Odd email problem

[Muse]

I don't remember encountering anything like this. I sent a party an email yesterday afternoon, someone I'd never emailed before, I wanted to order a birthday cake for my mom's party in 10 days. I found her on Yelp. She responded to my email within a few hours with details, ideas, information. Early today I responded, from the same computer using the same email client (Forte Agent 1.93x), and I get a strange reply asking why I didn't respond. I replied to that and got no response. Later I call her and she explains that my last two emails didn't have a body. I'd cc'd the last email to myself and the version I got did indeed have the body. I sent her another email after I talked to her on the phone, got an email this afternoon from her but my impression is that she didn't see my last email either. What could be going on here? I didn't ask her anything about her computer, etc. I will probably call her tomorrow and ask if she's using a Mac or a PC, don't know what else to say. What do you think?

 

[Muse]

Had a talk with my ISP tech support. The guy says he's seen problems like this. My email client is text only and he said hers may be HTML only and won't accept plain text. Seems odd to me, but I suppose it's possible. She sent me another email saying my posts aren't going through and she gave me an alternate address, her Yahoo email account. I pasted my last two posts to her at that address, also sent them from my ISP's webmail. We can really just get it all set up on the phone, but it's weird that email isn't working. I'm sure she does a fair amount of business, seems odd that she hasn't encountered this before. My email client is not common, though. But I've been using it for over 10 years never had this problem AFAIK.

 

[lxskllr]

Looks like Forte isn't primarily meant for email. Seems it's primary purpose is a newsgroup reader. The current stable version is 7.x. Yours is waaaay out of date; it's also proprietary.

 

[Muse]

Looks like Forte isn't primarily meant for email. Seems it's primary purpose is a newsgroup reader. The current stable version is 7.x. Yours is waaaay out of date; it's also proprietary.

However, it works nicely... usually, integrates newsgroups and email pretty well (a lot better than the freeware version I used initially) is very attractive interface, and I have all my data in there (approaching 2GB now) from more than a decade (back to Dec. 1996!). It's very easy to use, I have probably hundreds of filters set up, have a couple of dozen folders, plus scores or newsgroup subscriptions, although nowadays I don't follow newsgroups on a routine basis. Plus, the newer versions have their own issues, would be another set of problems to learn and deal with and I'd have to pay. There's a newsgroup dedicated to Forte Agent and when I have a problem I can go there and usually get expert help from smart dedicated users.

I'm wondering why she got the first email and none of the next several. My idea is that she was using a different system with a different reader. I'll ask her today.

If I could import my data from Forte Agent into a different email program, maybe I'd transition. Might look into that some time. I started off using their freeware version long time ago, then IIRC a free beta and then bought the version I'm using now. Many others are still using my version. The menus are a little opaque but with some hunting around I can usually find out what I'm looking for and there is incredibly extensive help built in. It's rather full featured. I don't crave something else. I've used Outlook, wasn't impressed.

 

[mikeymikec]

On the whole, Mozilla Thunderbird is my friend. An irritation for me is how they like to mess around with the UI every other version lately without regard for how their UI changes might conflict with the changes users have made, but so far their UI changes have been completely reversible.

 

[Muse]

On the whole, Mozilla Thunderbird is my friend. An irritation for me is how they like to mess around with the UI every other version lately without regard for how their UI changes might conflict with the changes users have made, but so far their UI changes have been completely reversible.

The ISP support guy I talked to last night said he had good experiences with Thunderbird too. I'd consider trying it if there was some way I could import my email data into it. I don't know how feasible that is. It might have a lot to do with how accommodating Thunderbird is in terms of its architecture. I have newsgroups, folders, filters.

 

[mikeymikec]

I don't know what system your program uses to store e-mail, but there's an add-on for Thunderbird called ImportExportTools which handles the most basic format that some programs use.

It might be worth asking on MozillaZine and/or googling to find out what format your program uses to store its e-mail in, and hopefully you'll find a stepping stone to TB.

Thunderbird is a usenet client and has the concept of mail folders and filters.

I hate the look of modern Thunderbird out of the box though, I tend to customise it to look very similar to the way it did in version 2

I haven't used newsgroups in years though, so I don't know of TB's shortcomings in that respect.

 

[lxskllr]

This might be of use...

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/netscape.public.mozilla.mail-news/2w1QgSIlXGg

I strongly suggest finding a libre replacement for Forte. It won't be good forever. The day will come when it won't run on anything but an antique, and unlike many things, there's nothing cool about an antique computer. Antique computers are ugly and slow, and after getting over the novelty of seeing something ancient that still runs, there isn't much left. There's little joy in actual use.