Stephen Poppitt's Blog-o-Sphere

Windows Live Mail – Solutions for common problems

Posted on 14 October 2022 by StephenPoppitt

Blocked Accounts

Here are some suggestions.

Unblock your account –

https://account.live.com/ResetPassword.aspx
https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2016113

Unblock your account –

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/unblock-my-outlook-com-account-f4ad2701-d166-4d8b-8a6a-9af2a1f8a4c4

When you can’t sign in to your Microsoft account –

https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=842227

Account support –

https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2114545

You can contact Microsoft staff, in a live chat, to request general help with using Windows 10 or other current Microsoft software. This is the link to use –

https://support.microsoft.com/contactus

E-mail Account of Deceased Spouse

If you cannot access a Microsoft e-mail account, because it’s your husband’s or wife’s account, who has passed away, have a look at this link:

Accessing Microsoft services when someone has died –

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/accessing-outlook-com-onedrive-and-other-microsoft-services-when-someone-has-died-ebbd2860-917e-4b39-9913-212362da6b2f#:~:text=You%20don%27t%20need%20to,(2)%20years%20of%20inactivity.

Basically, you can expect NO help from Microsoft (unless you obtain a court order).

You may need to access the account on the deceased’s behalf. For example, to inform people who they were in touch with, about the death. To do so, all you need is the account’s address and password.

You don’t need assistance unless (for example) the account password is not known to you.

But it may be written down on paper (or in a diary, or address book); or written on the computer’s casing; or stored in a text file on the computer; or saved in the cache of the web browser used to access the account.

You don’t need to formally close an e-mail account. If it’s left unused for a few months, the service provider will normally close it automatically (with a Microsoft Outlook.com e-mail account, this will happen probably 12 months after the deceased last signed-in). Most e-mail services close an inactive account after a few months of no activity; but it varies as to how many months.

It may not be necessary to close the account. If you just want to open an e-mail account for yourself, to replace your late partner’s account, there is no requirement to close your partner’s account first.

If an account is closed, all information held in it becomes (in theory) inaccessible.

Recover a former Email Address

Q: I changed my Microsoft e-mail address for my current one. Is it possible to recover the old one?

A: If you created a new alias for an existing Hotmail or Outlook.com account, made that the primary alias, and then removed the original address (which was then a non-primary alias), that address is gone forever. It can’t be recovered or recreated.

In other words, if you removed a Microsoft alias (such as @hotmail.com, @live.com, @outlook.com, or @msn.com), that alias is deleted permanently. It can’t be associated with any Microsoft e-mail account again.

If you deleted an address, that address cannot be used again:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/add-or-remove-an-email-alias-in-outlook-com-459b1989-356d-40fa-a689-8f285b13f1f2

In any other case, because Microsoft closes “inactive” accounts, if you have not signed in to your old Microsoft account in the past two years it will likely have been closed.

This problem has nothing to do with Windows Live Mail (WLM). You can contact Microsoft staff, in a live chat, to request general help. This is the link to use –

https://support.microsoft.com/contactus

Damaged Hard Disk

Unless your hard drive literally got destroyed, it’s likely that you can recover the files on it.

I bought a useful little device on eBay called a “SATA/IDE to USB Adapter”. It didn’t cost much (about $25). What you do is pull the hard drive out of the crashed computer and plug it into this device. Then plug the USB end into another computer, and copy the files. The adapter supplies power to the old hard drive for the transfer. The drive itself MUST be working.

I’ve used it to recover files from dead computers a couple of times. Worked like a charm.

Open the crashed computer, remove the hard drive, plug it into the appropriate adapter on this device, plug the USB end of the device into a working computer. It’s USB 3, so if the drive can be read you can transfer the data to the working machine quickly. It makes the old drive appear as an External USB drive.

This allows you to use an internal drive that has not been physically damaged as an external USB drive. If there has been some corruption to the disk, so that the operating system won’t boot, there is still a good chance it can be used with this cable on another machine that does boot, so that you can then copy files off it.

Apple Mac

The forum you’ve posted in is dedicated to a Windows e-mail program.

Your Apple computer (Mac, iPad, or whatever) doesn’t use Windows, so you’re more likely to get help in an Apple forum. Try, for example, the official Apple support community:

https://discussions.apple.com/welcome

For an iPad, this forum might be helpful:

https://discussions.apple.com/community/ipad

Problem described has nothing to do with WLM

Windows Live Mail (WLM) exists in two main versions for Windows 7, one is the 2011 release, and the other is the 2012 release. There were earlier versions too, for Windows Vista, including one released in 2009.

