The other day I began to have problems where Entourage would freeze after a download; after a force quit and restart, the new emails would be there but nothing filtered, and manually running rules was now ineffective. Research showed this was likely due to corruption of the identity, which was confirmed by running a few tests. Recommendation was to export my identity and re-import into a new one.
In order to get away from the issues of having all of my emails into such a massive database (4.7GB covered all emails since 2009 and several important categories going back to 2001- I used Eudora before that) I thought it would be a good idea to move to a more modern client that avoided the fact that Entourage's database scheme made it Time-machine incompatible, and began looking at Outlook and Apple Mail, both of which store emails in individual files.
Outlook 2011 works, but is cluttered (I don't use the calendaring, scheduling, etc. features) and omits several features that were very convenient in Entourage:
-no provision for "After sending, move email to folder X" which allowed me to keep important correspondence in the same folder as that client's incoming emails without having to keep all trivial sent mail forever. This option is very important to my workflow; smart threading in Mail or "sort by conversation" in Outlook helps but require you to keep every "let's have lunch next Thursday" email you send out forever in the Sent folder
-omission of the option to not include an account in the Send & Receive schedule. This was very useful as several of my accounts really represent aliases of my main email account on my server (such accounts being set up with the same login info as the main), allowing me to easily reply from "different" addresses. If I set up those accounts in Outlook, it checks the same account multiple times causing either multiple downloads, a cluttered inbox structure and error messages which aren't really errors but are actually the result of my admittedly convoluted account setup).
Apple's Mail also works, but I am constantly hearing about issues with Mail from this forum and others, especially if the setup has many rules, folders, etc. I'm also worried about Apple's current business model which makes major changes to such important applications rather willy-nilly and forces you to accept them with each system update.
Operationally, I also do not see in Mail an "After sending, move email to folder X" option. .
So the question becomes:
Do I make a new identity in Entourage 2008 and continue to use it? (Seems it's only a matter of time before system updates make it useless)
Do I move into Outlook or Mail and manually move every important email as I send them so I can empty out my Sent folder regularly?
Is there a way to deal with the lack of a "do not include account in the Send & Receive schedule" in Outlook?
Are my concerns about Apple Mail valid or paranoiac?
Is there another third party option that will satisfy all the needs I've described:
- multiple accounts with the option to not include an account in the send/receive schedule;
- the ability to move a new email to a specific folder after sending
- architecture based on individual files and not a huge database
Thanks for taking the time. I appreciate the very helpful input I get from you guys at this forum!
