What Is It?

A POP3 and IMAP4 email viewer and manager. It will allow you to review emails on your email servers for multiple accounts in a tabbed interface. You can then choose to view the full text (but not HTML*) or delete the emails without full download.

*You can view the text portion of the HTML code.

Why Would You Want It?

To check, monitor and delete emails on your email account servers without having to download the complete email or using your email client. This can reduce the load on your Internet connection which can be useful if you are on a capped package or having to use a limited connection, particularly when travelling.

Why Do I Use It?

I use it mainly for quickly monitoring emails when I am away from home. The fact that I can carry it on a USB stick or removable drive or transfer it to another PC/Laptop makes it very useful to me. As removal of SPAM by ISP’s and the major web based mail providers is so good I don’t bother with defining rules, I simply delete manually anything that gets through.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Provides access to email on servers
• Allows email text to be viewed
• Allows emails to be deleted on the servers

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

• Portable
• Supports multiple email accounts
• Multilingual
• Simple to Use
• Extensive & Useful Options
• Good Help Included
• Tabbed Interface for Email Accounts
• Whitelist and Blacklist Options
• Runs/downloads emails in the background
• Simple and complex rules with regular expressions
• Save Single and Multiple emails
• Keyboard Shortcuts for main functions
• Good warning messages and tooltips

Cons:What’s Not So Good?

• Rule setting is not user friendly
• Lack of HTML viewer option

More About What it Does in Detail:

The PopMan website has some good information and screenshots as well as a forum. The Home Page gives the following information:

Why use PopMan?

PopMan offers you features that are missing in most e-mail clients:

• List e-mails waiting on your server
  See the e-mails waiting on your incoming mail server and decide whether you want to download them to your computer.
• Delete unwanted e-mails
  Unwanted e-mails (mass mailing and other spam) can be deleted directly from the server, without having to download them at first. You can define rules to automatically delete e-mails based on their content.
• Check e-mail accounts in the background
  You can have PopMan run in the background and check your accounts at regular intervals. When new mail arrives, you will be notified immediately.
• Secure viewing of e-mail messages
  You can examine the content of your e-mails without the danger of potential viruses, ActiveX controls, or JavaScript code. HTML-formatted messages are not interpreted or executed - PopMan simply extracts and displays the text with information.
• Selective downloading of e-mails
  You can download any e-mail you choose without depending upon other e-mail clients.

Having installed the system and running the program the following screens and menus are provided:

This review will follow the usual format of presenting the majority of information as screenshots backed up by further information where necessary.

(click on any picture to enlarge where necessary)

System Tray Icon

The system tray icon displays information about the email messages from each account, this can be set in the Options screens (see later). A tooltip is also displayed when hovering the mouse cursor over the icon which shows the unread messages.

Left clicking on the systray icon displays further information:

The number on the right appears to be the size of the emails in KB

Right clicking on the systray icon brings up the following dialog:

These are all self evident except “Mute Mode” which isn’t documented but appears to prevent the system tray popup tooltips when new messages are received.

Main GUI Screen

This is the main screen with the “File” menu list shown. Clicking on “Accounts” displays the Mail Accounts manager.

The order of accounts can be changed which effects the order in which accounts are downloaded and the tab order for accounts in the main GUI screen. There are also options to edit and delete existing accounts.

Clicking on the Add button displays the account setup options:

Here the email account details are entered. The “Protocol” Dropdown gives the following set of email protocols where, for instance, you need to use POP3 SSL for a Google Mail account:

There are various other options available including the ability to set the account to be automatically included for receiving emails as well as options under the Colors tab:

and the Advanced tab:

Under the Advanced tab you can enter a longer “Server Timeout” interval and set the amount of each email that is downloaded.

When the accounts have been set up you can retrieve or “Update” messages either by an automatic timed option (see options below) or by using a manual menu, the F5 key or the “Update” button which allows for all accounts to be downloaded or individual accounts using the dropdown menu associated with the button:

As emails are retrieved the Status Bar shows messages about connecting to the server and downloading mails, when downloading is completed the status bar shows details for the current account tab:

When the emails have been retrieved they are shown in the main GUI window:

The columns that can be displayed are shown by right clicking on the header labels where they can be selected or deselected as desired:

Left clicking on the header will sort the list in the normal way.I particularly like the ability to be able to sort on time sent rather than received.