The point is: Windows Live Mail is so-called “legacy” software. It’s a static software, in that it was last updated in 2012. As the most recent update was 7 years ago, whatever problem you are experiencing today cannot be due to changes to Windows Live Mail.

The program has not changed recently. If you’ve had no problem using it during the past 7 years, I can say with some confidence that your present problem cannot be due to Windows Live Mail.

That being so, the problem may be due to the e-mail service you use, which appears not to be a Microsoft service. What that really means is, because I use Microsoft Hotmail I don’t have experience with your chosen e-mail service, so you must ask them what they have done recently, by way of changes to their service, that have caused your problem.

If they have made no changes, did this error occur following a Windows 10 update? If so, it may be due to that update, in which case you should ask this question in a Windows 10 forum. Like many users of WLM, I use Windows 7.

How to contact Support

You can contact Microsoft staff to request online assistance, at the following link –

https://support.microsoft.com/contactus

If you are in the UK, you can contact Microsoft UK at the following link –

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/about/contact/

If you press option 0, you will be connected to their UK switchboard, where someone from their staff will speak to you. If you press any other option, you will be connected live to Microsoft Support (for online assistance, similar to using a chatroom).

If you are elsewhere in the world, Microsoft’s Global Support phone numbers are here –

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4051701/global-customer-service-phone-numbers

Be aware that in each case all they will do is tell you that Microsoft does not provide support for Windows Live Mail any longer, and refer you to the volunteers on this help forum.

Microsoft will then advise you not to use software they no longer support, such as Windows Live Mail, and will tell you what current e-mail options they do provide live support for.

Error Message

Error messages explain what has gone wrong. In order to get help, you need to know what the error message says.

Copy the exact wording of the error message, including the error number (an 8-digit number). The error number identifies the exact error that is occurring, and is essential for solving your problem.

To view the error message, delete any unsent messages in the WLM Outbox (below the account folders, in the folder pane). Then compose a short test message, with a unique subject, and send it to yourself (i.e. from the account in question to the same account).

To post the error message on-line (including the error number): select the error message by clicking on it, then right-click on it and select ‘copy’. Then paste the copied text into your next post here (right-click here and select ‘paste’).

State what version of Windows Live Mail (WLM) you use, and what version of Windows you use:

a. To find the version and build of Windows Live Mail,
open that program, then press Alt+F and B.

b. To find the version of Windows, press the Windows key + R,
then type WINVER into the pop-up box, then press <Enter>.

Which Mail program are you really using? #1

There are several e-mail programs you might have –

• Windows Mail was an e-mail program that came with Windows Vista, and was the successor to Outlook Express.

• Windows Live Mail (often wrongly called Live Mail) is a different program, first released in 2006 and most recently updated in 2012. There were versions available for download for Windows Vista and for Windows 7.

• Mail (often wrongly called Windows Mail) is the name of the e-mail app on Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. It’s a different program (incompatible with both Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail). It is what people generally mean when they talk about “Mail for Windows 10”.

Your question refers to “Mail” or “Windows Mail”, but you posted in the forum for Windows Live Mail. Because of that confusion (the programs are quite different, despite their names), I have to ask which program you’re in fact using, and which version of Windows.

• To find your e-mail program’s version and build, in Windows Live Mail simultaneously press the three keys Alt+F+B. In Windows Mail, simultaneously press the three keys Alt+H+A.

• To find your operating system, simultaneously press the Windows key + R, then type WINVER in the box that opens, then press the Enter key.

Which Mail program are you really using? #2

I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you mean by “Outlook”.

Outlook is variously:

1. A program, part of Microsoft Office. The program is usually further identified by a year of release, e.g. “Outlook 2013”, or by an Office version number, e.g. “Outlook 15”.

2. An “app”, available for most mobile devices, and included in Windows 10 Mobile.

3. A webmail service once known as “Windows Live Hotmail”, later as “Hotmail”, later still as “Outlook.com”, then as “Outlook Mail (localized)”, more recently as “Outlook”, and most recently as “Outlook.live.com”.

If you ignored my advice and took a different approach

If you plan on doing a bunch of your own tests, I strongly recommend that you first configure Windows Live Mail to NOT delete messages on the server. Otherwise what you do might delete the messages on the server!

