I have had ongoing problem with the default Mail App in Windows 10.
In the past I used Windows Live Mail and its predecessor Outlook Express . These were excellent lightweight Email programs and just right for personal use. I also used the full Outlook program at work and it is also an excellent fully featured program designed for business but perhaps “over-kill” for light personal use.
Unfortunately Windows Live Mail, like the also excellent Windows Live Movie Maker, are both no longer available. Although there is an equally good mail program from Mozilla called Thunderbird, I decided to use the default Win 10 solution.
From the start, Mail App has had problems but it did improve over time and the convenience of using the default solution generally made up for the faults.
Problems that still regularly occur are issues with formatting on received emails, syncing, failure to download images, population of addresses from the People App**## and other minor annoyances. Perhaps, the most aggravating one is where all the text is only one letter wide with a long descending column of single letters that are impossible to read.
(** Outlook does this well. When forwarding an Email, clicking inside the “To Address” box prompts a list of recently used addresses to pop up and/or by clicking the “To” box you can select multiple addresses at once from the full list. With the Mail App, the suggested addresses are all over the place and ## it is not possible to select multiple addresses at once.
## Correction – If you click on the little person icon “Choose Contacts” in the right of the “To Address Box” it brings up the full list that you can then select one by one and then place all selections into the address box in one click on the Tick on the bottom right of address pop up. I should take more notice of what is in updates!)
I know that these issues must be the App as I have no problems with the same Emails on my iPad.
The straw that broke the camel’s back came when emails sent via the App from my Gmail were sent multiple (up to five) times. At the same time, the App stopped syncing with Gmail and these issues have persisted despite removing and re-entering Gmail on the App more than once.
I should just use Thunderbird. My neighbours use it and it is an excellent program – a lot like Live Mail. But as I pay for Office 365 I started using Outlook. It is a long time since I last used Outlook, but it did not take long to get used to it again.
In the meantime I am reluctant to give up on the default App as, despite its flaws, it is lightweight, easy to use and a breeze to set up again after a PC refresh. So I went looking for a solution and the internet has plenty of reports of problems and just as many suggested solutions. This YouTube video from Britec09 is good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k39Rq4q91mw
I will carry out the suggested fixes in the order they appear in the video until one works. I will start with the first and easiest – All Settings / Apps / Apps and features / Mail and Calendar / Advanced options / Reset.
After each fix I will use the App for a few days and report back in this post. Naturally I will stop when (if) it is fixed.
15th March – Reset. Note – It took only a second or so and I rebooted the computer. After the reboot, when I opened the Mail App, the emails for my Domain and Yahoo were still there. (I had previously deleted G Mail). The Hotmail addresses were not there but they were easy to put back. The App remembered them and the passwords. The G Mail account had to be input fully again but as I said I had previously deleted it.
Now I will see what happens and post again in a few days. I will leave the Mail App as the default but continue to run Outlook and use the iPad as a further check.