Lots of people do this sort of thing - essentially receiving your email from more than one computer and still having access to all of your incoming email.

You can do it a few different ways - depending on the choices your service provider (ISP) offers you for your email... If they only offer POP, (Post Office Protocol) then at least the IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) option is out. If you can use IMAP then you could configure that - which essentially lets you keep your email boxes/folders set up on the server, so wherever you go, if you configure your email client the same, you'll see all the same folders, etc. I've never used it other than to try it a bit, etc... since I receive so much email that I'd be constantly having to remove it from my online IMAP folders to prevent my quota from being used up.

The other main option would be to use the POP "Leave On Server" option. That's what I do, and it's worked great for many years. You can basically configure The Bat (or any other modern POP email client) to leave your email on your ISP's POP server - and usually you configure it to leave it there for x number of days. So any mail that's older than x days will then be deleted from the server.

You'd basically set the number of days to some low amount, that's at least more than the longest number of days you'd ever not use either (any) of your computer/email client for. So if you always use both computers at least once a day to check email, then maybe set it for 3 days to give some breathing room... If you sometimes would not use one or the other to check your email for a week, then you'd set it to leave the email on the server for 8 or 10 days.

The only reason not to set it to say 200 days or whatever is that it will get very large, and there is undoubtedly a maximum size quota for it, which you don't want to exceed or you'll probably stop receiving new email. (it'll bounce back to the sender with some sort of "quota exceeded" message or some such thing)

The POP option with "leave on server" is probably better in any case, since the email's being stored on *your* local PC - which is better, I guess, IMHO.

Does that make sense? I hope I explained it all ok, I tend to take a lot for granted, so feel free to ask any questions or whatever. I only just happened to see your message, and I can't see a way to email or PM you, and rarely use this forum, but I'll try to check back - or you can email me if you want - just notes at shaw dot ca if you want...

Hope that helps.. cheers!

with IMAP mail stays on the server, so you'll always see the same from both machines. As it's not possible to switch an existing theBat account from pop to imap, a new one for imap has to be set. It's hard to screw something so that messages disappear, but if you feel unsure create a test mailbox on the server and set an imap account for it. When all is OK and clear for you, set imap account for the real mailbox.