Migration to em client from Postbox - how it's going for me

[Tony_W]

The transition to em client from Postbox has gone quite smoothly, One email account is on gmail and a couple of others on a hosted domain. Those mailboxes are setup for IMAP so I had no mailbox contents to transfer. I was using PostBox and now using em client to view and interact with email on those remote servers. This made the transition easy. I transitioned to em client on day 1 and stopped using PostBox.

What went easily.

• em client is pretty good at setting up the email account info, finding the server names and port settings. I own a couple of domain names and em client somehow detected my obscure server names, I only needed my email address and password. em client did the rest

• I messed up the themes in em client and somehow created an “access denied” situation in the em client app’s folder in Windows which I could not correct. I needed to un-install and re-install to reset em client. Re-setting up the email imap accounts was fast.

• Customizable theme colours. It was confusing at first finding the correct parameter to change because the appearance of the user interface can be customized for font color and background/foreground colors, the number of configurable parameters is considerable.

• I initially ran a second instance of em client using the “/db location” parameter to separate work email from personal email so I that I wouldn’t inadvertently compose a work email from my personal account. Later I found I could have my work email in a New Window which served the same purpose. Signatures correctly appear depending with the account which has the focus. So far I haven’t messed up and sent work email from my personal account.

Where I had problems: With themes. I’ll write a separate post. I’m not entirely sure but I can customize the UI with te Theme Editor but I need to save the new theme and load it to have an effect rather than the changes persisting. When I exited the Theme Editor, the theme reverted to the old settings. Edit > Save > Load Theme > Apply.

So far, I’m happy with em client to manage 3-4 email imap accounts. Speed is good. Search is fast. I previously tried Thunderbird but it would freeze up on me manging the same accounts.

What’s missing in em client that was in PostBox is filters that can edit subject lines. I would prefix certain messages depending on contents of subject lines (I receive auto-generated messages from the same sender but with numbers in the subject line. Based on the numbers I change the subject line by adding text)

I’ll update as I get more use of em client. So far so good.

[Robio]

I’m with you on the theme editor. I spent 45 minutes trying to wrap my head around that thing — and all I wanted was a way to make separate messages in a threaded conversation stand out from each other more. Finally hit upon changing the the outline color to blue — but it didn’t stick. When I next launched the app, that outline was back to gray.

Also, a major Postbox feature (and Mail feature, and Outlook feature, and Canary feature) that eM seems to lack is the ability to click on a sender’s email and find previous conversations with that sender. Or to be more precise, in eM Client, you can right-click sender > Communication History — but you cannot act on those search results. For example, you can’t then select-all and delete.

The ability to edit subject lines and messages was a feature I used to use a lot as well, but I haven’t found any other email apps for Mac that do this (been searching for a Postbox replacement for a couple years), so I’ve given up.

[Tony_W]

@Robio

ability to click on a sender’s email and find previous conversations with that sender.

I requested that as a feature and got a response back from em client that works similarly to “messages” in PostBox. Enable sidebar, select Contact, then click on a message, in the side bar all the messages from that contact will appear in the list. This is how I delete all messages (e.g., advertising) from that sender. So

One time

• Click Menu > View > Sidebar > Regular Sized Sidebar
• At the bottom of the sidebar, click on the Contact icon (first one of four)

To find messages from that one sender (contact)

• In the message list, click on a message. All the messages from that one contact should be listed in the side bar. You can Select All (CTRL-A) and delete. (I’m on Windows)

[Robio]

Thanks for the tip. That’s not entirely counter-intuitive, but there really should be a path to this feature via right-clicking on the sender’s email. This is a little reminder of what I didn’t like about eM Client last time I tried it — a lot of functions seemed unintuitive or over-complicated. Having said that, the app has definitely improved since I last tried it.

Other Postbox features I’m missing badly:

• Tabbed browsing (I like keeping some messages/mailboxes open until I act on them — but no mail app has this anymore)
• Favorites bar (much lower profile than keeping the sidebar open)
• Focus pane
• Keyboard navigation (a major drawback for me)

Hopefully the aquisition will mean some of these features will be added.

[cyberzork]

@Robio

Finally hit upon changing the the outline color to blue — but it didn’t stick. When I next launched the app, that outline was back to gray.

See my posts below on “how to retain custom themes”, and also User created custom themes.

Cannot retain theme edits, they don't get saved

You have to “save the theme after modification” and then “load that theme” back into themes. So once you have saved your theme, go to “Menu / Settings / Appearance / Themes”. Then scroll right to the bottom and click the “Import” button and select your saved theme. You will then see your saved theme appear at the bottom of the themes in eM Client. Lastly click on your saved theme and click apply and save. Then close and reopen EM Client and it should be there permanently.