After taking that step, there can then be no harm inputting the correct username and password for your e-mail account into Windows Live Mail.

If that succeeds, well done.

If that does not succeed, then try the suggestions I posted here.

If you get a successful result, please post here saying how you solved the problem.

Windows Live Mail

There are three versions of Windows Live Mail: WLM 2012 (build 16.4.3528.0331); WLM 2011 (build 15.4.3555.0308); and WLM 2009 (build 14.0.8117.0416).

WLM 2012 will only run on Windows 7 or later. WLM 2011 will run on Windows Vista or later. WLM 2009 will run on Windows XP or later. My advice is primarily intended for WLM 2012 or 2011. Much of it applies also to WLM 2009, but the commands involved may differ.

I recommend that you use Windows Live Mail 2011 (WLM 2011), which I run on Windows 7.

You can download Windows Live Essentials 2011 from the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/windowsliveessentials2011_201908

This is the direct link –
https://archive.org/download/windowsliveessentials2011_201908/wlsetup-all.exe

WLM 2011 is one of several programs included in this installer. When you run the installer it gives you an option to choose which of the programs to install.

If you need help to install Windows Live Mail, see below. Or search online for the term windowsliveessentials2011 (i.e. search for the installer program).

Windows Live Mail 2009:

This version was released on 8 January 2009. This is the only version that supports Windows XP.

Windows Live Mail 2011:

This version was released on 30 September 2010, as part of Windows Live Essentials 2011. It requires Windows Vista or later.

If you wish to use Windows Live Mail, you are strongly recommended to install Windows Live Mail 2011, and to use the IMAP service with it. This arrangement has the widest compatibility. The only situation in which it will not work is for those using Windows XP.

WLM 2011 originally gave the user a choice of 3 services: IMAP, POP3 or DeltaSync. In 2016, Microsoft switched off its DeltaSync service. Today you can only use either IMAP or POP3.

By using IMAP instead of DeltaSync, Windows Live Mail 2011 continues to work normally. It is NOT necessary to change to Windows Live Mail 2012.

Download the installation program “Windows Live Essentials 2011” here:

https://archive.org/details/windowsliveessentials2011_201908

Windows Live Essentials 2011 has now reached end-of-support. This means you can no longer get help from Microsoft to fix it. But you can still get free help to fix it from the volunteers on this forum.

Windows Live Mail 2012:

This version was released on 7 August 2012, as part of Windows Essentials 2012. It requires Windows 7 or later.

This version is identical in use to WLM 2011. The only difference is the discontinuance of support for Windows Vista and for DeltaSync. WLM 2012 gives the user a choice of IMAP, POP3 or Exchange ActiveSync.

There are thus no benefits in changing to WLM 2012, unless you wish to use Exchange ActiveSync.

User forums report serious problems with the upgrade software, KB3093594, so it is recommended NOT to attempt to upgrade from Windows Live Mail 2011. If you decide to use WLM 2012, uninstall any earlier version, then install WLM 2012 using the full installation software in Windows Essentials 2012.

You can download the latest version of Windows Essentials 2012 (build 16.4.3528.0331) here:

English (United States) –
https://web.archive.org/web/20170112124505/http://wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/C/1/B/C1BA42D6-6A50-4A4A-90E5-FA9347E9360C/en/wlsetup-all.exe

English (United Kingdom) –
http://web.archive.org/web/20160423192125/http://wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/1/9/4/194B1919-A211-441F-BC0E-34F6B533B876/en-gb/wlsetup-all.exe

Windows Essentials 2012 reached end-of-support on 10 January 2017. This means you can no longer get help from Microsoft to fix it. But you can still get free help to fix it from the volunteers on this forum.

DeltaSync:

Although the DeltaSync service was turned off by Microsoft in 2016, Windows Live Mail 2011 and 2012 continue to work with Hotmail e-mail accounts by using IMAP instead (or, less effectively, POP3).

Gmail and other non-Microsoft e-mail services still offer DeltaSync (as well as IMAP and POP3). So you can still use DeltaSync in Windows Live Mail 2011, with non-Microsoft email accounts (but not in Windows Live Mail 2012, as DeltaSync support was removed from it).

Windows Live Mail 2011 and 2012 both continue to work, and can still be downloaded from the Archive.org website – using the links mentioned above.

Windows Essentials:

More information about this software suite (variously known as “Windows Live Essentials 2011” and “Windows Essentials 2012”) can be found on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Essentials

Windows 10:

The Windows Essentials 2012 software still works in Windows 10.

