Many of you might recall that I recently migrated (unsuspectingly) from
Outlook Express/Windows Mail to Windows Live Mail. You might also recall
that I suffered much consternation in that some of my messages were not
being sent; instead getting bogged down in the "Outbox" because of a sending
error.
Well, I'm posting this to warn all of you of a couple of little nasty
"features" (I consider them bugs) in Windows Live Mail.
For those of you that use or formerly used Outlook Express/Windows Mail that
entries in the address book permitted several e-mail addresses to be listed
for any single contact. And you might also know that if you did in fact
list several e-mail addresses for any given contact that one of those
addresses was identified as the default address and that's the address
Outlook Express/Windows Mail would use if you typed the person's name in any
of the address fields. Hence, you could keep a running list of a friend's
e-mail addresses as they might migrate from service to service, never
needing to get rid of the old address(es).
Well, Windows Live Mail doesn't quite work that way. If it should find your
old Contacts list from Windows Mail or your old address book from Outlook
Express it will use the first e-mail address in the specific addressee's
specifications.
To boot (as if this isn't bad enough), if that now invalid address just
happens to resolve to the same domain as yourself the e-mail will not get
sent.
So, here's what happened to my e-mail procedures that caused me so much
consternation:
1) a school boy friend had changed his ISP from Centurytel to Charter so I
had two addresses for him:
MyBuddy'sn...@centurytel.net
MyBuddy'sn...@charter.net (the current one and default)
2) as you may know, "centurytel.net" is the domain of my own ISP
3) addressing Loren placed the "centurytel.net" address in the "To:" list
(rather than the "charter.net" one)
4) in sending out jokes, I have several groups established with about 45
addressees and naturally Loren is in one of those lists
5) since Loren's address included my own ISP domain, it was (apparently)
checked for validity before sending to any of the addressees.
6) the message would go out to none of the addressees, getting stuck in the
Outbox with a sending error flagged at the bottom of the page
7) "knowing" I had Loren's address right, I started testing, sending to
each member of the lists individually and naturally not bothering to send to
Loren since I "knew" his address was correct.
8) when I finally had to suppose that Loren's address was incorrect, I
tried sending to him -- found the failing recipient, but why
9) Took me another hour or so to discover that the old (first) address was
being placed in the address field.
Now, I've tried this specifically with a mail ID I pretty well can assume is
incorrect: "NoBody@" where I sent a message to both nob...@centurytel.net
(immediately failed) and to nob...@charter.net (got sent, but naturally
bounced).
Just thought you may want to know about this to save you the grief,
frustration, consternation and agitation I experienced.
----
Holland's Person, Bill
E-Mail: billgal...@centurytel.net
- "All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit
it. I myself deny it."
- US Editor and Satirist, H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
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