I am slowly developing a lover affair with eM Client. It is certainly the best client I have ever used. But like with all software there are little quirks and issues and I would like to add my 10c to the list of feature requests.
“De-duplication” of emails needs to have an automatic option. My days start with going through and de-duplicating all my accounts and it takes much too much time and many clicks (17 clicks and much scrolling !!!). I have seen comments in the forum that I should avoid getting duplicates in the first place. Well, this might be fine for many users, but as a sys admin I get a lot of unavoidable duplicates. If it is a busy day I need to de-duplicate several times in a day. I hope that a de-duplicating feature is also added to the mobile app eventually.
Search is complex and confusing. It works, but the learning curve is long and confusing. The option of having several search parameters in more than one place is confusing an it is easy to make a mistake meaning that emails are not found. A complete re-working of this critical function is warranted. I like the idea of being able to save a search, but the ability to edit the search critea of a search folder is limited. I would welcome many more options and more boolean operators. A gold standard as far as I am concerned is the search function in The Bat. They call “Search Folders” “Virtual Folders”. That program has other issues so I am not advocating The Bat. I often have to build a complex search such as looking for email where multiple keywords should be present such as “customer” AND “rubber bands” and NOT “widows”… I have no idea how to do this is eMC.
When selecting multiple emails (for example using ctr-left mouse click) this has to be done carefully as a “mistake” can lead to all selected emails being suddenly duplicated (and unselected). This means the whole selection process has to be done again costing a lot of time and adds duplicated emails to the trash folder. Should be an easy fix…
When pasting text from one email to another a pop-up appears offering “Paste Options”. This pop-up still appears (and does not go away automatically) even if a default option has been set in the settings. This is annoying and time consuming. Should be a simple bug to fix. I do not want to have to click away an unnecessary dialog box after I have pasted some text.
Rules. In all “folder properties” it would be very useful to be able to see if any rules are applied to a folder already and be able to modify the rules directly instead of having to go through the main menu. In the “Rules” dialogue window it would be very useful to see more information about each rule such as all the folders they are being applied to… It is easy to modify the wrong rule or cause issues when rules are used in more than one place.
Please add a “home” button somewhere at the top of the screen. By “home” I mean it should take you to the most recent item on the current list by date and time. Using the keyboard “Home” key is sometime tricky and I want to be able get “home” without letting go of my mouse. This would actually surprisingly save a lot of time.
When emails have been marked as junk they nicely end up in the junk folder and the sender is blacklisted If I want to reverse the decision there seems to be no option other than going through the whole Rules/Blacklist. As this list is a very long list it takes forever to find the one that needs to be reversed. You also need to make a note of the address before going there. It would be very convenient to be able to mark the email/domain directly in the Junk E-mail folder and with a right click find the option to reverse the blacklisting.
On the subject of spam filters generally… I understand the thought process behind not having a generic spam filter tool in eMC as this is might better done at server level for several reasons. But as I access emails on many servers (and some have less control with limited local spam filtering) many spam emails still get through. I would welcome an optional professional local spam filter “plug-in”.
Crashes happen a lot with eMC and it is not always at the most convenient time. Restarting the program often leads to an automatic repair starting. In my case this takes 45 mins with a pretty fast i7 XPS with 16Gb of RAM and SSD. I can “Cancel” the repair immediately, which I have had to do if I am in a meeting at the time. After a restart the repair never happens again. Not sure why it is suddenly no longer needed. What happens during the lost 45 mins if it is no longer needed after selecting “cancel”? Anyway, It would be useful to be able to manually start a repair once eM Client starts again. In fact an option to force start a “maintenance repair” from the main menu would ease my mind and maybe be a good sensible thing to be able to do…
One fairly reliable way to crash the program is when you move attachments between an open email and one being edited (drag and drop). There is also a very obvious bug that when shutting down windows eM Client does not shut down cleanly like it should (like ALL other windows programs) necessitating a file system repair when rebooting. The same things happens if you put windows into sleep/hibernation, it will crash when taking the computer out of sleep. As I have chosen to let my computer “auto sleep” after 1 hr to save my laptop battery when travelling I get to do a 45 min repair when coming out of “sleep” or “hibernation”.
Backing up eM Client means having at least as much free SSD space as the program uses. In my case this is means keeping 250Gb of free SSD space on my laptop which is very hard to keep available at all times. I am reluctant to order a 2Tb SSD for no other reason than to back up eM Client. Can some sort of incremental or journalled backup be implemented? If the destination drive/folder is not available when automatic repair starts it would be a useful additional option to be able to restart the backup from the pop-up window (together with the current “Open Settings” and “Cancel” options).
PDF previews would be really useful when you hover over an attachment and not just show an icon representing the type of attachment… We need to open all attachments fully to see them now and it takes a lot of time, particularly when looking for a specific attachment and you are not sure in which email it is hiding. Being able to print them too would be useful. It does work for images so why not for PDFs?
