First beta of new OE Classic 1.6 (Pro version) has been released for paid customers only. It has a lot of goodies inside but the most significant of all is the new support for identities making OE Classic the only program (at least that we know of) which supports such a feature, except of course Outlook Express which also had identities. A lot of Outlook Express users were unhappy when Windows Mail and later Windows Live Mail removed support for identities. Now you can use identities once again.

If you are not familiar with identities, it is in fact another name for user profiles or users and can be used in a single and multi-user environment. While multi-user is obvious, if used by a single user, it can help you separate your entire folder/message/address book/settings data in each user profile or identity. For example, you may have one identity for your home email and another one for your work email. All data you can create with the program is fully separated in each identity. Identities can optionally be password protected and are much easier to select, edit and use than they used to be in Outlook Express.

A lot of other things from version 1.51 has been improved and feature list is huge but more details will be released once we reach stable version and that should be quite soon.

Due to improvements in message store system (and new support for identities), starting with next version, OE Classic will no longer support older beta version database formats (last version which used these was released on Jun 20th, 2011). As program automatically upgrades database format every time you install new version, most likely you can safely ignore this notification. We will of course, be providing older version (on demand) which you can use to convert older messages database.

Program will also notify you if you need to take any action (if it detects older database format).

Bug fixes

• Outlook Express identity import option is no longer available on Windows where it doesn't exist (e.g. Windows 8, Windows 7)
• Fixed error which was displayed when starting import wizard on Windows 8

This version is extended with a couple of new features - Add Sender To Address Book option, Mark as Read/Unread and some bug fixes. When adding sender to address book, OE Classic automatically detects and extracts first name, middle name, last name, nick name and also detects titles (e.g. Dr., Mr., Miss) and suffixes (e.g. Jr., Sr., II, III). Also, as certain users prefer to keep their latest emails on top of the message list they can now do so as sorting top-down now keeps scroll bar on top. Here is the rest of the list:

New features

• Added Mark as Read and Mark as Unread
• Message list is much faster due to code optimization - e.g. Select All can be up to 400% faster, scrolling is smoother etc.
• Add sender to address book added
• Auto-detection of title, suffix and first/middle/last/nick name

Bug fixes

• Newsgroups message list is decoded after downloading (affects Subject and From fields)
• Scroll bar is positioned on top for descending sort (arrow down) in header column
• Vertical splitters can no longer be resized to completely hide message/folder/contact list
• Cc list is shown in preview pane (when available)
• Contact list displays Unnamed Contact if name hasn't been entered

Registered users can now easily suggest new features and vote for previously suggested features in the registered user page. The voting system is very easy to use - all you have to do is click the "Like" button next to a feature description. You can click on any number of features but you can only give one vote to each. The system is fully transparent so you can see which new features are the most popular.

We encourage you to vote because this results in two important benefits - first, you leave a trail you asked for a certain feature so we can easily track it and notify you when it is ready to use, and second, you give us better image what features we should focus on first and which are more important to you.

Free users cannot ask for new features or vote, so this only benefits registered users.

Let the extensive feature list speak for itself.

New features

• CSV import can recognize more fields
• Import wizard window extended with export options (either import or export options are shown)
• Added export option (File menu)
• New user interface control for inputting emails, allows multiple email addresses in To, Cc and Bcc fields with drop-down search box
• Message viewer can open multi-selected messages in multiple windows (File/Open)
• Cleans up incorrectly repeated Re/Fw/Fwd in subject line from other email clients when you use Reply or Forward
• Address book entries now support multi-select operations, e.g. adding multiple contacts to message editor fields, deleting multiple contacts etc.
• Clicking To, Cc and Bcc buttons in message editor opens address book
• Attachments can now be removed with backspace key as well
• Deleting contacts from address book now displays confirmation dialog
• Outlook Express 6 import improved (retains folder structure, recognizes flags, account name, more stable, more import options)
• Message decoder code refactored, 2 decoders were merged into one, more versatile - as a result there will be fewer bugs in message decoding calls
• Folders can be deleted using Delete key

