Scott on Writing

Musings on technical writing...

A Neat Idea, but a Poor Implementation

Last week I blogged about using GMail as an online email backup service. Essentially, I added an Outlook rule that auto-forwarded all incoming messages to my GMail account. The idea was that I could then check this account when away from my desktop computer to see my latest messages. I think the idea is grand and useful, but using Outlook rules to accomplish this is far less than ideal.

This morning I turned off the Outlook rules due to the following three annoyances:

  1. Outlook forwarded every incoming message to GMail. Problem is, 90+% of the email I get is spam. SpamBayes scuttles about 99% of the spam I get to a Junk Email folder, so I don't see it in my Inbox. However, my GMail account is flooded with spams, and the GMail filters only catch a small percentage of the deluge of crapola.
  2. Since every message is forwarded by Outlook, every message has the little 'forwarded' icon next to it (versus the unread message icon). Just an aesthetics thing, but annoying, since I use that as a visual cue to quickly determine how the message has been handled (unread, replied to, or forwarded). Furthermore, the forwarded messages sent to GMail have my signature, the subject line prepended with FW:, and so on.  More aesthetic issues...
  3. My Sent Mail folder exploded in size. Since I get hundreds of emails a day and each and every one was forwarded to my GMail account, I end up with a Sent Mail folder that has a lot of bloat, including forwards of all those spams mentioned in complaint #1. Furthermore, Google Desktop Search - which I use to quickly search my Inbox - returns a bunch of crap results from the Sent Mail folder.

So I've suspended forwarding my incoming mail to GMail. I think the idea is a good one, but it needs to be implemented at the POP server level, and only after aggressive spam filtering has taken place. Ideally, there would be some service that would very often poll my computer for changes to 'important files' and, if I am online (which I always am, unless the DSL is down), it would backup those changes to some online respository (like GMail) from which I could easily restore later or view/download the files from some remote location.  (Say I'm on the road and forgot to move over an important file to the laptop. I could just hop onto the online service and pull down the file, or any past revision of the file that was backed up.)

Speaking of GMail uses, Arjan Zuidhof left the following comment in my blog entry about using GMail as an email backup service:

Scott, since you mentioned the Knowledge Base tip some time ago, I've used GMail for this. Took an hour to happily subscribe to all newsletters and mailinglists I stopped subscribing to since blogs and RSS arrived. Since then, more than 10.000 items pile up there, taking about 5-6% of my space. However, I find that in practice, I'm rarely using GMail to find stuff. Google itself has indexed the net in such a superb way, that this extra knowledge base is actually a bit superflous. In the end, everything in my inbox is also indexed by Google, because it's available at some URL.

Arjan, I've found the same thing - why bother searching the GMail KB when Google search can do such a good job on its own. I still do think GMail is a great resource for effectively managing listservs, and if you are on private, non-indexed listservs, then the archiving/searching functionality is quite useful. However, for general, public listservs, you're right - using GMail as a knowledge base, while cool in theory, is really not too useful in execution.

posted on Thursday, October 20, 2005 8:57 AM

Feedback

# re: A Neat Idea, but a Poor Implementation 10/20/2005 11:47 AM hurcane

If you "redirect" a message instead of "forward" a message, you don't get the funny messages. That doesn't solve your problem of letting SpamBayes process the mail before Outlook redirects it, but now you know. :-)

# re: A Neat Idea, but a Poor Implementation 10/20/2005 12:13 PM Scott Mitchell

hurcane, I don't see a redirect option in the Rules Wizard for Outlook 2003.

# re: A Neat Idea, but a Poor Implementation 10/20/2005 8:17 PM James Walsh

I have my own domain, so I setup my email address as a group address, forwarding to my pop3 (outlook) account, and my gmail account. (This means spam still gets through, but Gmail filters most of it out).