When searching for emails the junk and trash folders are not searched. Should be an option.
The email editor could do with some more and better HTML editor buttons such a Font, Point Size, Scale Up or Down selection, and possibly some other editor tools directly on the tool bar. There is an ability to customise the tool bar but some useful functions cannot be added.
It would be extremely useful to be able to add multiple calendar reminders.
Being able to right click on an email in a list and have the option to “open in a new background window” like you can with browsers (without loosing focus on the list). I often need to open several emails at one time and have to keep going back to the list to do so.
When forwarding a plain text email and having subsequently added HTML elements such as a graphical signature it would be useful if eMC would “automatically” switch the email to HTML format. Currently any added HTML elements are simply ignored unless the original email is already in HTML format.
Integration with Teams is very hit-miss. If I receive a meeting invite in outlook to join a teams meeting (and I have to use outlook for other reasons) and I accept the meeting request it does not appear in my eMC calendar… See attached. This is a little scary and I have missed meetings because of this. As a result I have to have Outlook open as well as eM Client. Is there some way to make these applications play better together?
Being able to click on web links in the preview window is very useful. What would also be great if you could mark text and with a right click option send the text to a search engine in a browser window. Right now you need to cut/paste.
The built in translate function is very convenient as I work in several languages. The only issue is that it does not understand the need to change the personal pronouns. German has both a formal and a familiar form of “you.” The formal Sie is used to address strangers, business associates, and acquaintances (Bekannte, as opposed to close friends, Freunde), and for most situations outside the family. Other in-line translation tools allow you to choose and automatically corrects the grammar. Maybe the option to choose the service would help other user too… My preferred service right now is DeepL.
I can, and do, live with these little limitations. Improving them would enhance this particular users experience.
Thank you for considering my requests and please let me know if I am either missunderstanding how to do something and if other users agree with me.
I agree with some of your points and possibly would with others if they continued to affect me. I am no longer involved with admin as I sold my company and now only have a consultancy role. Your items:
1./ Totally agree I used to receive approx 300 email/day, sometimes a nightmare
2./ Yes, like a magical mystery tour and The Bat! is good in some areas as was Eudora many years ago
3./ Never experienced this, though I know others have
4./ Don’t get this except with Microsoft
5./ Absolutely agree
6./ Never thought about this
7./ Never used this, I do not have any Blacklist rules, I use a server side facility
8./Although I use a server side program and do not remember the last time I had SPAM in eMC I do think there should be an aggressive facility
9./ I do not want to tempt fate but eMC has never crashed on me, I am currently using: Samsung Galaxy Bk3 Ultra, Evo i9-13900H, 32GB DDr5 RAM, NVMe SSD, Win11 Pro
I guess the 45min is checking the database etc though a cancel with no negative effect is odd. I always close eMC before system close, I do with all running programs. I use Sleep function all the time with no issue
10./ I run eMC backup automatically every day at 0900 on a 32 day schedule and do not have a space issue because of compression
11./ Agree
12./ Not an issue for me
13./ In this situation I cut&paste from a separate editor to get what I want
14./ Yes agree, I use an external calendar to overcome this
15./ Never needed this
16./ Another case where I cut&paste
17./ Very aware of this and always used to double check
18./ Always pick & choose search engine to use so no issue
19./ A pet hate for me although I do not to use translators, at the present time they are not accurate, verb tense, pronoun, contextually, idiomatically and colloquially, maybe they will be better with AI, we had native language speakers in all the languages we encountered.
You will notice in eMC that translations do not always fit the field space provided and in some instances they are just wrong.
I am an enthusiastic eMC user and also tolerate what I call idiosyncrasies.
¡Suerte!
skybat
¡Los mejores desde Budapest la soleada y mantente a salvo!
Thank you skybat… I think we are basically both on the same page. eMC is so very good today that these glitches are more apparant than they would be in other, lesser, programs.
There is always room for improvement in all software and users are the ultimate experts as they live with the front end every day.
I hope some, or possibly all of my comments help towards making the product even better.
I have been comunicating with Gary today and he has pointed out some things that I have missed. I have to congratulate him and eMC on his responsiveness.
I can chime in on many of these. Some of these were requests I made but I guess didn’t have enough folks rallying around. #11 - PDF previews. I agree. It’s a many step process for just a peek for me. #13 - email editor. I too do a lot of composing in here. I find the table editor is really broken (insert points, no easy way to keyboard around the grid) a big problem, but I have been begging for either making the paste format sticky like it is in word, or allow a simple hightlight on hover of a selection to highlight something in yellow like O365 web has as well as outlook. #15 - Open in background - I agree. Maybe a middle mouse click does this? It would save me a bunch of time too. #17 - Teams - yes I have some customer that do not get invites. #18 - I use a custom autohotkey script that I bound to CTRL+ALT+? that looks up whatever selection I have. I can share it with you but I agree it would be nice to build that in here.