Bug fixes

• CSV import no longer displays options errors when options are hidden
• Support for multiple From in message decoder (uncommon but possible)
• Reply, Reply To and Forward in message viewer now reply to correct sender instead of using sender from main window
• Popup windows like the one for adding attachments no longer hide previous window that opened them
• Bcc wasn't saved in outgoing message and therefore would never be used
• OE_ prefix in Outlook Express 6 import is now gone for good
• Message decoder attachment count is now consistent thanks to message decoder code refactoring
• Version check incorrectly reported that there is a new version available (time zone difference)
• Time zones were not taken into account when calculating message date and time
• Received header in preview pane wasn't showing date in local format
• Removed extra new line in message editor when signature is undefined
• Forwarding a message no longer removes attachments

At last, this version brings you Address Book import, repeatedly requested by many people.

You can import from almost any program, including Outlook Express, Outlook, Windows Live Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird, web-mail services like Gmail or other program or web page which can export to CSV file (Comma Separated Values) or text file format. These files are quite common for exchanging address books.

OE Classic CSV import is very advanced and although it looks relatively simple it offers a lot. You can easily set how will each column be used, change field separator or set if CSV has a header row. You can also easily preview how the data will look before importing it using grid display.

You can easily adjust what you want to import from CSV file using options. Options are also automatically detected.

To make this even easier for you we've made auto-detection of field separators, header row and automatic mapping of columns. We really did a stress test with CSV importer and it can now swallow almost any file, including non-standard ones and even the ones some well known programs could not.

Help has been updated to describe all the new options so please read it carefully to learn how to use it effectively.

More importers are coming soon.

New features

• Import address book from Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail, Gmail and many other programs using CSV file (Comma Separated Values) or text file
• Revised and easy to use import wizard - now you can start all importers from a single location

Bug fixes

• Male contacts had female icons
• Removed address book gender auto detection (it wasn't really useful nor precise)

This version fixes a few serious bugs and the startup error "list index out of bounds" some of you have been experiencing. It was caused by multiline From and Subject headers in a few (usually spam) emails. Normal emails should never have something like this. Although this version won't produce the error again and takes care of malformed headers if you experienced this error you still need to fix the current state of your mailbox.

We've made this easy for you - all you need to do is to run OE Classic with a command line parameter that will fix this.

Note: You should not run the following if you never experienced "list index out of bounds" error during program startup!

On Windows 7 - Click Start menu and in the field "Search programs and files" type (or even better, copy-paste) the following:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\OEClassic\OEClassic.exe" -console fixdb

On Windows XP - Click Start menu and select Run and then type (or paste) slightly different command:

"C:\Program Files\OEClassic\OEClassic.exe" -console fixdb

Make sure you include quotes as specified above - it is required as path has spaces in it. Once you run the above, a new window will appear and print some diagnostic messages. It should complete quickly. Once it finishes, click "OK" to close this window. Now you can run OE Classic normally as before.

New features

• File menu Save As option for saving selected single email message in .eml format - works for newsgroup (.nws) messages too

Bug fixes

• A number of fixes with regard to mailbox and disk operations, improved overall stability and better message decoder
• Fixed "list index out of bounds" error on program startup (caused by different reason than the one we had before) related to malformed email headers like From and Subject (usually appeared in spam emails)

This version improves drag and drop functionality so now you have the ability to move messages to folders by dragging them (of course, the menus are still functional).

New features

• Drag messages to folders to move them and if holding modifier keys (CTRL, SHIFT, ALT) to copy them
• Folders, accounts and newsgroups are now sorted alphabetically wherever displayed
• Folders are scrolling during drag operation and when mouse is near top or bottom of the folder list

Bug fixes

• Dragging messages no longer causes program to slow down (was caused by reading from disk)
• New folder and Rename folder now focus correctly onto a new or renamed folder after the operation is complete

We just added Twitter feed so if you use Twitter you can follow us there as well. Follow button is in the newsletter box on the right.