For Windows 10 users, the best version of Windows Essentials 2012 to use might be this one (which comes with some helpful additional notes on the Archive.org page) –

https://archive.org/details/wlsetup-all_201802

Windows 10 users are reporting success at signing in, after a Windows 10 update broke Windows Live Mail, using the following procedure:

1. Uninstall Windows Live Essentials 2011, or Windows Essentials 2012, using the Revo uninstaller.
2. Install this Archive.org version of Windows Essentials 2012 instead.
3. After the reinstall, restart your computer.

Windows XP : Windows Live Mail 2009

Please note *carefully* that Windows XP can only use Windows Live Mail 2009 (WLM 2009), as WLM 2011 and 2012 require Windows Vista or later, but I have never used either Windows XP or WLM 2009.

Accordingly, my advice might be of no assistance to you — there are some differences between WLM 2009 and the later versions.

Install WLM : IMAP Protocol

Which version of WLM to install –

Windows Live Mail 2009:

Released on 8 January 2009, this is the only version that supports Windows XP.

Windows Live Mail 2011 (“WLM 2011”):

Released on 30 September 2010, as part of “Windows Live Essentials 2011”. It runs on Windows Vista or later. Accordingly, it runs successfully on Windows 10 (just the same as any other 32-bit program).

You are recommended to install Windows Live Mail 2011, and to use the IMAP service. This arrangement has the widest compatibility. The only situation in which it will not work is for those using Windows XP.

It originally gave the user a choice of 3 services: IMAP, POP3, or DeltaSync. In 2016, Microsoft switched off its DeltaSync service. Today you can only use either IMAP or POP3.

By using IMAP instead of DeltaSync, Windows Live Mail 2011 continues to work normally. It is NOT necessary to change to Windows Live Mail 2012.

Download the installation program “Windows Live Essentials 2011”:

https://archive.org/details/windowsliveessentials2011_201908

Windows Live Mail 2012:

Released on 7 August 2012, as part of “Windows Essentials 2012”. It requires Windows 7 or later.

It is identical in use to WLM 2011. The only difference is the discontinuance of support for Windows Vista and for DeltaSync. It gives the user a choice of IMAP, POP3, or Exchange ActiveSync.

There are no benefits in using WLM 2012, unless you wish to use Exchange ActiveSync.

User forums report significant problems with the upgrade software, KB3093594, so it is recommended NOT to attempt to upgrade from WLM 2011. If you decide to use WLM 2012, uninstall any earlier version, then install WLM 2012 using the full installation in Windows Essentials 2012.

Download the installation program “Windows Essentials 2012” (build 16.4.3528.0331):

https://web.archive.org/web/20170112124505/http://wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/C/1/B/C1BA42D6-6A50-4A4A-90E5-FA9347E9360C/en/wlsetup-all.exe

DeltaSync:

Although the DeltaSync service was turned off by Microsoft in 2016, Windows Live Mail 2011 and 2012 continue to work with Hotmail e-mail accounts by using IMAP instead (or, less effectively, POP3).

Windows Live Mail 2011 and 2012 both continue to work, and can still be downloaded from the Archive.org website – using the links mentioned above.

How to Install WLM –

Run the installation program, choose the option “Windows Live Mail”, and install only the mail program.

Open the new installation of Windows Live Mail. Before proceeding, select the option “WORK OFFLINE” on the ribbon. The ribbon is the top menu bar in the WLM program’s window (the menu which includes the tabs labelled ‘Home’, ‘Folders’, ‘View’ and ‘Accounts’). On the ribbon, go to: Home > Work Offline

If you create a new account within Windows Live Mail, using the IMAP or the POP3 protocol, WLM will sync to your e-mail account on the online server (i.e. will download all the ‘live’ folders present on the server, including all mail for the last few years):

1. Click on the “Accounts” tab on the ribbon, then click on the “E-mail” button.

2. It’ll launch the “Add new email accounts” wizard. Now provide required information
such as your e-mail account address, password, display name. Then select “Manually
configure server settings”. Then click on “Next”.

