Maggie's Farm

I started off with a Google search for "best free email program review" and went through a number of sites that listed out the current free email programs.  I installed and tested about ten of them.

The reason I said "true multiple identities" up above is because a few of them claimed to support multiple identities, but all that meant was that you could change the 'From' box when sending a message.  The incoming mail to all of the so-called "identities" still went to the same 'Inbox'.  And, inevitably you'd be answering some nasty troll and be so wound up that you'd forget the change the 'From' box and send it using your real address — and now the troll knows your last name, if not your full name.  I cringe to think how many people have screwed themselves over by forgetting to change that 'From' box.  Hence the need to find a program that does it correctly, even if it costs some bread.

At that point I turned to the commercial market, searching Amazon.com, Egghead Software, etc, and soon stumbled across a program with the embarrassing name of "The Bat!"  Somebody obviously spent way too much time watching action flicks in his youth.

Unfortunately, embarrassing name and all, it works perfectly.

And, in a way, it actually does a better job with the identities than Outlook Express (OE).  As noted, it costs a whopping $35, but at least it does the trick.  Home site is here.  Just get the 'Home' edition.  It has a 30-day trial period if you want to test it out first.
 

Installation

Assuming you're using some kind of full-system backup routine, like either the built-in one with Vista or a commercial program like True Image, you should install the program on a partition other than the C Drive.  That way, should you have a catastrophic meltdown and restore an older C Drive, you won't lose any of your email.

Note to Gmail users: When you set up your first identity and get to the point where you enter the names of the POP and SMTP servers, you'll notice that Bat has already done it for you but it's probably using "pop3" in the name.  Remove the '3', and don't forget to remove it when setting up future Gmail accounts.

Also, don't forget that many mail servers (like Gmail) require your full email address as your login name, so when you get to the 'username' part, add the rest of the address to your name if necessary.

Important: When you get to the Setup panel, click on the 'User-defined directory' button.  You'll notice that it goes from saving the email on the C Drive (in your 'users' folder) to keeping it in the same directory the program is in, hopefully/presumably on a different drive.
 

Global Options

First, let's make the overall layout more like OE.  Go to the View Menu, 'Window Split Mode', select the third option.  Grab the bars between the windows and adjust them so the size is correct.  You can also grab the bars between the 'Name', 'Unread' and 'Total' above the left-side window and make the columns narrower, and you can overlap the 'Total' column with the right-side window if you don't care about a 'total' figure.

To get rid of the unnecessary tool bar above the right-hand windows, click inside the tool bar with the right mouse button and deselect 'Configuration' and 'Quick Search'.

Go to the Options Menu, 'Preferences'.  Click on 'Viewer/Editor' and set all four boxes to 'HTML'.  You might want to uncheck the "Use smiley icons..." box while you're there.  Click on 'Profile Layout' and set the 'Font face' to 'Arial' and the size to '10'.

Note: If you don't have an anti-virus program running, click on 'Anti-Virus' and turn it on.

If you want to play with the looks of the program, go to View Menu, 'Themes'.  The 'Office11Adaptive' is a nice look.  Similar to the default theme but the icons are crisper.

If you want to get rid of the annoying box that pops onto the Task Bar every time it looks for mail, that's View Menu, 'Show Connection Centre'.  Hide it.

You also might want to clean up the tool bar in the editing window a bit.  Right-click on the bar and open 'Customise'.  Highlight 'Formatting' on the left.  Expand the areas in the middle box.  The box on the right is what's already on the tool bar.  I removed 'Insert Smiley' and a few others, including the 'Background colour' entry so I don't accidentally click on it instead of the 'Text colour' button.
 

Individual Account Settings

At the bottom of the Account Menu is a "Properties' entry.  Whichever account is currently highlighted on the left (whether it's the actual name or just one of the folders) is the Properties that will be active.

Highlight the first identity and open the Properties.  You'll basically do the same steps for each account.

Click on 'Transport'.  While many email hosts (like Gmail) have an online Help page dealing with different email programs, I haven't seen any for this thing.  But it should work either straight away, or by trying a few adjustments.

If you can, you should open your old email program and look over the account's settings. What you're looking for are the 'port' numbers and whether it needs a 'secure connection'.  (Note that 'secure connection' is different than 'secure authentication')  If the old program uses a secure connection, that's usually the 'TLS' setting.  If it doesn't, that would be the 'Regular' setting and any problem will probably be with the 'port' numbers.

If you can't access the old program, start off by switching both 'Connection' boxes to 'TLS'.  Open the second 'Authentication' box and set it to 'Regular'.  OK the boxes closed and send yourself a test email.  Look down in the status bar for any error messages.

