PC Pals Forum
Technical Help & Discussion => Windows PCs & Software: Help, News & Discussion => Topic started by: chorleydave on June 16, 2003, 14:12
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Hi everyone.
After trying several alternatives, I continue to use Outlook Express (OE) as my mail/news client. As many will know, OE allows you to request a "read receipt", to notify you when an e-mail has been opened. The problem is that the recipient can choose not to send a receipt.
I was looking through the "List of Lists" website and found a program called MSGTAG. http://www.msgtag.com/home
"MSGTAG alerts you the moment an e-mail you've sent is opened. You'll know when the message was sent, when it was viewed, and the elapsed time in between. The beauty of MSGTAG is that you don't have to change anything about the way you write or send your e-mail. It works with almost all desktop e-mail clients including Outlook, Incredimail, Outlook Express, Eudora, and Netscape. One of the best things about MSGTAG is that your friends don't need to do anything different either. There are no annoying pop- up windows asking them to send a notification back to you - all they see is a small MSGTAG footer letting them know that you've been notified that your message got through. When using MSGTAG your privacy is respected. At no stage do we ever have access to the body of your message - your e-mail goes straight from you to the intended recipient, without passing through our servers. MSGTAG is professionally and stylishly designed and has helpful wizards to guide you through installation. For Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/ XP; Uninstaller included."
Has anyone tried this program? Does it work? Do you have to have an "always-on" connection for it to work? I would be grateful for any advice.
Thanks.
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That looks a good system Dave. Thanks for telling us about it. My guess is that Simon will be the first to test it to destruction. ;D
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Hi Clive.
Well, I've tried it. It's working great with all my pop3 accounts. I've sent mail from them all to my two web-only accounts, they arrived without problem and as soon as I had opened them, my read confirmations were in the pop3 account I specified when setting it up.
Just one last thing to try, I disabled Firewall while I tested it, so after dinner I'm going to test again with Firewall enabled, although I can't foresee any problems.
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Haven't I had enough excitement for one week, Clive? ;D ;D
I'm still loading programs form the re-install, let alone trying new ones! :o :o ;D ;D
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Looks interesting doesn't it?
I quickly read through their website this afternoon and I can't work out how they do it. According to what I've read, your email doesn't pass through their servers, so how do they know it's reached it's destination? ???
Clever stuff ;)
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Well i'm on win98 and it sort of works, mailwasher could not find my pop3 accounts and neither could outlook express. Clive i finally got your reply after removing MSGTAG so not over impressed with it.
My firewall was running and MSGTAG was allowed access, by removeing thee access it seemed to work, but that defeats the object of the exercise.
It sounded so brilliant too, ah well if it sounds to good-blah, blah. ;D
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MSGTAG could not auto-import my accounts from within Outlook Express. I had to set each of them up manually in MSGTAG. After setting up each account and hitting finish, a message gives you a Port number. You go into Outlook Express > Tools > Accounts > Properties, under the "Server" tab change your smtp setting from whatever is in there (ie smtp.freeserve.co.uk) to "localhost" (without the quotes) and then under the "Advanced" tab change the outgoing mail port from the default 25 to the port number MSGTAG has given you.
I haven't tried Mailwasher yet. I'll post back when I've tried it.
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OK. I've Sent e-mails to each of my pop3 accounts with MSGTAG running and then with it disabled. I didn't have any problems deleting or "bouncing". I had to remember to remove the addresses from Mailwasher's blacklist, of course!!!
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Hi again.
I did some more testing this morning, by sending several messages to my sister, who lives just up the road. Everything is working fine from my end, but I have discovered a slight catch. If the recipient downloads the messages to a client, such as Outlook Express, and then goes offline to read them, the notification is not sent to you unless they re-read the messages while connected. If the messages are read offline and then deleted, no notification is sent.
Slightly better than Outlook Express' method, but still not foolproof.
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As I understand it, it would also mean that the recipients PC would send out a 'read' receipt, which would trigger a notification of outgoing mail from some AV software. I can only speak of Norton, as I've not used anything else, but that sort of thing can be slightly worrying, as you appear to be sending mail out unexpectedly, which could be the symptom of a virus. I suppose the MSGTAG footer would explain that, but, to me, it would still be irritating.
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Hi Simon.
It doesn't seem to trouble AVG anti-virus. I'll certainly be sticking with it for the time being, will evaluate its usefulness and then decide whether to keep it when I do my half-yearly (November) format and reinstall.
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I'm not sure AVG does outgoing mail scans - does it? You can turn the notifications off in Norton, but I like to see stuff going out. Anyway, let us know how you get on, Dave.
In a similar vein, I downloaded an add-on for Outlook which was a pop up notification of e-mails (similar to MSN Messenger), but I soon un-installed it as it was taking twice as long to load Outlook and check for e-mails.
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I'm not sure AVG does outgoing mail scans - does it?
Yes, it does Simon :) I think you may have to enable it first though.
Look at the E-mail scanner tab and tick Check Outgoing mail.
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You can also certify AVG outgoing messages with the footer
"Outgoing mail has been checked with AVG anti-virus and is certified Virus Free."
although I turned certification off, because it also adds several lines of technical stuff such as the program build and the version of update file, not to menion a link to the AVG website. These things mean nothing to the recipient and just add to the babble at the end of the message.