3. On the next screen, select IMAP (or POP3) from the “Server type” drop-down list,
then enter the following details (for accounts other than Hotmail, get the incoming
and outgoing server addresses and port number off the website of your e-mail
service provider):

IMAP Settings (for Hotmail):

Incoming Mail –
Server type: IMAP
Server address: imap-mail.outlook.com (Port: 993)
SSL required: Yes
Authenticate using: Clear text
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp-mail.outlook.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

IMAP Settings (for Hotmail) – Alternative:

Incoming Mail –
Server type: IMAP
Server address: outlook.office365.com (Port: 993)
SSL required: Yes
Authenticate using: Clear text
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp.office365.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

POP3 Settings (for Hotmail):

Incoming Mail –
Server type: POP3
Server address: pop-mail.outlook.com (Port: 995)
SSL required: Yes
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp-mail.outlook.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

An e-mail account with Microsoft can’t use POP3 unless the account’s settings on Microsoft’s website are configure to let devices and apps use POP. You must do this in webmail, i.e. using a web browser; you can’t do it in Windows Live Mail.

Authentication settings –

The authentication instructions for the outgoing mail server warn you
to use the same username and password as on the incoming mail server.

Accordingly, be certain to correct those details if they are not the same,
such that both sending and receiving do use the same username and password.

In addition, the username must be the FULL AND COMPLETE name of your e-mail
account: i.e. it must include all the text before AND after the @ symbol.
If you FAIL to include the second half of the account name (e.g. @hotmail.com),
then sending and receiving mail from that account will likewise FAIL.

Advantages of IMAP over POP3 –

IMAP and POP3 both still work. To change to IMAP (e.g. from POP3 or DeltaSync),
you have to add a new account in WLM (using the option ‘Manually configure
server settings’), and choose IMAP as the type.

IMAP works well with WLM, although you have to re-configure the Junk mail
folder in the WLM settings to get it to the right place – see step 4 below.

POP3 only works in WLM if you enable it in the options on the e-mail service’s
website first. Another drawback is that you will only get your Inbox mail
(if mail goes to the Junk folder, for instance, you’ll never see it).

4. Fix the duplicate IMAP folders –

If you have selected IMAP as the account type (in step 3 above), the WLM program automatically creates the following folders in WLM’s folder list for that account:

Deleted Items
Sent Items
Junk E-mail

The folders with those names are useless duplicates (the real folders are those named “Deleted”, “Junk” and “Sent”). You must remove the useless folders, as follows (being very careful to obey these steps exactly, or you risk data loss):

1. Select the option “WORK OFFLINE” on the ribbon. The ribbon is the top menu bar
in the WLM program’s window (the menu which includes the tabs labelled ‘Home’,
‘Folders’, ‘View’ and ‘Accounts’). On the ribbon, go to: Home > Work Offline

2. Right-click on the newly added e-mail account’s name (e.g. someone @somewhere.com),
then click on “Properties”.

3. On the “IMAP” tab, under “Special Folders”, untick “Store special folders
on IMAP server”.

4. Click “OK”.

5. When asked for confirmation to refresh the folders list, click “Yes”.
It’ll take a few moments to download and refresh the folders list.

6. Manually delete the useless folders one by one: select a folder
(“Deleted Items”, “Sent Items”, or “Junk E-mail”), then right-click
on that folder, then click on “Delete”.

7. Select WLM’s option to work ONLINE. On the ribbon, go to: Home > Work Online

How to re-install Windows Live Mail –

You can do an automatic uninstall of the WLM program, but if you just reinstall it the problem won’t be fixed. What you must understand is that only a few of the program’s files are in the program files folder.

An auto-uninstall alone is no good. You need to manually uninstall extra bits. There is a complete hidden folder, full of program settings, that has to be manually removed in addition:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For %username% substitute the name of the current user.

So long as that folder exists, any re-install of the WLM program is going to use all the old settings, as before, so if those settings are causing the error then the error will persist.

The safe approach is to move the folder named “Windows Live Mail” to a new location, or some users rename it “Windows Dead Mail” instead of moving it.

You need a clean reinstall, so you must move or rename that folder before reinstalling the WLM program.

How to do a CLEAN re-install of Windows Live Mail –

There are no other files associated with the WLM program.

What there might be are registry settings, which might be unreasonably surviving the uninstall of the program. Some software is poorly written, and uninstall software is very often the worst written of all. Many programs do not clean up their mess, and often leave registry keys behind.

The logic of this is that if the user later restores the program, the settings previously present are still available.

The logic in this goes wrong where the uninstall occurs because of a software fault due to corrupted settings.

There are lots of freeware programs online, called registry cleaners, which will do a better job of removing registry contamination left behind than the program’s built-in so-called uninstaller. But they can be unsafe, making too many too agressive changes.

