Sharing one email address

[SimpleSi]

I've a mate running his own little business with one email address using outlook to receive /send.

 

He want's a colleaque (lives miles away) to help deal with the business emails - is there a way of them both seeing incoming email and also seeing a reply from the other one without shifting to web based mail?

 

regards

 

Simon

[jamesfed]

What does he have setup as a mail server?

[sukh]

Hi

 

They can use POP3 and leave a copy on the server so each can download a copy. It's the replies which are going to be a little tricky.

 

Or, if they use MAPI (exchange/outlook) then they can both open the same mailbox and see incoming and sent items

 

Why not use use a web based email in addition to what they are using now? Be much easier and less hassle?

 

Sukh

[m25man]

Sounds messy but if you tell Outlook to leave a copy of the messages on the POP3 server or use imap on both clients they should be able to maintain a reasonable level of consistency between them.

Downside is that neither will know what the other had actually done with regards responding to a message... very unprofessional.

 

Best solution, a hosted exchange account for each user, work from anywhere then using Outlook properly. Trouble is Microsoft have a minimum qty of 5 mailboxes which on my last return was about £19.60 per month +vat

[john]

You could get a mailserver from someone like Carl at CS New Media, he has Smartermail which is a very good substitute for Exchange if your wanting exchange style feature

[elsiegee40]

I'd play with gmail or similar to see what you can achieve. My mind is working along the lines of 3 accounts. Two personal and the public one that automatically forwards to the personal accounts. Gmail records the messages sent via outlook too. But you might have to come up with a method of automatically copying in the other personal account on a reply sent via the public account.

 

I'm doing some fairly complex combinations using gmail to manage both home and school email accounts via outlook at school and home... enabling me to send from outlook from either account in either place and have gmail as the central record of everything. You need to get creative!

[IT_Guy]

The hard part is getting the other guys sent emails into the sent items box - only way I can think of is to Bcc each other on all emails and add a rule moving the emails into the sent items box.

[eddyc]

I believe that gmail let you do this for free - a friend on mine owns a domain - example.com - yet if you got to mail.example.com you will find that you are redirected to a gmail account. We all share team@example.com - we log in to gmail in effect and can see everything which has been opened\replied to\to be replied to - it seems to do the trick for us!

[elsiegee40]

OP is trying to avoid a web-based solution but TBH anything non web based won't be pretty.

 

Using gmail would at least mean access to both sent and received emails from any hardware in any location for both users.

[mjs_mjs]

I have an IMAP server - i can send and receive from multiple locations all at once and can see everything form each location. I do this with AOL and googlemail.

 

I'm a little confused to the question as the solution seems to be quite simple? - just set both mail clients to look at the same IMAP server? (most have concurrent POP and IMAP functionality)

[SimpleSi]

He's with one.com BTW.

 

Now they seem to have IMAP - does this mean outlook would autosync their sent items folder?

 

I'm pretty much just an email "user" _ i use hotmail/gmail/gmx via web interfaces and set up schools computers to simply download from pop3 accounts to outlook/oe - I've no idea what IMAP is so be gentle people

 

Si

[camel]

I have an IMAP server - i can send and receive from multiple locations all at once and can see everything form each location. I do this with AOL and googlemail.

 

Same here, I connect with Imap to my school and gmail accounts tied to my laptop, phone and when required a browser. All sync'd, no prob.

[Marci]

iMap = messages stay on server in a folder structure. Client devices / software synchronise against that folder structure. Downside - can eat at storage space. iMap seems to be becoming the "norm" for email these days.

 

POP3 = messages are downloaded from the server into a local folder structure on the client, then typically removed from the server.

 

Internet Message Access Protocol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - have a read of the "advantages over POP" section.

[mjs_mjs]

IMAP and POP are very similar to set up - basically when setting up your client you choose IMAP and use the IMAP servers from the provider as opposed to POP

[kili]

As I see it your only solution given that you want to use a client based option such as outlook is that each time you reply to an email you would add the email account your using to send as a recipient under the BCC field this would then send a copy back to you and the other user of the same email account .

Remember to tick the option under outlook to leave a copy on the server for x number of days so that your collegue can pull a copy of the sent item.

 

Could be confusing but it's the only way I can see if you don't want to login to a web based solution

 

Kili