;D ;D ;D ;D
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You could always add something like that as a signature to your e-mails, without all the tech gabble. I have done that with my e-mails, and also a link to Pals! ;)
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That's a good idea, Simon. I do have a signature with links to some of my favourite websites (including PC-Pals) but I have to add it manually, as I haven't set it up to automatically append itself to the end of every e-mail. I could set up a separate signature confirming that e-mails have been virus checked, couldn't I?
I'll set it up now before I forget.
Cheers, Simon. :)
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Hmmm! Outlook Express is more advanced than I thought when it comes to adding signatures. I've just clicked on the "Advanced" button and have discovered that I can choose a different signature to add to each account. Now, I have my own AVG signature (without the tech stuff) automatically added to my Yahoo account and the my own AVG sig PLUS the links to my fave sites added to the domain account I use for personal (friends and family) e-mails.
Strange, I haven't noticed this facility before. Is it new to OE6?
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Not sure if it's new to OE6, but it's a neat trick! I'll have to investigate Outlook and see if it does the same. :)
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Hmmm! Outlook Express is more advanced than I thought when it comes to adding signatures. I've just clicked on the "Advanced" button and have discovered that I can choose a different signature to add to each account. Now, I have my own AVG signature (without the tech stuff) automatically added to my Yahoo account and the my own AVG sig PLUS the links to my fave sites added to the domain account I use for personal (friends and family) e-mails.
Strange, I haven't noticed this facility before. Is it new to OE6?
Lol. Typical Microsoft. The feature is built-in, the help file goes into detail on how to set it up, BUT IT DOESN'T WORK!!!!! No matter which signature you ascribe to a particular account, it will always load the default signature!
It's not only me. I've just spent two hours searching the Newsgroups to try and solve this. Hundreds of users report this problem. Guess what? Microsoft's official line is that it is "by design". They suggest you add signatures manually if you want to use more than one!
What on earth is the point of building in a feature that "by design" doesn't work. Why can't Microsoft be honest for once and admit that it is a bug or flaw that will not be fixed?
Does anyone agree with me that ALL Microsoft products should be given away free as magazine cover disks, as they are basically all in the beta stage?
;D ;D ;D ;D
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:good: I doubt if anyone would disagree with you Dave. ;D
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I agree. ::)
I am using Mozilla at the moment, and it definitely works in their mail client. You create your signatures in a text program (Notepad / Word / Composer etc), save them as files, and you can append whichever file you like to your outgoing mail, in each individual account.
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Well, I've been using MSGTAG for two weeks now and I don't know how I managed without it. Has worked so well, I am now considering upgrading to the paid [cough] version, although that isn't really necessary because it is just as easy to leave sent messages in the "Sent Items" folder until you receive notification that the sent message has been read.
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I use MSGTAG, too. And, in fact, all of Nick Boltons's products. MSGTAG is very handy and Mailwasher Pro is truly indispensible, but the real beauty of the bunch is Firetrust Benign (http://www.firetrust.com/products/benign/). Just do it, ok!
;)
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I'm not sure I would want anyone to see when I opened an email, or not. I'm sure it has thousands of benefits, not least including and SPAM senders knowing if that address is in use.
I am not happy with a receipt like that - I would regard that as spyware? Use of my CPU and bandwidth to send information to another user without my knowledge?
Oh, hi all btw - been away for ages :o
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Welcome back, K! Nice to see you again. ;D ;D
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I'm afraid I've found another fault in MSGTAG. :(
I was testing a new e-mail address which I have set up on my domain. However, MSGTAG did not send a tag. After investigation, I discovered that this is because I have the option "Read Messages in Plain Text" ticked in Outlook Express 6 SP1. This option is a security feature to prevent web bugs amongst other things. Once I had disabled the option and sent another test message, I received a tag. Therefore, it would appear that any software that weeds out web bugs, including the OE6 SP1 basic effort, blocks MSGTAG's system.
Oh well, I'll stick with it for the time being, until I find something better.
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Well, tell the author, Nick Bolton, about it, then Dave. Firetrust are usually pretty responsive on these issues (unless everyone else also happens to be reporting the same problem, too).
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Hi Rodders.
I've sent a message via the feedback form on the MSGTAG.com website. I'll keep you updated when I have a reply.
ps. Re: your other problem (internet access) you have a PM)
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I have now had a reply from MSGTAG.
Hi Dave,
Thanks for writing,
You are correct in your observation that OE6's "Read Messages in Plain Text" options will prevent notifications from being returned. The MSGTAG notification is triggered by someone opening the e-mail you sent in an HTML capable e- mail client. Most of the major e-mail programs will trigger the tag, but there are some people who don't use HTML rendering e-mail clients, or have security settings that will mean that the notification isn't triggered. The tagging feature of MSGTAG requires HTML capable readers to activate the tags. There is no possible mechanism to do this in plain text email unfortunately.
I hope this explains the situation, and this isn't too much of an inconvenience for you,
Feel free to let me know if you ever have any further questions, problems, or comments on MSGTAG!
Regards,
Charles Horn,
Customer Support Representative
MSGTAG
Fisher Young Group Limited
http://www.msgtag.com/support/
Therefore, for anyone still considering Message Tag, the negatives are:
1) The reader has to be connected to the internet while opening the mail for a tag to be sent. Downloading mail, diconnecting and then reading offline = no tag notification.
2) The program only works if HTML is enabled in the recipients client.
The positive is that except for the test e-mail I sent to myself with HTML disabled, I have received a notification for every e-mail I have tagged.