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E-Mail Program for Mac OSX

Shuggie

Shuggie

Trade: Ammonite Audio
I am not getting on particularly well with Apple's own 'Mail' e-mail program in OSX, so I'm looking for some recommendations on business-friendly alternatives that can handle a number of different e-mail accounts, with pretty much the same sort of functionality as MS Outlook.

I've downloaded Mozilla Thunderbird, which looks fine, but any thoughts or experiences would be welcome.

Cheers!
 
In what way are you not getting on with Mail? I ask as it's actually a heck of a lot more powerful than the first impression it gives, plus it is superbly integrated into the system (contacts, iCloud, iOS syncing etc). Mail can certainly handle multiple accounts with ease, plus has MS Exchange compatibility etc.
 
The primary issue i have with apples mail, is you have to use attachment tamer to send jpeg/pdf attachments to windows users.

Otherwise it appears to do everything outlook does as far as email goes?
 
I am having problems sending mail, on a random basis. It's rather difficult to confirm that an e-mail has actually been sent, when some go into the 'sent' folder, while others stay in 'drafts'. This is all a bit inconsistent and irritating. If something does not work properly all of the time, then I know to look at the settings, but the settings are clearly fine. I'm seriously tempted to use the Windows 7 machine and MS Outlook for business communication instead, but maybe Thunderbird will suffice.
 
Agreed the drafts things is super annoying, but only occurs with microsoft email backends for me, no idea how to correct it.
 
Not sure that Sparrow is still available as Google bought it to improve its mail app (nothing released yet that I'm aware of) but might be worth a look.

I use the iPhone version still but no longer use the Mac version as I find Mail ok.
 
garyi said:
The primary issue i have with apples mail, is you have to use attachment tamer to send jpeg/pdf attachments to windows users.
Click to expand...

Huh? I send attachments to Windows users all the time without issue. At least I've never had any complaints and I routinely send .pdf invoices to trade account holders.

Shuggie said:
I am having problems sending mail, on a random basis. It's rather difficult to confirm that an e-mail has actually been sent, when some go into the 'sent' folder, while others stay in 'drafts'. This is all a bit inconsistent and irritating. If something does not work properly all of the time, then I know to look at the settings, but the settings are clearly fine. I'm seriously tempted to use the Windows 7 machine and MS Outlook for business communication instead, but maybe Thunderbird will suffice.
Click to expand...

If it appears in the 'sent' box it's been successfully sent, if not, it's not. Mail seems to have a quicker 'time-out' behaviour than many mail clients, and it's certainly irritating there's no obvious way to force it again when it's timing out (it usually gets a sulk and just puts a little triangle warning by the relevant account) - the easiest way to force it to try again is just to close it and reopen it IME. In fairness to Mail it is only responding to a fault condition upstream, i.e. the POP or IMAP account will be slow or offline at that point in time!
 
The trouble is mail puts it in draft and even though sent remains in draft. This has only occured for me with an ms backbone.

The jpg and pdf issue is very very well documented on apple discussions, with the general concensus being its an apple issue and does not happen to everyone.

Though on this new pc i have outlook 2013 and its just terrible with it would appear a rather flakey handling of imap, so all in all i prefer mail.

Of course the logical answer for the op is outlook for mac, though that is a giant douche.
 
I have all outgoing email BCCedd to my self - this gives me proof that the mail left the machine and got to at least the first server before returning to me. It also means that both the outgoing and incoming related mail are in the same folder without have to do and folder manipulation work by sorting on the subject field
 
Tony L said:
Huh? I send attachments to Windows users all the time without issue. At least I've never had any complaints and I routinely send .pdf invoices to trade account holders.
Click to expand...

It loves to balls up Word doc attachments, always has. Knocks the extension off and other silly business.
 
garyi said:
The jpg and pdf issue is very very well documented on apple discussions, with the general concensus being its an apple issue and does not happen to everyone.

Though on this new pc i have outlook 2013 and its just terrible...
Click to expand...

I've never had the attachment problem (fingers crossed), though from what you say I may just have been lucky (or you've been unlucky).

As for Outlook, think yourself lucky. It's Lotus Notes, sorry, IBM Lotus Notes at work. Give me Outlook anytime.
 
If the issue is with attachments, why not just zip them before sending? Every Windows machine available will be able to unzip them as it's part of the OS, and it stops Outlook for mistaking the files for inline images.

For what it's worth, as far as I understand it, Apple don't consider this to be a bug in their mail app, as it handles attachments exactly as per the email protocol's specification. The bug lies with Outlook's handling of images (which includes PDFs) that it considers to be inline within the email. Outlook opts to hide their attachment status in a non-standard way (so you can't save them as regular attachments) and even intermittently greys out the 'save image' option when the user right-clicks on the image.

I know that doesn't help anyone at all in the real world, but it's likely why Apple's devs consider the problem to lie at Microsoft's door (although admittedly it wouldn't kill them to be a bit less hardcore about it).
 
Anex said:
It loves to balls up Word doc attachments, always has. Knocks the extension off and other silly business.
Click to expand...

Ah, ok, I always save with an extension as a matter of course so I won't have hit that issue. I started in personal computers with an 8086 and DOS 3 so I'm very set in my file-management ways!
 
Mr phillip, a fair assumption, but not the issue. Again though i think it comes down to the server handling the back end of the email, and again MS and Apple is the conflict.

At work i cannot send jpgs as attachments. I have ensured that all attachments appear at the end and ran aterminal command to prevent inline images, but still jpgs arrive to the sender either as nothing or totally scewed. Pdfs arrive as nothing more than brackets with the pdf name in, and word docs usually managled.

The issue is between the two apps for sure.

Yes zip fixes all issues, only less capable recipients find a load of artifacts from osx in there as well, which really highlights i guess just how old these various oses are!
 
Given the ever growing number of devices a person might want to view an attachment on, I'd say zipping is the last thing you want to start doing.
 
garyi said:
At work i cannot send jpgs as attachments. I have ensured that all attachments appear at the end and ran aterminal command to prevent inline images, but still jpgs arrive to the sender either as nothing or totally scewed. Pdfs arrive as nothing more than brackets with the pdf name in, and word docs usually mangled.
Click to expand...

Hmm, that's definitely more severe than anything I've encountered in 30 years of working with Macs. The only time I've had anything like that happen was when the company I was working for installed some wacky filtering software on their mail server that removed every image and garbled every doc that was sent through it. That was down to misconfiguration of the software though (also they where using Lotus Notes not Mail.app).

I think you're right to suspect something server side though.
 
For sure but of course then onus is on apple to play with microsoft.

Though whats happening with imap on this new outlook is beyond me, search takes forever and you have to go into each folder and convince it to download everything.

I look forward to the mangledmess they release formacs new incarnation. Another example of software beyond its sell by date.
 
I've been using Thunderbird for several years now, albeit for personal use at home, and have had no issues with it. That said I'm using an old version as I hate the new tab's they've introduced, (plus some other layout bits that don't appear to be able to be switched off).
 
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