E-mail Addresses

[zinnie]

Hi, my understanding is that if you have an ISP e-mail address you lose it if you change ISP's ...if that is true is there any way to download stored messages before you lose the address. Anyone out there with any experience of this ?
Thanks

[ojread2]

Of course you will lose an ISP address if you move ISP's
This is why I have all mine come to a web mail address
You can download them now to your web address if you have one. It will be in your settings of you web mail

[bravejordy]

Short of tediously copying and pasting each and every message I'm not sure there is an easy answer. This is why it's always a good idea to have your ISP email account set up to automatically send your messages to Outlook Express (or similar). It's been a long time since I changed ISPs but if memory serves me, they did allow me to keep my old email account for a couple of weeks to give me time to notify those in my Address Book of my change of email address. You're best checking with your ISP though.

[Mosaic]

When teaching people to use email I always suggest they don't rely on it to store important messages, files etc.
It is safer to copy these to a location on your computer - belt and braces.

[divegirl]

Can you not just forward them to your new address?

Lisa x

[rockyracoon]

I've still got my AOHELL email account that I jacked in about 4-5 years ago, check with the ISP before worrying too much.

[zinnie]

Thanks both for your replies. I was actually asking this question for a friend who is changing ISP's. I personally use Windows Live Mail for my two web based e-mail addresses and ISP address. I believe my friend uses Outlook Express, but I
not sure I fully understand your answers, how does OE access the stored e-mails in the ISP address if the address is no longer functioning, or does OE actually store the files on the PC.?

[ChuckFickens]

"I believe my friend uses Outlook Express"

In that case their emails are almost certainly already downloaded on their computer.

Just disconnect the computer from the internet totally (pull the power cable out the router if you have to) and see if they can still read their emails to check.

[sunny-dave]

OE keeps the messages locally on your PC - which is fine until your PC dies - so your friend should regularly 'export' all messages from OE to a backup file and then store this file on a memory stick (preferably kept away from home somewhere).

[VHG]

>>>>OE keeps the messages locally on your PC

But OE has an option to also keep messages on the server (as well as downloading them to the PC).

When I used OE I always set the option to keep the messages on the server as well.

Then if I set up OE on a new computer I set the option to keep them on the server DURING the setup of OE, then I would go into OE and it would download the emails onto the new PC AND keep them on the server.

That way I always had a "backup" of my email on the server.

I assume (but dont know) that Windows Live Mail also has this "keep emails on the server" option.

[sunny-dave]

Agree VHG - 'leave copy on server' is a good practice - as long as you don't fill up your ISP mail allocation and have it start bouncing incoming new mail ...

But it is not the default setting for pop3 and therefore very few 'technically naive' users will do it.

I'm a belt&braces&sparepairofpants person, so prefer to have my own off-site security as well as anything provided by an ISP :)

[zinnie]

Hi everyone. Thanks for the 'wealth of input'...I think I can now give my friend
the right guidance..

[VHG]

>>>Of course you will lose an ISP address if you move ISP's

This is not totally true.

Some ISPs will let you keep an email address for a small monthly fee.

They would probably need to access the email system via a web interface though, but that is not a problem as that is what I do now for all my emails anyway.

[wildwood]

My ISP will let me keep my e-address for life - free. We've been with the present one for over 5 years and have no reason to change. For most mail we use an gmail address that downloads it to Windows Mail every 5 minutes.

Left mail on a webmail server tends to add up very quickly and depends on your ISPs quota allowance before it bounces new mail back. Not a good idea in my opinion.

[heathfield]

If you're on AOl you can keep your address for free, so long as you request this.