Emails on two computers

[anotheoldgit]

I have set up an email account on both my main computer and on my laptop, both with the same address.
How is it that some emails go to my main computer and some to my laptop, but they never go to both?

[Ethel]

Are you using something like outlook express to collect your mail from your mail providers?

If so, you have set it to delete from email account on collection - so it can only go to one Outlook - the one that gets there first.

[vehelpfulguy]

Not sure Ethel explained it very well (sorry Ethel).

Your e-mail first arrives at your ISPs server.

When you look at your e-mails it downloads them from the server to your PC or laptop.

Once downloaded from the server they are not downloaded again, so they go to EITHER your laptop or your PC, whichever one you used first to look at your mail.

It is possible to set Outlook Express to LEAVE e-mails on the server, so they would download to BOTH your laptop and your PC.

If you want to know how to do that let me know (I did explain it a week or so back on another answer)

[Ethel]

An easy way round this is to open a gmail account - you can have gmail email addresses, but it will also collect email from other email servers - exactly like Outlook.

The difference being that gmail is web-based so all your emails can be accessed from any pc in the world.

It works very well with my blueyonder emails, and other gmail addresses. All on one gmail account.

I found it much easier to set up the pop3 on gmail than either outlook or thunderbird.

[anotheoldgit]

Thank you both Ethel and vehelpfulguy.

Yes vehelpfulguy I would very much like you to explain your method if you would be so kind.

[rojash]

I explained this the other week as well..
In OE, click Tools/Accounts
Go to the Mail tab and click on your email account
Click Properties
Go to the advanced tab and tick the box "leave a copy of messages on server"
Tick the box "remove from server after... ...days
Fill in the number of days so that it's slightly greater than the frequency with which you check your emails on each of the machines - say 3 days.

Do this on both machines.

[anotheoldgit]

Thanks to you also rojash, very helpful.