Eudora's Personality Order

If you had multiple phone lines, which would you you rather have: one phone on your desk that could answer any of the lines or a different phone for each line?
Or if you regularly travelled between two cities, would you carry two cellphones to have local service in both cities, or would you rather have a single phone with regional service that served both cities the same?

Eudora allows you to consolidate your email needs in the same way that a multiple-line phone or cell phone with regional service allows you to consolidate your phone service.

Eudora personalities allow you to:

1. Set up one Eudora to receive and send email from multiple email accounts, such as your home ISP and UIC accounts.
   
   
2. Set up one Eudora, and use a single email account -- one login ID and incoming mail server -- to send email using different options. The options can either be cosmetically different, such as using a different From: name or address, signature, or stationery, or technically different, such as using a different SMTP server for outgoing messages.

The advantage to the first is obvious. It might not be as obvious what using different options for the same account might do for you, but that can be every bit as useful.

• If you receive email with your regular mail that's addressed to an alternate netid -- my acccwebstaff@uic.edu email, for example -- you can define a personality with a different name, return address, and default signature, tailored specifically for that netid, while still using your own login id and server as its real account.
  
  
• If you use Eudora on a personal computer that is connected to the Internet in multiple ways -- say with a cable modem at home, a connection to the ACCC network at work, and a dial-up ISP telephone connection when you're on the road, you'll need different "sending email" options for the different connections.

To create a new personality in Eudora:

1. Click the Personality tab -- the tab below the Mailboxes window that looks like two heads -- or select Tools -> Personalities from the Eudora menu.
   
   
2. Right-click in the Personalities window, then select New... from the menu.
   
   
3. Click the radio button beside "Skip directly to advanced account setup" then click Finish.
   
   
4. Fill out the two tabs of the Create New Account dialog box as in the figures on these two pages.

Example 1: Using a Different ISP

As an example, let's consider our fictional UIC faculty/staff member Ada Byron Lovelace, whose netid is adabyron and who uses mailserv for her email. And let's assume that she is making a Eudora personality on her laptop machine, which she'll use when she's at home, connecting with a commercial ISP, where she has to use her ISP's SMTP server. She can't use her work personality because she uses a connection to the ACCC network when she's on campus and can use the ACCC's SMTP server.

The two figures labeled "Example 1" are the definitions for this personality. It differs from her <Dominant> personality only in its SMTP Server:.

Example 1a: Setting Up the Outgoing Email for Ada Byron's home ISP account This Eudora personality is just like Ada's regular Eudora email account; the only difference is that she needs to use her IPS's outgoing email or SMTP server, so the SMTP Server: setting is myISPs.smtp.net. To find that out, she either asked her ISP, looked on its Web site, or looked it up in the ACCC Web site SMTP Servers for Selected ISPs, at http://www.accc.uic.edu/ecomm/smtpmove/isps.html. Note that Check Mail is not checked. Ada will use this personality to read her email, but only when she's at home. She'll turn Check Mail on then. (See Compliation #1 Incoming Email.) The items given in italic are specific to Ada; you should substitute values appropriate for your situation. The items in blue are specific to this personality.

Example 1b: Setting Up the Incoming Email for Ada Byron's home ISP account This tab is exactly the same as Ada's on-campus personality. It's not by accident that Ada is using IMAP. If you want to read your email from more than one machine or if you want to use WebMail, the UIC email on the Web service, https://webmail.uic.edu/, then you must use IMAP. If you don't, the day will come that your email account will be messed up.

Example 2: Using a Personality to Reply to Other Email Addresses

If you answer email from other email addresses like I do, you're going to love Eudora personalities. "Example 2" is the Eudora personality that I use for email that comes to acccwebstaff@uic.edu. "Example 2a" is the Generic Properties tab for my acccwebstaff personality. The Real Name: and Return Address: are the ones I want used on the replies I send to email that comes in from the acccwebstaff address. The rest of the information is set to match my tigger account.

Example 2a: An Alternate Personality for Replying to Departmental Email Addresses This is the Generic Properties tab of the Eudora personality I use to answer email sent to the ACCC's acccwebstaff@uic.edu. Because I only use it to reply to incoming email, it doesn't much matter what I have on the Incoming Mail tab. Check Mail isn't checked on the Generic Properties tab since I never check mail for this personality. It's actually set to my tigger account.

When I reply to messages that come in from acccwebstaff, I use "reply all", then select my "ACCC Web" personality from the dropdown list beside From:. (Example 2b, top.) My reply, which used to come from judygs, now reads that it is coming from acccwebstaff. (Example 2b, bottom.)

Example 2b: Selecting an Alternate From: Address for an Outgoing Message

Defining and using a personality in Eudora works almost as you'd expect it to. In particular --

• The incoming email for all POP personalities are mixed together in your In mailbox, which can make a big mess. I recommend that you define a Eudora filter that moves incoming email from each POP personality to its own mailbox or at least changes their color in the In mailbox. One of the "Header" options in Eudora filters is <<Personality>>. Set it to "Is" and the name of the personality.
  
  
• The incoming email for each IMAP personality appears in that personality's Inbox, in the bottom half of the Mailboxes window, below <Dominant>. (See Example 3.)
  