I then added the below sub to the Outlook VBA (This Outlook Session). This will automatically add your gmail account to the BCC of every message you send. (You'll have to set Outlook's Macro security to "low").

As a side point, you can use gmail to check and reply to messages when you are away from Outlook. Just BCC the ones you send to your pop3 account.

Comments to: walshy(at)walshy(dot)net

--------------

Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
Dim objRecip As Recipient
Dim strMsg As String
Dim res As Integer
Dim strBCC As String

' #### USER OPTIONS ####
' address for Bcc -- must be SMTP address or resolvable
' to a name in the address book
strBCC = "name@gmail.com"

On Error Resume Next
Set objRecip = Item.Recipients.Add(strBCC)
' handle case of user canceling Outlook security dialog
If Err = 287 Then
strMsg = "Could not add a Bcc recipient " & _
"because the user said No to the security prompt." & _
" Do you want still to send the message?"
res = MsgBox(strMsg, vbYesNo + vbDefaultButton1, _
"Security Prompt Cancelled")
If res = vbNo Then
Cancel = True
Else
objRecip.Delete
End If
Err.Clear
Else
objRecip.Type = olBCC
objRecip.Resolve
If Not objRecip.Resolved Then
strMsg = "Could not resolve the Bcc recipient. " & _
"Do you want still to send the message?"
res = MsgBox(strMsg, vbYesNo + vbDefaultButton1, _
"Could Not Resolve Bcc Recipient")
If res = vbNo Then
Cancel = True
End If
End If
End If

Set objRecip = Nothing
End Sub

# re: A Neat Idea, but a Poor Implementation 10/21/2005 5:58 AM Aaron Seet (icelava)

True that Google has done a good job indexing many a great "discussion" throughout the Internet, but there were times when I couldn't find an answer via Google and its extension of newsgroups and forums content, and instead found it directly in my personal cache of mailing list emails.

My sequence pattern is something like:
1. Google
2. Google groups
3. Own list emails (MSN Search for Outlook)

sometimes 2 and 3 are swapped.

# re: A Neat Idea, but a Poor Implementation 10/21/2005 8:34 AM Ivan V.

As hurcane says, why not redirect, at the server level. That's what I do, and after a while, Gmail has learned to classify most of the spam. Of the 2000+ spams I get on a month, barely 20 get to my inbox.

Just redirect your main address to your gmail one, and retrieve your mail from gmail. This way is more transparent, and has the added advantage that you don't need outlook open all the time. And since gmail marks all pop-retrieved e-mail as read and archived (there's an option), when you're not on your office you can use gmail and you'll know which messages are new.

Try it, I highly recommend it.

# Using GMail for all of your e-mail 10/21/2005 9:02 AM Giddy Up! - Erik Lane's Blog

# re: A Neat Idea, but a Poor Implementation 10/21/2005 10:07 AM Scott Mitchell

Ivan/hurcane, I don't know if I have that level of control at the mail server level. That is, I don't know if my ISP allows me to auto-forward mail, I'll have to look into it. It doesn't appear that WebHost4Life.com allows auto-forwarding...

# re: A Neat Idea, but a Poor Implementation 10/21/2005 11:01 AM Ivan V.

Scott, a quick check through your provider's hosting packages shows they do support e-mail forwarding even on their most basic package, so you're good to go!

# re: A Neat Idea, but a Poor Implementation 10/21/2005 12:45 PM Scott Mitchell

You're right Ivan, forwarding is supported. It's not configurable through the regular, online mail client, I had to login through the administrative interface. But sure enough, found it and now have all my mail except @4GuysFromRolla.com going through Gmail.

My next concern, which hopefully y'all can allay, is replying with the right email address. That is, I *had* four POP accounts coming into Outlook, and my email address when replying to an email would be based on the account the message came from. But now I just have two POP accounts (4Guys and GMail), even though GMail has three POP accounts forwarding to it. Problem is, when I reply from the GMail account in Outlook, I don't know how to make Outlook use the right email address...

