Sharing a POP3 account with Outlook Express

Most people will dedicate a POP3 account for Mail Print usage but it is possible to share an account between both Mail Print and a standard e-mail client like Outlook Express. This FAQ entry will explain how this works, some of the risks and how to set it up for Outlook Express.

Most e-mail clients including Mail Print can be configured to either delete messages from your server as soon as they have been read or leave them on the server and keep a note of the id (identity field) so they don't get retrieved the next time the software connects to the server.

We can use the ability to leave the messages on the server to allow two clients, Mail Print and Outlook Express, to share a single POP3 account. In order to make sure the POP3 account gets cleaned out we can tell Outlook Express to delete messages after a certain period so you don't use up all your storage quota on the server.

There is a small risk to this configuration which depends on how well behaved the mail server software at your ISP is. Most mail servers will stop you from using two clients to connect simultaneously so if both Mail Print and Outlook Express connected at exactly the same time one would get locked out while the other did it's work and the system will be robust. If however you find your mail server isn't quite so well behaved then you could potentially loose some messages to one of the clients. The risk is small but if it is a worry to you then you need to dedicate a POP3 account to each client.

In the account setup in Mail Print we make sure the option "Delete Mail after Printing" is off. In Outlook Express in the account properties we make sure the options "Leave a copy of messages on server" and "Remove from server after" are both set and enter the number of days that is likely to be the biggest interval between checking, probably 7 days would be a good value.

Now both Mail Print and Outlook Express will receive every message and Outlook Express will be responsible for purging the old messages.