  

  Example 3: Using Eudora with Multiple Personalities This figure shows Ada Byron's four Eudora personalities. Her dominant personality is an IMAP connection to her mailserv account on campus. The second and third are the IMAP personalities in Example1 and Example 2 from this article. The fourth is a POP personality connected to her tigger account. You can't tell by looking at the Mailbox window how many POP accounts she has defined. When you open Eudora, it will only ask for the password(s) for the personality or personalities that you have set to Check Mail. So you don't get confused and to make the mailbox list shorter, double-click in the Mailbox window, on the name of each personality that you're not using. This closes its mailbox tree. Eudora will ask for the personality's password later, if you check mail for the personality or if you open one of its mailboxes.

  
  
• Eudora doesn't check email for any personality unless you tell it to:

To check mail just once (Example 4):

1. Go to the Personality window (click the Personality tab or select Tools -> Personalities from the Eudora menu).
2. Right click on the personality's name.
3. Select Check Mail from the right-click menu.
   
   

   Example 4: The Personality Window and the Persona Right-Click Menu. The first defined and default Eudora persona is called <Dominant> in the Personality window even if it uses POP. POP dominant personalities are not called <Dominant> in the Mailbox window. I've right-clicked on the UIC from my ISP name in the screen shot below. From the right-click menu, the Message menu allows you to send a new message, or to reply, reply to all, forward, redirect, or send again the current message, acting as the selected persona. New... creates a new persona, Delete deletes the selected persona, and Properties allows you to edit the selected persona's properties. The tabs with the Mailbox window are, in order from the bottom left: Mailbox, File Browser, Signatures, Stationery, and Personalities. (Two heads.)

Or you can set the personality to automatically check mail, as described in Complication #1: Incoming Email below.

• When you reply to email in an IMAP personality's mailbox, either the Inbox or in any of its other mailboxes, that personality's options -- in particular, its SMTP server, default signature, and default stationary -- are used for the reply.
  
  
• Personalities' mailboxes -- even IMAP personalities' Inboxes and the Eudora In mailbox -- are just like any other Eudora mailbox. In particular, you can transfer individual email messages from any mailbox, belonging to any persona (even a POP one) to any other mailbox, including the Eudora In mailbox and any IMAP personality's Inbox.

Complication #1: Incoming Email

If you have two personalities that use the same login name and server -- say, if your <Dominant> personality and another personality differ only in the SMTP (outgoing email) server they use -- such as in Ada's Example 1, you will want to set the <Dominant> personality to not check mail while you're using the ISP personality or your Inbox will be open twice. This is not necessarily bad, but it might be confusing for you.

To switch from checking email from Persona #1 to Persona #2:

1. Set Persona #1 not to check email.
   1. Click the Personality tab
   2. Right-click on the name of Personality #1
   3. Select Properties from the menu
   4. Click the Generic Properties tab
   5. Uncheck Check mail
      
      
2. Set Persona #2 to check mail, following the list above.
   
   
3. Return to the mailboxes window by clicking the little blue and white icon at the bottom of the window or selecting Tools -> Mailboxes.
   
   
4. If the <Persona #1> mailbox list is expanded, double-click on its name in the Mailboxes window to contract it. Likewise, if the <Persona #2> mailbox list is not expanded, double-click on its name to expand it.

Complication #2: New Messages

The new message icon (or Message -> New) will use the <Dominant> personality's options, including its SMTP server, by default. There are several ways to create a new message from a Eudora personality.

1. Use the new message icon, or Message -> New, to open the new message. Then click on the grey down arrow beside the From: field and select the personality you want from the list (see page 9). That's not hard, but you do have to remember to do it.
   
   
2. Use the new message icon (or Message -> New) to open the new message and then change the personality while you're composing the message.
   1. Right-click in the message's window
   2. Select Change Personality from the menu
   3. Double-click the name of the personality you want to use
      
      
3. Use the Personalities tab.
   1. Click the Personalities tab
   2. Double-click the name of the personality you want the message to be from

For IMAP personalities, replies shouldn't be a problem. Just make sure you open the message you're replying to using the mailbox tree (Inbox and mailboxes) for the personality you want used for your replies. Eudora will automatically use that personality in the reply. And if you get it wrong, you can always change it.

And One Minor Annoyance

Eudora always displays the whole mailbox folder tree for every IMAP personality you have defined, regardless of whether you're checking its email. So if you have two IMAP personalities that point to the same account (same login id and incoming mail server), Eudora will display its IMAP mail folder tree twice.

This can get confusing. My advice is to close the mailbox tree of all the IMAP personalities you're not currently using. Double-clicking on the personality's name in the Mailbox window will close its mailbox tree if it is open.

For More Information

See Qualcomm's tutorials, which come complete with animated screen shots. They're great sources of information about how to set personalities up, but they only talk about using POP Personalities.

http://www.eudora.com/techsupport/tutorials/win_personalities.html

http://www.eudora.com/techsupport/tutorials/mac_personalities.html

And enjoy using personalities. They can really help!

Comments are welcome; please send them
to Judith Grobe Sachs, judygs@uic.edu
a.k.a acccwebstaff@uic.edu :-).