The selected email can be read in the Preview screen below the messages screen. This can be resized by dragging the top edge with the mouse or switched off completely in the Options- View screen.

There is also an option to display the following New Mail message at the System Tray with buttons to Show in PopMan, Open the email client or Close the message box :

Right clicking on an individual message displays the context menu shown in the above Main GUI screenshot. This provides options to:

1. Open
2. Source
3. Save As
4. Reply To Sender
5. Trust Sender
6. Block Sender
7. Delete
8. Unmark

individual or selected emails. Emails can be selected using the normal windows method with the mouse and shift and/or control keys.

1. Open

The Open command opens the email in a separate screen which has its own menu options. The above screen shot shows the File menu which includes the additional option to Print the email.

Note: It would be useful to be able to print emails from the main GUI window either individually or in a selected batch

2. Source

Selecting this opens a separate window that shows the full source information for the email including all the email header details, HTML text if an HTML email, etc:

3. Save As

This option allows you to save individual emails or batches of emails. For individual messages clicking on Save As simply displays a standard windows Save dialog box. For batches of messages PopMan automatically displays the following dialog:

The option to use the *.eml format should only be used if you have an email client that will handle this format. PopMan shows the following dialog as the batch of emails is saved:

4. Reply To Sender

The “Reply To Sender” option only works where a suitable email client is available on your PC and has been set up in the Options settings (see later)

5. Trust Sender

Using this option adds the sender to the Whitelist and the following message dialog is shown:

6. Block Sender

Similar to the Trust Sender option this also displays a message dialog which warns that setting this option for the sender will automatically delete future emails from the sender - SO USE WITH CARE

7. Delete

Using this function you can delete the selected email(s). Again PopMan provides warning messages which you can choose not to show in future operations, this message also tells you more about deleting and the available options which is very useful:

There is a final warning message to advise that you will not be able to recover the message after deletion (as you are deleting from the server NOT a local downloaded copy)

8. Unmark

This function provides a quick way to unmark any messages that you may have previously selected all in one go.

View Menu

The View Menu provides several options:

Again these are self explanatory but provide a quick way of switching on or off a wide range of options.

Tools Menu

This provides access to several useful tools, the Whitelist, the Blacklist, the Rules file and the Options screen. It also allows for several different Themes to be set and to import email account information from Outlook Express.

The font and font color settings are universal, it would be nice if these could be set for individual accounts.

White List

and to add manually:

Black List

Note; Again there is a warning that any senders added to the blacklist will be automatically deleted at the server which cannot be undone.

The add screen is identical to the White List shown above.

Rules List

This is simply a text file that has to be edited in Notepad or preferably a syntax based text editor like Notepad++

I think this is the weakest part of PopMan which is generally well thought out and has comprehensive functionality. Fortunately for me I don’t need to use these types of rules although if they were simpler to set up I might be tempted.

Main GUI Tabs

The tabs on the main GUI screen display the emails for each individual account. There is also an option to show all emails marked for deletion under a tab named Trash.

A context menu is available when right clicking on a tab:

This provides several options which allow you to Check accounts and Rename the tab as well as Marking or Unmarking all emails as read.

You can also combine accounts to show under a single Tab (this can be reversed by using the Separate Account function).

Options Screen and Tabs

The available options are all self evident from reviewing the screenshots. These options are very extensive but are nearly all useful and relevant. Altogether a well thought out package.

General

Autocheck

Notification

Email Client

View

Tray Icon

Language

Mouse Actions

Logging

Help

The Help Menu provides links to the Help File, an Update checker and the About screen:

The help file is reasonably comprehensive:

What are the Technical Details & Compatibility?

What is the ProReviewer Experience?

This is a handy program that allows you to quickly and easily check your email accounts from your desktop or when on the move. Portability means you can easily transfer from one PC/Laptop to another or carry it on a removable device. As it will also connect to your main email client you can also reply to emails. Personally I rate this as:

Very Useful - Stable - Good options

If it had an option to view HTML emails either internally or by exporting to another utility as well as better rule setting functionality it would be just about perfect.

What Could Make it be Better?

“Unread” emails tab

Import accounts from more email clients

User friendly rule setting interface

Option to view HTML emails

What Other Posts are Relevant?

Why You Want to Use Portable Freeware Applications

Why I decided to Write This Blog

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 at 4:21 pm and is filed under Portable Freeware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.