To make a permanent theme without reverting back, you have to first “Save the Theme” in the Theme editor, by clicking the “Advanced” button at the bottom right. Give the Theme a custom name when saving so you know what it is.

Then “modify that saved theme” in the eM Client “Theme editor” and finally, import that modified saved theme back into the themes using the “Import” button at the bottom of Themes.

The imported or custom saved theme you make “will then appear at the bottom of the Themes list” to choose from anytime. Then finally Apply and Save and Close Settings.

Lastly if you don’t want the custom theme anymore, click / select it at the bottom of the Theme editor and press the “del key”.

(How to create or adjust my own eM Client theme)

https://support.emclient.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/149/6/how-to-create-or-adjust-my-own-em-client-theme

(eM Client user created custom Themes)

https://www.emclient.com/themes

[asn]

I am also trying to migrate from Postbox. One major count and one minor count against eM Client so far.

My $ 0.02 so far:

Edit: eM Client may not support how I current;y manage my e-mail. There may be a way to achieve this that I haven’t worked out yet.

The Good:
An option to NOT have e-mail automatically set to “read”. This is the single most important reason I chose to use (and pay a lifetime sub for) Postbox.

It handled importing my gmail account, 2 Yahoo! accounts and a different IMAP 4 account.

I could make the GUI to look more or less what I am used to.

Edit: I found out how to map certain actions to keystrokes. So I set up M to Mark as read and U to mark as unread. In Postbox M was a toggle between read & unread. I can live with that.

The Bad:
The e-mail rules stuff does not seem to be able to select a message based on if it is read or not. Am I missing something? This may be a deal breaker for me, based on how I like to manage my e-mail.

The e-mail rules stuff did not let me edit any of my Postbox rules, which were all enabled, but I think would not run anyway as they were associated with a “removed account”. Workaround: duplicate a rule and then you can edit it.

It doesn’t know about Proton Mail (I am using ProtonMail Bridge) so I had to set that up manually.

The Ugly:
Rules editor. Apparently missing at least one important option (select based on read/ unread status). Potential deal breaker.

Seem to be some duplication of e-mails in my ProtonMail account. I haven’t look at the “deduplicate” option that I think I saw.

Apparently I can’t click on, say, the “From” column to sort by the “From” column. I have to RMB > sort > …

The Unfamiliar:
Plenty, but such is life.

I needed to find out how to disable some categories stuff that I do not think I enabled (Primary/ Other). It is incompatible with how I manage my e-mail. Solution: RMB on “Categories Bar” > Category tabs > Hide Categories Bar

I don’t understand why some e-mails are showing up in my ProtonMail inbox that I dumped into other folders. It might be similar to the ProtonMail client which can group threads across folders. Hopefully I can turn this off.

I tried to “move to archive” a few messages, and they didn’t go to the archive folder of the mail account. I found them, but I have no idea which folder they are in.

[Robio]

Wow, is that ever convoluted. Thanks!

So far, convoluted seems par for the course with eM Client. I had to get help in another thread just to make a couple message-filtering rules — and I work in software usability, so if I needed help…

I’d bet cash money the entire UI/UX team are engineers.

[Robio]

Different but similar experiences here. I’ve spent the last 2 years trying to find a replacement for Postbox, because I knew its demise was inevitable. I had tried eM Client a couple years ago (one of 20+ apps I’ve tried), and ruled it out because of how convoluted it is.

But with the official announcement, I’ve circled back around to eM Client, and it’s improved a lot. If I can work out some issues (like the fact that my sent messages aren’t appearing in threaded conversations), I’m likely to pull the trigger on a lifetime license.

There are only 3 apps I’ve found that even come close to Postbox’s functionality: Outlook (user-friendly, nice bells and whistles, but dealbreaker: no account aliases), MailMaven (in beta, with a long way to go), and eM Client — which seems to be the most powerful and the most customizable. But woof, the UX is rough. They really need somebody on the team who’s thinking about non-techie end-users. The Rules Editor is a perfect example, as your experience demonstrates.

So far, it seems like for any process that could be 4 steps, eM Client loves to make it 10.

Still really liking the app for the most part. Although I haven’t found a way to navigate by keyboard. And note my wording: Haven’t found, because with eM Client, my experience has been that it probably does the thing, but figuring out how to do the thing is going to be a journey. I’m guessing/hoping there’s keyboard navigation, since keyboard filing exists. But so far, no dice.

