Thunderbird and Plusnet

[Simpo Two]

Evening all. Just dropping in because I've finally replaced my 2007 PC with a new one, and am spending a few days trying to get it to do all the stuff in Win 10 that my old PC did so happily in XP.

I've hit a brick wall with e-mail. First, I don't want the cloud, I like my stuff in my box on my desk, and I believe that means we're talking 'POP3'. So the task is to migrate from Outlook Express (XP) to Thunderbird (Win 10). I've succeeded in importing all my e-mails into Thunderbird on the new machine, but Thunderbird won't download any new ones. When I click 'Get Messages' it wants a password, so I put the password in, but comes back with the same message: 'Enter your password for [e-mail] on mail.metronet.co.uk' Brick wall.

My e-mail is a Metronet e-mail address. Metronet was taken over by Plusnet who are currently my ISP. So I rang them to see if they could sort it out. They said they were having 'server issues'. I pointed out that my old PC, running Outlook Express, still receives e-mails, so how can it be the server? He went off to think about it and came back and implied it was something to do with Thunderbird. He said I can use their webmail (no thanks) or wait until it's fixed. But he said the problem has been going on for months (!) which doesn't bode well for any quick fix.

Can anyone confirm this is true? Or does the problem lie in having a Metronet e-mail address? Either way, are there any other programmes that support POP3 worth trying please?

[xeny]

Windows has a built in email client "Mail" that seems to support POP3, so that's probably worth a try.

Hope you're doing something to back your local (so only) copies of any critical email up.....

[e-honda]

What ever your setup, migrate away from a legacy email address.
It comes up time and again that people use thier old isp's email address for a decade or 2 and eventually the new isp tires of maintaining the legacy systems and shuts them down, often with relatively short notice.
Migrate away now while you can do it on your own time scale.

[Simpo Two]

Thanks for the ideas. I looked at Mail; didn't think it supported POP3 but but will have to investigate further.

Re the old e-mail, how can it be working on one machine with one set of software, but not on another with modern software?

Anyway, I got a support message from Plusnet saying 'As discussed, your issue with accessing client mail (thunderbird) is mainly because of the ongoing server issue that currently doesn't have a estimated time fix.' That suggests they either have no idea and/or aren't very interested in fixing it. Or could it be a Thunderbird issue? I'm out of my depth here.

Changing e-mail address is a last resort as I've had it for 20+ years and it's set up with everything; changing it is guaranteed to be a nightmare of confusion I feel. In practice, because it was originally set up for business, I use redirects so I maybe the trick is to get the person who... no actually I've just run out of knowledge!

[jan8p]

Can you post a screenshot of the connection settings from Outlook Express (XP) and Thunderbird (Win10) so we can compare?

This will probably be something very simple, because if POP3 is working on Outlook Express, it will work on Thunderbird.

[Simpo Two]

jan8p said:

Can you post a screenshot of the connection settings from Outlook Express (XP) and Thunderbird (Win10) so we can compare?

This will probably be something very simple, because if POP3 is working on Outlook Express, it will work on Thunderbird.

Not very easily, but I can type them out. When you say 'connection settings' do you mean the window/tab with server name, user name, port, and SMTP? Thanks for the ray of hope :-)

[xeny]

Simpo Two said:

Changing e-mail address is a last resort as I've had it for 20+ years and it's set up with everything

Outlook express at this point is out of the ark. Plusnet I suspect have very few customers using Metronet email addresses, and are probably putting stuff all effort into sorting out the problem - it's not impossible the guy from Metronet who understood the email system has jumped ship since the takeover.

I'd second the move email service, and it is it is far easier to do while the old email account works. The last thing you want is a message saying they're discontinuing it with say a month of notice.

Just to p you off, the smart thing to do is probably to move to a cloud based service, either Gmail or Microsoft's, because then you can change ISP with impunity.

[Brainpox]

Simpo Two said:

Changing e-mail address is a last resort as I've had it for 20+ years and it's set up with everything; changing it is guaranteed to be a nightmare of confusion I feel.

All the more reason to start migrating now, while you still have some access to that email address, rather than when it dies altogether.

Can't help with your original problem unfortunately. You are relying on outdated tech. Not believing in the cloud is nonsense to be honest, everything online is stored somewhere. The cloud is just a friendly term for it. Before you download them, your emails are on the cloud. But with your methods, once you've downloaded them to one PC, you can't get them anywhere else.

[fuzzymonkey]

We've had multiple people post on here in the last 6 months of email issues when their ISP gets rid of the old domain name from 15 years ago They were all up st creak without a paddle!

Use this as a chance to move over to a more modern service as 100% they will not keep your address in the future...

[Dolf Stoppard]

Are you my Dad? I only ask because he too clung to the idea of using Thunderbird with an old Sky / Yahoo address. I eventually persuaded him to move over to Gmail and he loves it. No sync issues and no future issues. Use the web client now while you still can.and start migrating over.

[xeny]

I think Thunderbird will handle gmail via IMAP, although I've not personally tried:https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-and-gmail

[jan8p]

Simpo Two said:

Not very easily, but I can type them out. When you say 'connection settings' do you mean the window/tab with server name, user name, port, and SMTP? Thanks for the ray of hope :-)

Yes!

[Simpo Two]

OK, all good replies, thank you for the ideas and options.

I think I'd rather go one step at a time, so the first thing is to fiddle with settings to see if that works. Then later I can worry about changing address and the redirects. The problem really is that I never quite understood how it all joins together, and because OE has been so reliable and just works, it's not something I've had to look at. 'If it ain't broke don't fix it' is my motto for computers - the only reason for buying a new machine was that the browsers were no longer supported for XP so bits of the internet were increasingly missing.

Jan8p - I'll send you a PM if you don't mind rather than put stuff in the public domain.

[xeny]

on the windows 10 PC, "snipping tool" will let you take screen shots easily - click on the start menu and just start typing blindly to find it.

The easies to install free screen shot tool for XP that I can remember is mwsnap - http://www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/mwsnap.html just download the zip file and unzip it.

[Simpo Two]

Thanks everyone for all their ideas. I will abandon the Metronet address before too long but meantime the good news is that it's working. The issue was passwords - there seem to be two in the Plusnet system.

I've even managed to get an OE address book from Office 2000 on XP into Thunderbird on Win10, so I'm feeling ahead of the game today

Thanks to James for helping me check stuff and making sure I wasn't going bonkers.

[jan8p]

Glad it’s working!