If it doesn't work, open Properties back up and set both 'TLS' boxes to 'Regular'.  Try another test.  If that doesn't work, use 'Regular' and set the 'Port' boxes to '26' and '110'.

You'll also want to double-check that your login name is correct and both server names.  If it's a password problem, it'll let you know specifically.

If it still doesn't work, hoof it over to your ISP's web site and look for an online Help file on how to set up email programs.  It'll be there somewhere.  They probably won't have a specific entry for Bat, so look over the Outlook Express figures.  If that fails, call 'em on the phone.
 

Once it's working, open Properties back up.  Click on 'General', then check the box down at the bottom.  See the note about this feature at the bottom of this post.  There's a small snag.

Click on 'Options' and check the first two boxes.  Set the check-your-mail time to whatever you want.  Click on 'Files & directories', click on the second 'Browse' button and pick out a handy location to save any file attachments.

Now click on 'New message'.  One very poor thing Bat does with New messages and Replies is add a bunch of unnecessary crap to the email.  In the box to the right, delete everything.  Go to the Format Menu and select 'HTML'.  Click on 'Reply' over to the left and again delete everything in the window.  Then go to the Macros Menu and select 'Text', '%TEXT'.  Go to the Format Menu and select 'HTML'.

If you'd like to have it play a sound file when mail arrives, click on 'Sound'.  The stock Windows sound files are in C:\Windows\Media.  If you'd like to use the classic Windows sound, it's here.

If you want to clean up some of clutter at the top of the message list window, one very nice feature in Bat is that it allows you to customize each folder.  For example, you don't need a "To" header in the 'Inbox' because — duh! — you already have a pretty good idea who it's to.  Likewise, you don't need a 'From' header in the 'Outgoing' and 'Sent' areas since it's a pretty good bet that you're the one who sent it.

To change them, first click on the appropriate folder, then go to the View Menu, 'Message List Columns'.  I uncheck 'Message Flags', 'Parking' and 'Flagging' from every folder and then modify it by maybe removing a 'From' or 'To'.
 

Adding Additional Accounts

To add another account, just go to the Account Menu, 'New'.  Run through the same process, then open the new account's Properties and make the above adjustments.
 

Importing Messages

This imported all of my OE messages (from four identities) just fine.

Click on the account name, go to the Tools Menu, 'Import Messages'.  Select the 'Mailbox Import Wizard'.  Select your email program on the first panel.  If you were using OE, it was probably version '5x / 6x'.

On the next panel, navigate your way to the folder than contains your old email database files.  If you don't have a clue where they are, see note below.

On the next panel, open the 'Local Folders' area.  Uncheck the folders you don't want, click 'Next'.  In its blunt honesty it says it "may take a long time", and if you're importing a ton of email, this is true.

After the import process is finished, open the 'Local Folders' entry on the left of the program.  Click on a folder and the messages should appear to the right.  Click in the message listing box and hit Ctrl-A to highlight them all, then grab one of the icons with the mouse and d-r-a-g them over to the real folder.  When everything's moved, delete the 'Local Folders' entry.

If you're importing mail into multiple identities, you'll have to close down the program in between imports or the panel that lets you pick out the proper folder won't open.

If you have no idea where your old email resides, it depends on what program you were using.  If it was a second-party program, like Eudora, Opera or Thunderbird, the database files will hopefully be stashed somewhere in the program folder.  Their names should be the same as your email folders; "inbox", "outbox", etc, and the file dates are a big clue.  Their 'last modified' dates should be the last time you closed the email program.  If you can't find them, do a Windows Search for "inbox" or "outbox" and hopefully they'll pop up.

If you were using Outlook (not 'Express'), the database files are buried somewhere in the 'Windows' folder.  Use Windows Search to sniff them out.

If you were using Outlook Express, open C Drive, Documents and Settings, your user-name folder, Application Data, Identities.  If you don't see an Application Data folder, go to the window's Tools Menu, 'Folder Options', click on the 'View' tab and check "Show hidden files".

Inside of the 'Identities' folder are a bunch of numbered folders.  Your files are inside one of them.  Look for a set of files that match your email folders ("inbox", "outbox", etc), and if you find more than one set, check their file dates for the ones that match the last time you closed the program.
 

Importing Your Address Book

Unless you were using Outlook Express, try the following.  From the Tools Menu, select 'Address Book'.  From its File Menu, select 'Import from'.  Select your email program if it's listed.  If it's not, fire up the old program, open its address book and export the database in every format it can.  Hopefully it'll have 'comma-separated' or 'tab-delimited' and can then be imported into Bat.