In the long run, I’ll probably love this app. But I’m not looking forward to how much work it will be to get there.

[asn]

If they are engineers, they are engineers who have no concept of efficiency and love taking their mice/ trackpad pointers for long walks. For example, so far I have to do a lot of

move mouse
right click
scroll down to option
Select sub-option list
scroll down sub-option
left click

just to sort by a given column. The usual approach is to simply left click on the column to sort by it. Once to sort ascending, then click again to change the sense of the sort.

And how about consistency? As a long time Postbox user I was used to the M - mark read/ unread toggle and the A - archive keystrokes. But I set up two quick actions: “M” - Mark Read & “U” - Mark Unread (no toggle that I can find).

While trying to find out where an e-mail goes if I archive it I reflexively pressed A (Postbox shortcut for archive). It jumped me to the top of the folder list. Because I had sorted this folder by From, I eventually realised that it was looking for the first “From:” that begins with “A”. “Nice feature!” I thought at first. Then I thought “what happens if I press ‘M’? Will it search for the first “M” in “From” or mark the current e-mail as read?” Guess what happened?

Well, if I have sorted by “From” or by “Subject”, then quick actions M and U are ignored. If I have sorted by date, then M and U quick actions work.

IMO this is both inconsistent and inefficient, since it is a PITA to change the current sort.

[Robio]

Yeah, there’s definitely room for improvement. Having said that, Postbox had its bugaboos too. Some of which were actual bugs that I reported 10+ years ago and were never fixed. (Like the fact that Postbox does not play nice with keyboard shortcuts customized in Mac > System Settings > Keyboard.

A lot of my favorite apps are feature-rich and UX-poor, like eM Client. But I’m telling you, it’s really improved from the last time I tried it, and with this active user-forum, I’m guessing they’ll be receptive to suggestions from Postbox migrants. And I’m sure some Postbox features will be ported over.

Assuming eM Client becomes my Postbox replacement (not a final choice yet), I’m looking forward to helping the app improve. It’s better than the at least 95% of the 20+ other apps I’ve tried.

[asn]

I will try the desktop app of my main e-mail address (neither Outlook, nor Yahoo! nor gmail). My Yahoo and gmail accounts are just privacy invading SPAM magnets. I like having mailboxes in one app and I don’t like web mail.

If I can do what I want in the desktop app, then I won’t need to use eM Client to manage it, just to be under the same umbrella as the other ones. At present it isn’t worth me parting with any money for.

[Robio]

Replying top-level again with another little frustration, just because I know anyone in this thread will emphathize:

Creating a template in Postbox:

1. Write an email
2. File > Save as Template

Creating a template in eM Client:

1. Figure out where the heck to go for creating a template (really far more than one step)
2. Settings > Mail > Templates > Mail Templates > [Mail Templates…]
3. [New]
4. Finally a form for creating a template…which looks kind-of like compose window…

…now, how the heck to I actually compose an email using the template I created?!?

[cyberzork]

@Robio

how the heck to I actually compose an email using the template I created?!?

Click “the dropdown on the right of New” and select Mail / Template as in the default example.

[Robio]

@cyberzork
Thanks! I’m such a keyboard commando I’m not sure how long it would have taken me to think about creating a new email with a button instead of CMD+N. Seems so obvious now.

[Robio]

Replying to myself with more evidence the eM Client team needs team members who aren’t engineers: On the website, the user guide is under Resources > Documentation, and isn’t even mentioned under Support. You literally can’t get to the user guide from the page titled Support.

[Robio]

@cyberzork Do you know if there’s a way to include variables in templates — i.e., auto-filling in names and dates?

[cyberzork]

@Robio

Do you know if there’s a way to include variables in templates.

Sry i don’t know. If there is a way someone will update this thread.

[Michal_Burger]

Good tip, we’ll put it to File → Save as Template, thank you.

[Michal_Burger]

Hello we are very opened to relevant improvement suggestions. We just need to see very clear specific feedback in a way.

• I am missing this specific feature
• This should be placed on that place instead of some other place etc.
  Once we have the list of such feature requests from users from Postbox, we’ll make a list, prioritize them and those we decide are reasonable we’ll implement pretty quickly. We really want to merge good features of Postbox into eM Client as soon as possible.

[Michal_Burger]

Thank you for a relevant feedback. We’ll focus on keyboard only UX a lot (based on the Postbox users feedback) in upcoming days.
Sort can be changed by a simple left click on most places where there is a table view. If you use multiline view for emails (default view), it really takes a few clicks in version 10, but based on our telemetry sort changes are very rare action. What is your use case for changing the sort frequently?