderbird, but they all fell short and I went right back to O.E. or WinMail.

Cheers Mates!
The Doctor

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I swear by (not at) Eudora, even though my students were recently laughing at its outdated-looking interface. I’ve been using it since the mid-90s (currently in Win 7 with Eudora 7.1) I have tens of thousands of emails stored in probably more than 100 boxes and use it to simultaneously check mail from several accounts/”personalities.” I’ve researched other email applications and dread the day I’m forced to migrate to another, probably less functional, program.

I’ve always stored my Eudora data (settings and email folders) in my separate Data partition, primarily so it gets easily backed up with my other data. I’ve never had a problem in telling Eudora that the data is in a non-standard location.

My only reservations about it are (A) its somewhat limited formatting, (2) the fact that I can’t tell it to put my signature at the end of my replies (at the top) rather than the end of the entire email, and (C) it has a several seconds delay after deleting emails, but that’s probably because I’m not good at keeping my In box clean.

Oh yeah, (D) it doesn’t seem to delete attachments when the email is deleted (even though I have “delete attachments when trash is deleted” checked in Options). So my Attachments and Embedded folders are humongous. (I’ve created old attachment folders from time to time where I move attachments to).

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I’ve used Eudora since the early 2000s and always enjoyed its straight forward interface. I did IT work for a college research department as well as engineering. I found Eudora safer than Outlook and and other alternatives and recommended it to the rest department. I was still using it daily until this month and had to change to T-Bird because ATT/Yahoo now require specific inbound and outbound ports (995 & 465) and I know of no way to change Eudora’s default ports. Eudora made setting up email on replacement PCs a breeze because you simply copy it to the new PCs program files and run the installer. It picked up all settings, mail and folders. I’ll miss it
Lee

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I was still using it daily until this month and had to change to T-Bird because ATT/Yahoo now require specific inbound and outbound ports (995 & 465) and I know of no way to change Eudora’s default ports.
Lee

Lee, have a look at the Eudora support page: http://www.eudora.com/techsupport/kb/1501hq.html
It looks like it should be possible to change to any desired port numbers by editing the settings file. I haven’t tried it, since I don’t need it.

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Lee, have a look at the Eudora support page: http://www.eudora.com/techsupport/kb/1501hq.html
It looks like it should be possible to change to any desired port numbers by editing the settings file. I haven’t tried it, since I don’t need it.

Thanks for the information! I tried it this morning and it seems to be working fine. I’ll watch it for awhile and all is stable I’ll nuke T-bird.
Long Live Eudora

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I’m a Eudora die-hard too, glad to see there are so many of us!

The only bugbear is that many senders use Outlook and edit their mails in Word, which adds a shovel-load of extra formatting tags that Eudora can’t handle. I have to ask each of my Outlook contacts to make sure they send me mails in plain text so I can read them (or I have to switch to my webmail momentarily).

Other than that, it’s bulletproof. I’ve been trying to find a replacement (almost went for MailForge), but nothing else quite comes up to scratch.

If anyone out there can write an add-on that will allow it to decipher Word-speak I’LL BE WILLING TO PAY FOR IT!

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I hope Eudora will hang on for the long haul. Tried Thunderbird but didn’t really like it. Tried G mail briefly but have grave concerns about Google’s privacy practices.
I frequently use Word to clean up emails before forwarding and didn’t know of any problems. Never got any negative feedback. I hope all I sent went smoothly………..

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At the most, Ive only used 2 accounts in Eudora so I can’t say how it would do with so many. A great deal depends on your ISP. Mine is ATT which contracts out to Yahoo to handle email. I get multiple errors a day in Eudora and I’m sure they are related to Yahoo. I’ll stick with Eudora 7.1 though as I tried T-Bird and the newer Eudora and didn’t like them. Eudora is good in handling many folders and mailboxes which is a necessity for me.

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