You can build a do-it-yourself uninstall kit: what you do is start a registry monitoring program running, then install the WLM program. The log file recorded by the monitoring program during the install shows you exactly where in the registry the WLM setup/install program has stored the WLM settings.

Then, to uninstall the WLM program properly, you go through the registry, manually deleting the keys identified by that log file. A re-install can then be done as a clean install.

On Windows 7, a good monitoring program is RegShot, a freeware utility which takes before and after snapshots of the Windows registry. Very useful for identifying changes made to the registry by programs, especially during software installation.

Regshot is an open-source (LGPL) registry-compare utility that takes a snapshot of your registry, then compares it with a second one taken after installing a software program.

Download includes both 32bit and 64bit versions.

Homepage: https://sourceforge.net/projects/regshot/

Download links –
https://sourceforge.net/projects/regshot/files/latest/download

A clean reinstall of Windows Live Mail (WLM) also involves these steps –

1. Uninstall Windows Live Essentials by following the steps at this link:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/essentials-uninstall-ui

2. Delete the following folders for a clean installation:

For 32 bit Windows –
C:\Program Files\Windows Live
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Windows Live

For 64 bit Windows –
C:\Program Files(x86)\Windows Live
C:\Program Files(x86)\Common Files\Windows Live

3. Reinstall Windows Essentials 2011:
https://archive.org/details/windowsliveessentials2011_201908

See above for the section concerning WLM’s settings. When reinstalling the program, those are the settings you will need.

If you have chosen to use the POP3 protocol, you MUST select the option to leave your messages on the online server, otherwise the program will delete all messages as soon as you open (i.e. download) them. With POP3 all messages are only saved on your local computer, not on the server, unless you specify otherwise.

The steps you must take are:

1. Open Windows Live Mail.
2. Click on “Menu” (the small down-arrow at top left on the ‘ribbon’),
then click on “Options”, then click on “Email accounts…”
3. Click on an e-mail account in the list, then click on “Properties”.
4. Click on the “Advanced” tab.
5. Under the heading “Delivery”, tick “Leave a copy of messages on server”.
6. Untick the option “Remove from server after X day(s)”.

Installing Windows Live Mail on Windows 10

After installing Windows Live Mail (WLM) on Windows 10 or 11, WLM may need the following tweak:

1. Close Windows Live Mail.

2. Create a restore point, using System Restore.

3. Open the Registry editor: press the Windows key; type REGEDIT in the search box; then double-click on the term REGEDIT.EXE in the search results. If you are unsure about finding the correct area to edit, read this article:

https://www.lifewire.com/hkey-local-machine-2625902

4. In the Registry Editor, navigate to this location in the registry:

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

5. Create the following three DWORD entries in that location:

Value name: RecreateFolderIndex
Value type: REG_DWORD
Value data: 1

Value name: RecreateStreamIndex
Value type: REG_DWORD
Value data: 1

Value name: RecreateUIDLIndex
Value type: REG_DWORD
Value data: 1

Make CERTAIN that you create DWORD entries. There are several other types: this solution FAILS if you create the wrong type. This is the procedure:

(a) To create a DWORD entry, right-click on that location (it’s in fact a registry key), then select ‘New’, then select the option labelled ‘DWORD’. Then type in (or copy-and-paste) the text which is the name of the new entry.

(b) Then modify the new entry’s value: right-click on the new entry, then click on “Modify”, then type in 1 as the new “value data”, then click on “OK”.

Do that three times, to create those three new entries.

If the three entries already exist, you only need to do step (b). The entries will (presumably) each have a value of 0. You must modify all three, so that they all have a value of 1.

6. Close the Registry Editor, then restart the computer. This step is ESSENTIAL. Windows will only re-load the registry when Windows itself starts.

7. Start Windows Live Mail.

Then the message display should be back to normal, and those 3 values in the registry should have reset themselves to 0 (and can be left like that).

Step 6 is essential, and was kindly contributed by user DKO777. He reported the following on another thread: “My Registry did NOT have any of the lines mentioned, so I had to create all three and set them to 1. Following a PC reboot these reverted to 0 and WLM worked normally”.

Do NOT log-on to a Windows administrator account! This fix fails if you do. You MUST make the registry changes from within your normal user account, i.e. you must make the fix in the account in which Windows Live Mail is installed.

