[Spambayes] Complicated

[Tony Meyer]

> I thought that I would install it at home on Outlook Express.  No  
> way. I could have deleted a years worth of spam in the time that I  
> have spent trying to understand the installation.  I am no sure it  
> is hard but the terminology is confusing.  I am not willing to risk  
> having no email to get it going.

The problems here are:

   (a) This is a project where all contributions are made by  
volunteers working in their 'spare time'.  In addition, the most  
common contributions are ones that benefit the contributor  
themselves; I don't think any developer uses Outlook Express, so  
contributions towards this have to be somewhat more altruistic than  
normal.

   (b) Outlook Express is an extremely limited mail client (Microsoft  
would like you to buy Outlook/Office).  This means that there's more  
to setting it up than there is with other clients (e.g. Eudora,  
Thunderbird), and a plug-in (like with Outlook) isn't feasible.

> Having said all that, you have done some good work here and I will  
> just wait until you get it refined before I give it another go.

Unfortunately, you may be waiting a long time.  There is a partially  
completed automatic configuration script, but it hasn't been worked  
on for some time, and is pretty far down my list (and probably not  
even on anyone else's).

However, on a brighter note, there is a step-by-step guide, which we  
have made as simple as possible (suggestions are always welcome) at  
FAQ 4.21: <http://spambayes.org/faq.html#how-do-i-set-up-spambayes- 
and-outlook-express>

If you do decide to give it a go, and you run into trouble, please  
don't hesitate to ask for help here (please be as specific as  
possible about where you are up to, and what is going wrong).

If something does go wrong (it's a pretty simple process, so it  
shouldn't, but...), then to revert to how things were before you set  
it up, all you have to do is change the settings in Outlook Express  
back to connect directly to your mail server.  No mail will be lost,  
it will still be waiting on the server to be collected.

=Tony.Meyer

-- 
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