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GMail

Posted: Thu May 04, 2017 5:49 pm
by dilwyn
Has anyone managed to get Gmail emails sent and received from Windows Live Mail?

I've set it up exactly as Google and others on the web say you should, trouble is it doesn't work, it can't even download the listof folders, it just sits there and hangs and waits forever.

IMAP enabled on Gmail and it's set up as an IMAP Gmail account in WLM as Google describe.

With my existing POP3 email addresses due to be retired shortly, I have wasted two weeks trying to get the Gmail working in anything other than a browser and will find myself with no email whatsoever at this rate.

No suggestions for new email programs or operating systems - it has to work on Windows 7 , Windows Live Mail.

Re: GMail

Posted: Thu May 04, 2017 11:06 pm
by XorA
I have a feeling your being hit by two buggy imap implementations, the Win7 one is very buggy, and the gmail one is too :-(

Re: GMail

Posted: Thu May 04, 2017 11:16 pm
by Dave
You might take a look at zoho.com. They offer functional POP3 and IMAP, and they mostly cater to businesses. You'll like the price, too. A few of my friends use them for IMAP with Windows Live Mail so I know it has the potential to work, at least.

Re: GMail

Posted: Fri May 05, 2017 10:11 am
by dilwyn
XorA wrote:I have a feeling your being hit by two buggy imap implementations, the Win7 one is very buggy, and the gmail one is too :-(
You're right there - this is common to all what I would call "Helpful" comments on the web about this.

It seems that there are tons of messages out there about this issue and no one working solution.

It can be made to work, but it's LUCK. Apparently, install a Gmail address in Windows Live Mail ten times, it might work once. This is exactly what happened to me last night. The sympton of failure in QLM is that it fails to download the folders list, sometimes locks up completely, sometimes times out with an error message. After several attempts (i.e. delete the account from WLM and reinstall the account) it suddenly worked.

I'm still having problems with the dilwyn.me.uk domain - a simple example is try to send email from Gmail to myself, i.e. Gmail to dilwyn.me.uk forwarded in turn back to my Gmail and the emails just disappear into a black hole with no error messages. I raised a ticket with 123-reg about this, they blame gmail, gmail blames them. There is no block on either, so what the hell is going on?

Thank goodness for Alain Haoui's email to ql-users this morning... confirms I can receive from it but none of my test emails are getting through to it, so some way to go yet. Seems I'll be out of touch with the QL scene for a while (apart from via QL Forum) until this gets sorted.

Technology should be getting simpler with time, not ten times harder with every change. Change always seems to be for the worse in the world of IT (like politics?)

Right, back to the anti-depressants :(

Re: GMail

Posted: Fri May 05, 2017 10:12 am
by dilwyn
Dave wrote:You might take a look at zoho.com. They offer functional POP3 and IMAP, and they mostly cater to businesses. You'll like the price, too. A few of my friends use them for IMAP with Windows Live Mail so I know it has the potential to work, at least.
"potential to work". Hmm. I hate that phrase. You mean it might work after several months of frustration, right?

Re: GMail

Posted: Fri May 05, 2017 1:18 pm
by XorA
Windows Live Mail
Is there a reason your stuck with this other than "old habits die hard"? Plenty of IMAP clients for Win7, this single requirement is the source of your problems.

NOTE: gmail is still iffy in Win10 mail, but more reliable than this, so I don't think MS and Google are going to play nice this decade.

Re: GMail

Posted: Fri May 05, 2017 4:42 pm
by Ralf R.
When I changed from XP to 7, where OE (Outlook Express) no longer exists, I changed to Thunderbird, which is very similar to OE and work without problems and was able to import my OE database perfectly.

Thunderbird also works on 8, 8.1 and 10. Just simply copy the folder after a new installation and all is done.

Re: GMail

Posted: Sat May 06, 2017 12:16 pm
by dilwyn
XorA wrote:
Windows Live Mail
Is there a reason your stuck with this other than "old habits die hard"? Plenty of IMAP clients for Win7, this single requirement is the source of your problems.

NOTE: gmail is still iffy in Win10 mail, but more reliable than this, so I don't think MS and Google are going to play nice this decade.
OK, try again for the second time. The first two replies vanished along with Firefox being used to type it.

"old habits die hard"? WLM for all its foibles and bad reputation is pretty close to my ideal email program actually. Too many email programs are overburdened with fdacilities I'll never use.

Gmail is "iffy" full stop. Yesterday, I was away, so WLM was not part of the equation. I got some emails from various people on my phone and thought things were OK. Today, I've been getting phone calls from colleagues to say that while I replied to some of their messages, some from them to me bounced back for no apparent reason. One of them was able to forward a rejection email to my old email address as it's still active for a few days. Email address used correct, no obvious fault except that the 'bounce' claimed the email address was invalid.

Likewise, even when using Gmail from a browser or from the app on my phone, some messages get through, some just vanish - no bounce messages, just recipients don't receive them. No pattern, seemingly just random. It'll work for a while, stop working, start working again. Tallies with my son's experience of Gmail (he uses Mail on Win10).

Re: GMail

Posted: Sat May 06, 2017 9:17 pm
by Dave
That sounds like it could be a few things. Do you have a SPF field in your DNS record? If not, some mail servers will just randomly blackhole your emails without any returned error.

Re: GMail

Posted: Sat May 06, 2017 10:29 pm
by dilwyn
Dave wrote:That sounds like it could be a few things. Do you have a SPF field in your DNS record? If not, some mail servers will just randomly blackhole your emails without any returned error.
I don't know what that means (yet) but sounds worth looking into.