In most cases, all you will need to do is modify 3 existing entries, by changing the value of each from 0 to 1. It certainly won’t harm Windows to make so minor an alteration.

If the foregoing does not fix the problem, you have made a mistake:

1. You have created the wrong type of entry in step 5 (you should have created DWORD entries); or

2. You have failed to restart the computer in step 6 (restarting just Windows Live Mail is not enough).

Gmail Account : Problems

You can use Windows Live Mail (WLM) to access a Gmail e-mail account.

Google has a page of advice on how to do this:

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7126229?hl=en

If you have a problem setting-up or using WLM with a Gmail account, the first thing you must do is follow the advice given by Google on that page.

The error 0x800CCC0F, where you are using WLM to run a Gmail account, indicates a problem with the account’s credentials (i.e. there is a security issue concerning your password).

This error occurs because Gmail has recently introduced the use of so-called “two-factor authentication”.

To fix this error, do one of two things:

1. Generate a so-called “app password” to use in WLM (instead of your normal password). The following advice tells you how to do so:

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833

2. Alternatively, tell Gmail to allow access by less secure apps (including Windows Live Mail). This page includes the details of how to do so:

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6010255

Verizon Account : Problems (#1)

You can use Windows Live Mail (WLM) to access an e-mail account with Verizon.net or its AOL Mail e-mail service.

Verizon has a page of advice on how to do this:

https://help.aol.com/articles/verizon-move-to-aol-mail-setting-up-your-new-aol-account-
in-a-third-party-email-program-or-mobile-device-imap

If you have a problem setting-up or using WLM with a Verizon account, or an AOL Mail account, the first thing you must do is follow the advice given by Verizon on that page.

Verizon Account : Problems (#2)

This is a solution to the error 0x800CCC90 (incorrect password), where the e-mail service (the name after the @ symbol in the e-mail account’s address) is Verizon.

This error can be solved by these steps:

1. Sign-in to your AOL e-mail account on their website, in a web browser.

2. Click on: Options > Account info > Account Security

3. Scroll down the page to: app password

That setion contains an explanation of the need to use a one-time password for “third party apps”, by which they mean Windows Live Mail (amongst others).

4. Follow the simple instructions they provide, and Windows Live Mail should resume working (if your settings are correct).

Cannot start Windows Live Mail : Repair the Installation (#1)

Repairing the Windows Live Mail installation won’t hurt anything, but it might help if there’s a problem with one or more of the Windows Live Mail program files. A repair will check that all the program files are present and correct, and (where necessary) are properly registered.

Accordingly, this type of repair will put right any error in the file associations, by re-associating the .eml file type with the Windows Live Mail program in the Windows registry.

This type of repair will put right many errors. There is an error in the installation of the program if you cannot see (for example) the ‘View’ tab, on the ribbon.

The ribbon is the top menu bar in the WLM program’s window (the menu which normally includes the tabs labelled ‘Home’, ‘Folders’, ‘View’ and ‘Accounts’).

To do this repair, close all running programs, then press the Windows key + the R key simultaneously, then type WLARP in the box that opens, then press ‘Enter’. In the window that then opens, click on “Repair all Windows Essentials programs”.

When it finishes, restart the computer. Then launch Windows Live Mail, and test it to find out whether the fault is fixed.

This might seem to you as though it’s what you’ve already done, but it isn’t.

The trick to getting this fix to “take”, so that it doesn’t keep reoccurring, is to (a) close all open programs first; then do the procedure; then (b) immediately restart the computer. You are making changes in the Windows registry in the procedure, but these don’t get recognised by Windows until the registry is reloaded on the next start-up.

Alternatively, if you are intermittently running some incompatible software, i.e. any program that tampers with the e-mail settings (for example, CCleaner or Norton 360), or another e-mail program, you will still get occasional problems where you have to re-do this fix.

The easiest solution is to uninstall any other e-mail software on your machine, and the incompatible software, so that those programs can’t make the type of changes which will interfere with Windows Live Mail’s settings.

Alternatively, the software suspected of being incompatible might have a specific feature you could disable, without totally abandoning that software.

Windows Defender (now called Microsoft Defender) comes with Windows: you could run it, for temporary protection, whilst temporarily disabling the suspect antivirus software, when running a test to find out whether the suspect software is in fact causing the problem.