# re: A Neat Idea, but a Poor Implementation 10/21/2005 2:17 PM Ivan V.

I just quickly checked if you could achieve it using VBA (in Outlook), but it seems you can't. Tough luck.

Try Thunderbird. That's what I use (since I no longer need Outlook's PIM features). It does what you want.

# re: A Neat Idea, but a Poor Implementation 10/22/2005 12:03 PM Erik Lane

Scott,

I have the same issue but in Outlook XP or 2003 (not sure which version) allows for selecting which email account to send the email through.

For my accounts that are being forwarded to GMail I still have them setup in Outlook but only "send" messages enabled...no recieving of messages.

# A Neat Idea and the RIGHT Implementation 10/23/2005 1:16 AM Scott on Writing

# re: A Neat Idea, but a Poor Implementation 4/26/2006 6:42 AM Fred

I would like to know how to redirect messages from Outlook to Gmail. What exactly does one do to create this? I can't figure it out in Outlook.

# re: A Neat Idea, but a Poor Implementation 4/26/2006 7:13 AM Scott Mitchell

Fred, you can create an Outlook rule that automatically forwards all incoming email to a specified address. However, as I mentioned in this blog entry, it is less than ideal.

In any event, if you have questions about how to do particular things in Outlook, I've found that a GREAT place to ask is the Outlook USENET groups. Very helpful and smart folks there.
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.outlook
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.outlook.general

Title:  
Name:  
Url:
Protected by Clearscreen.SharpHIPEnter the code you see:
Comments   

Add To Your Reader

My Links

Archives

Post Categories

 

I am a Microsoft MVP for ASP.NET.
I am an ASPInsider.
<May 2008>
SMTWTFS
27282930123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
1234567

Comment Stats

DayTotal% of Total
Sunday 1866.8%
Monday 37913.9%
Tuesday 45316.7%
Wednesday 50418.5%
Thursday 53519.7%
Friday 49418.2%
Saturday 1666.1%
Total 2717100.0%

Hour1Total% of Total
12:00 AM 652.4%
1:00 AM 682.5%
2:00 AM 622.3%
3:00 AM 742.7%
4:00 AM 572.1%
5:00 AM 1033.8%
6:00 AM 1084.0%
7:00 AM 1585.8%
8:00 AM 1716.3%
9:00 AM 1475.4%
10:00 AM 1716.3%
11:00 AM 1816.7%
12:00 PM 1886.9%
1:00 PM 1696.2%
2:00 PM 1605.9%
3:00 PM 1324.9%
4:00 PM 1073.9%
5:00 PM 923.4%
6:00 PM 913.3%
7:00 PM 963.5%
8:00 PM 833.1%
9:00 PM 782.9%
10:00 PM 792.9%
11:00 PM 772.8%
Total 2717100.0%

Comments by Blog Entry Date/Time

Day Entry MadeAvg.Total
Sunday 5.54144
Monday 5.22339
Tuesday 4.28419
Wednesday 7.67637
Thursday 6.90607
Friday 5.48411
Saturday 5.33160
Total 5.842717

Hour1 Entry MadeAvg.Total
12:00 AM 5.0035
1:00 AM 1.002
5:00 AM 0.000
7:00 AM 7.0035
8:00 AM 5.35107
9:00 AM 6.32278
10:00 AM 6.47246
11:00 AM 4.41181
12:00 PM 6.88330
1:00 PM 3.00111
2:00 PM 5.41222
3:00 PM 8.64285
4:00 PM 4.0589
5:00 PM 5.92154
6:00 PM 4.52113
7:00 PM 9.67174
8:00 PM 9.80147
9:00 PM 5.05111
10:00 PM 5.4265
11:00 PM 4.5732
Total 5.842717

Learn More About Comment Stats
1 - All times GMT -8...


Blog Stats

Favorite Web Sites

My Books

My MSDN Articles