If you were using OE, presumably you used its address book to export a WAB (Windows Address Book) file somewhere.  If you didn't, do so now.  Double-click on the WAB file and Vista will import the contents into Windows Contacts, the address book for Windows Mail.

In Bat's address book, 'import from', 'Windows Mail'.  The entries should appear above and the 'Imported Windows Mail Contacts' folder should be highlighted on the left.  Since your main address book is the 'Personal' folder, highlight all of the imported entries and d-r-a-g them over to the 'Personal' folder and drop them in.
 

Misc Notes

— When you open the editor to write a new message, the default box is probably way too large.  Resize it, then go to its View Menu and select 'Store window position'.  This is a global setting.

— You'll notice an 'Inbox - Known' entry over to the left.  Since you're not going to use this ditzy routine, right-click on it and delete it.

— You'll notice a small column to the left of any message with a file attachment or written with an HTML editor like we use.  Click on the column with the right mouse button and select 'View', 'Hide'.  That'll put any file attachments over to the right of the message, like it does in OE.  This is a global setting.

— If you have a message half-written and want to save it, just close the editing box.  It'll ask you if you want to save it, then it'll store it in the 'Outgoing' folder.  Double-click on it to open the editor back up.

— To make your own folders, click on the identity's name with the right mouse button and select 'New', 'Folder'.  If you want to move it up or down in the window, right-click on it.  To move a message, just grab it with the mouse and d-r-a-g it over to the icon of the proper folder on the left.

— Because of security issues, Bat doesn't allow for attachments such as pictures to be displayed from commercial sites until you give it the go-ahead.  The emails from Netflix are a good example, as they contain small images of the movie embedded along with the text.  To approve a site, click on the big globe icon that appears on the upper-right of the message.  Click 'Allow' and close the window.

As you might have noticed by now, one big improvement over OE is that Bat gets the mail for every identity when it fires up.  Then you click on the appropriate 'Inbox' and away you go.  Displaying the identities together was a nice improvement.
 

Bugs

No program's perfect, of course, so there are bound to be a few snags with Bat.  Here's what I've run up against:

— The Address Book remains selected on the same 'Group' folder no matter which account you're sending email from.  As such, if you actually want different address lists for each account, open the Address Book, right-click in the folder area to the left and select 'New Group'.  For easy reference, make the group name the same as the account name.  Then, when you click on the little "To:" when sending mail, you can flip the menu to whichever address list you want.

— At the bottom of the Properties page is a checkbox where you tell the program which account should be the default when sending someone a web page using the browser's 'Send Link as E-Mail' function.  If none of the accounts are the default address, a box pops up when you send the link and asks you which return address you'd like to use, but the hitch is that it also requires the email password.  If an account is checked as the default in Properties, it doesn't.

The snag is that you might not want to send someone a web page using the default return address, at which point you'll have to go to the 'View' menu, skip down to 'Message Header' and select the 'From:' entry.  That'll display the 'From:' box in the email, at which point you can delete the default return address and put in the one you want.

— This thing needs a 'Lock Toolbar' really bad.  Both the bar with the headings ("Messages", "Specials", etc), as well as the one with the buttons, can be moved with the mouse, not only within the top part of the program, but actually undocked.  The problem is accidentally grabbing one with the mouse and then having to rearrange things.  You'll (eventually) see what I mean.  Don't panic when it happens.  Just reach for the edge until the pointer turns into that little 4-way pointer and then gently grab it and move it to where it goes.

— Amazingly, there's no 'Indent' feature in this thing.  I went down the list in the 'Customise' area of the editor's tool bar about nineteen times, looking for things like 'Indent', 'Quote', 'Blockquote', and came up with nuttin'.  That's kind of discouraging and it's the only true 'minus point' about the program I've seen.  The only way I can figure out to indent a paragraph is to (cough!) manually use the Tab key to indent each line.  There's a forum on the Bat site and a few others were complaining about it, but none of the suggestions worked.

— The 'center justify' doesn't work, either with pictures or text.  Ditto 'right justify', etc.  They don't work inside of Tables, either.  While the above bugs could almost be understood (assuming the progammers were morons), the 'justify' commands are some of the simplest commands to write in the programming galaxy.  They had to really try to screw this one up.

If you're writing something somewhat important and you want to use one of the justifications, just use Windows Mail.  Set it up ahead of time, and if you're an ex-OE user, your addresses should already be in Windows Contacts.
 

Discounting a few snags and a horrific name, The Bat! appears to be a very well thought-out program, is customizable as hell, and handles multiple identities perfectly.  It has a 30-day free trial period so it won't hurt anything to give it a spin.