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Recovering Email Settings Print
Friday, 14 January 2005
One item I can count on during the holidays is calls from friends who received a PC. The friend usually tells me how great the new machine is and how I should come over and take a look. Their new machine is "state of the art" with everything one needs except for their email settings. One quick way to recover the email settings is with a free program called Mail PassView.

My typical response is to congratulate them on their new PC and tell them I'll make a point of seeing it the next time I'm around. After a short pause, I hear there is a problem. It seems someone has forgotten his or her email settings. And to make matters worse, I'm the cause of the problem since I told the friends to:

- have multiple email accounts
- use strong passwords
- don't write the passwords down

They seem to forget that I also suggested they get a secure program to store their passwords like RoboForm or SplashID.

Finding Your Email Settings 

The good news is this problem is easy to solve. There is a free utility called Mail PassView that reads emails settings for many email programs. You simply click the program file and you get a listing like the one below.

Click-to-enlarge

Not only does the program return passwords, but is also provides the server name and account type. This info is also needed for most email programs. You can also save the information to a HTML report.

The program works with the following email programs:

  • Eudora
  • Google Email
  • Group Mail Free
  • Hotmail/MSN Mail
  • Incredimail
  • Mozilla Thunderbird
  • Netscape 6/7
  • Outlook 2000 (POP3 and SMTP)
  • Outlook 2002/2003/2007 (POP3, IMAP, HTTP, and SMTP)
  • Outlook Express
  • Yahoo! Mail

We've used Mail PassView to retrieve email settings with most of these email applications. We've not tried Incredimail and Group Mail Free. The program has worked very well except for one instance with our Google Email account even though we use Gmail Notifier. On our notebook, the program failed to find the Gmail account, but had no difficulty with the same account on the desktop computer.

The program also had an unexpected side benefit as it showed to my friend just how easy it is for someone to get personal information from a PC. As a result, my friend vowed to lock his desktop when he was away. Equally important, he realized he needed to scrub his old machine of personal data before donating it to charity.

URL: www.nirsoft.net/
Cost: Free
Version Reviewed: 1.31

Related Article:

RoboForm - Security Meets Simplicity 
Last Updated ( Sunday, 01 July 2007 )
 
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