Outlook Express/Google/POP3 error

I'm new here and have a very aggravating problem.

At the end of September we signed up for high-speed via Xplornet. When setting up the email I had to switch to Outlook Express. I have since discovered that Xplornet uses Google Mail as their server. The problem is that when I click on the OE icon to get messages 9 times out of 10 I get a POP3 error telling me that the server has timed out. When it kicks back in I will get anywhere from duplicate to octuplicate messages. For whatever reason after the message is received in the OE inbox Google doesn't seem to remove it from it's server. Worse yet today I was actually receiving messages from October 27th!!

I have checked, double checked, triple checked all settings - both OE and Google.
I have restored to a previous date.
I have run CCleaner.
I have disabled the AV email scanner (I use AVG).
I have talked to Xplornet tech support - 3 times and have been bumped to level 3 but all to no avail.
I have gone into the webmail and deleted all messages previously received and sent as well as the trash - BUT I'll still get some of those "deleted" messages in the OE inbox after the fact.

What else can I do??????????? HELP - almost makes me wish I had dial up again..............

 

I'm not sure about the duplicate emails but I don't see anything about having to use OE as your client. What did you use before the switch?

 

Originally it was netscape but my ISP was no longer supporting it. I switched to Mozilla and T-Bird. BUT when we were setting up the email with Xplornet they couldn't get it to work with T-Bird so I went with OE.

 

had similar issues in OE, but now everything works fine. make sure you go through your gmail account(s) & set it(them) to allow POP3 (you can do allow IMAP, but i didn't like it and had other problems so i disabled THAT). open your gmail account and click on Settings (top right of your inbox page) then click on Forwarding and POP/IMAP to change the settings.

the "configuration settings" link (on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP page) will help you with the rest of the adjustments (on the Servers and Advanced tabs in OE Tools > Accounts > Properties) you need to make it work properly. you don't/shouldn't need to use your ISP's instructions for gmail (just use gmail's settings & pop/smtp servers and ports).

T-bird will work, i just found it had a higher learning curve than OE so i haven't bothered with it again. i find T-bird's format a little clumsy, but that may be because i'm so used to OE i didn't try harder to figure out everything.

hope this helps

 

took too long to edit, so i can't.

i also had a problem with duplicate emails with my yahoo & isp accounts, until i got everything into OE. had to delete them manually, then no more issues. get my free yahoo with FreePOPs, btw.

also, if you have IMAP enabled for gmail, AND you haven't deleted anything permanently, it will download because gmail only archives them. you have to manually "delete forever."