So install autohotkey. Then make a .ahk file, and put this in it.
; Google selected text - CTRL+SHIFT+?
^+?::
{
Send, ^c
Sleep 50
Run, http://www.google.com/search?q=%clipboard%
Return
}
This says when that key combo is hit, do a clipboard copy of the selected text then use it as a search argument to google. Hope it helps, I use it 5-10x a day.
The database repair is running because there was some issue detected with the database. Probably eM Client was not closed correctly, or there is some disk issue, or some other possibilities.
If you cancel the database check, the whole database may be irreversibly lost.
This has been a request for some while, and one official response has always been that is caused because eMC is not closed correctly and subsequently the database needs to be verified on startup in case of error.
Can also be caused if the OS is slow to write to database even when closed correctly, has never happened to me though there have been reports of this.
Solution is to shut down eMC following the correct procedure and maybe count to ten before closing down the OS, however, on my system I have no issue if I put my system to sleep, worth considering unless there is a specific reason to shut down.
¡Suerte!
skybat
¡Los mejores desde Budapest la soleada y mantente a salvo!
I know… But for the love of all that is holy, why does eMC not shut down cleanly when windows shuts down. EVERY single program I use (I just counted my open apps and there are 17) shut down cleanly when windows shuts down. There is a mechanism in windows that communicates with open apps and eMC is ignoring this. This has been a feature of windows for decades.
When you try to log off, shutdown or restart your PC, Windows 10/11 will give you the chance to save your work before gracefully closing all open programs. If you don’t take any action for a minute, it will bring you back to the desktop.
There is a dialog between windows and open apps whereby if the app does not shut down properly windows comes back to the user with “this app is preventing windows from shutting down”. To proceed with the shutdown or restart the process, you have to click on “Shut down anyway”. This doesn’t show up for eMC.
What Windows does do is send all applications a message that Windows is about to shut down and they should do whatever is necessary. Typically the application would do whatever clean-up action is necessary and then close. If the application ignores this message, or does not reply in a timely manner, to interrupt the shut-down process, leading to an error message, the session will end. At this point there is no way for an application to stop the process. This explains the 45 minutes of repair needed when I start eMC and which is screwing up my working life.
There is no reason to suspect a Windows problem. Not sending this message would have major consequences and would have been caught early in testing. And we know it works for all applications other than eMC. I strongly suspect this is an application problem. Applications do not get nearly the same level of testing as does Windows.
Simply saying it is a user problem for not shutting down eMC before closing windows does not cut it any more in 2023. We have the right to expect our apps to have enough intelligence to protect our data. Imagine if this happened with Apple products? There would be riots.
Please please implement this function as soon as humanly possible. I will pay you to do it !!! Who do I pay? How much do you want?
It is not eM Client that is not closing correctly. It is because Windows itself is terminating the application incorrectly. There is absolutely nothing we can do if your OS terminates applications like that. Maybe something for you to ask Microsoft about?
Then it will close correctly, and there will be no database check on the next start.
But that is not what is happening. Windows just terminates the application on your device for some reason, leaving the database corrupt. A database repair will need to be run on the next start.
It should default to searching whatever folder or account you currently have selected, and be highlighted if any options other than that are selected.
Because there is no way to show a column that shows the last date and time of any e-mail in the Conversation, Sent and Received e-mails can end up in a weird order. You can have an e-mail you sent Today be displayed as the Oldest e-mail, if you sort by Received instead.
There is nothing telling you what folder searched e-mails are in under an account.
“Current Folder” does not include all folders when you have the account selected. Given that it is the highest level of the hierarchy, it should include all folders in the search. Instead, it only includes the Inbox.
It depends on what options you have selected in the dropdown in the search box.
I know, that’s my point. The default should be to search whatever account or folder you currently have selected, not whatever previous settings you applied in the dropdown on a previous search.
There is a column for that in single line layout. But you need to disable Conversations first.
There are so many instances (bugs or feature requests) where the feedback is to disable Conversation view. It feels like eMClient does not care about developing features for, fixing bugs with, or working on improving Conversation view. If it’s given as an option, why not support it? (By the way, this is not meant to read as a personal attack at all - it’s a genuine question.)
Current Folder is exactly that - current folder. Instead use the “Current folder and subfolders” option.
Exactly. And the account level is the highest level of the hierarchy. If you select the account, that is the “folder”. So it should include ALL folders and e-mails within that account. But it doesn’t. It only includes the Inbox. The account level is not the same as the Inbox folder, but eMClient’s search treats it like it is.
This is not a bug. A conversation includes messages from multiple folders, normally an Inbox type folder, and the Sent folder. We can’t display the folder for a conversation, because it is not a single folder.
No, that is not actually a folder, but we display the Inbox when you click on the account name. If you want to include sub-folders, select the option for “Current folder and subfolders”. We make a distinction between a single folder and a folder and sub-folder because there is a difference, and it gives the user better control over where they want to search.