Cannot start Windows Live Mail : Repair the Installation (#2)

In order for me to investigate this fault, please provide the following information:

1. MSInfo
2. Event Viewer
3. Windows Update Logs
4. WindowsLiveMail.log

To get MSinfo, Windows Update Logs, and WindowsLiveMail.log, read the following thread and follow the steps provided by the user “Litton_B” –

How to gather log files for “Windows Live Essential” installer issues:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/messenger-wlinstall/how-to-gather-log-files-for-windows-live-essential/5738c23a-395a-43f4-819a-2bcd6e657cf1

Cannot start Windows Live Mail : .OEACCOUNT fault

An .OEACCOUNT file is essential to Windows Live Mail’s proper operation. It has a filename similar to the following example:

account{4D41B9AE-0C30-4C9A-AAA3-01D4AC3C4871}.oeaccount

Normally there is one such file for each e-mail account in Windows Live Mail (WLM). The string of 32 characters between the curly brackets is a unique string, which is different in every case (so your .OEACCOUNT files will each contain a different set of characters to the name used in my example).

Only one such file is allowed for each e-mail account. So if WLM creates a duplicate file (for instance after a computer crash), the WLM program will typically fail to start.

This is the location of the top-level folder, where you must start looking:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For %username% substitute the name of the current user.

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

I can’t be sure if your problem is caused by such a duplicate file. I’m suggesting that it’s worth looking to see *whether* there is such a duplicate. Remember: if your WLM contains (say) 3 e-mail accounts, you should have exactly that number of .OEACCOUNT files on your machine. Each mail account should have one such file of that extension.

Probably one or more of them will be in the top-level folder, but also look in every sub-folder.

If an account has more than one, the solution is to find the offending file and delete it. Before deleting a file, make sure you have a backup copy of it!

I recommend you delete only one such file, then try to start WLM. If WLM doesn’t start, replace the file into the folder you deleted it from. Then try the same with the next such file you’ve found. Do this one by one with each such file. Be careful to put each back where you found it (if the deletion doesn’t cure the fault), before trying the same with the next such file.

Cannot start Windows Live Mail : Reading Messages

If Windows Live Mail (WLM) will not start, it is still possible to read your existing messages.

WLM uses the .eml file format to store e-mail messages. Each message is stored as a single .eml file. An .eml file contains only text, and will open in Notepad.

You therefore do not need an e-mail program to read your existing messages. The function of an e-mail program is to send and receive new messages. Any text editor can read your existing messages.

Although this is usually good advice, it might not be good for you if you were in the habit of sending or receiving mail in some format other than plain text.

To read the messages, you need to find them. The WLM messages folder (including all of its contents and subfolders) is named “Windows Live Mail”, and this is its default location:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For %username% substitute the name of the current user.

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

Instructions –

1. Copy that single line of text to the clipboard.
2. Open a command window: press Windows key + the R key
to open a Run box, type CMD in that box, then press
the Enter key.
3. Right-click inside that command window, then
click on ‘Paste’ to insert the copied text.
4. Press the Enter key (the folder in which the current
user’s e-mail messages are stored will open).

Signing In -vs- Logging On

The following explanation describes how Windows Live Mail (WLM) works, using Microsoft’s Hotmail as an example (because that’s what I use for e-mail). If you use some other e-mail service, Windows Live Mail still works exactly as I describe below, because it only has one way of functioning, so it works the exact same way with any e-mail service that’s accessed using it.

Windows Live Mail distinguishes between: (a) signing-in to your Microsoft account (the webmail account which stores your existing e-mail messages, account-specific contacts list, and calendar); and (b) logging-on to an e-mail server (necessary to send and receive new e-mail messages).

The password you type when Windows Live Mail starts (or which you’ve saved in its settings) only allows you to access your webmail account on Microsoft’s website. To receive and send new messages, the IMAP (or POP3) and SMTP settings stored in Windows Live Mail (the e-mail server addresses and port numbers) must also be correct.

It’s a two stage process: it’s possible to sign-in successfully (so that Windows Live Mail opens, then displays the existing e-mail messages); but when, as a separate action, the program tries to log on to the IMAP or POP3 server to download new messages (those which have arrived at the server since you last used Windows Live Mail), or to re-download older messages, this action fails.

If you receive an error message that asks you to sign-in to your Microsoft account (i.e. the first of the two stages), this indicates the problem is with your webmail account (i.e. not with accessing the e-mail server). Typically, it will be an account security issue.

Launch your web browser, go to https://account.live.com (or https://outlook.live.com/mail) and sign-in to the Microsoft account you access when using Windows Live Mail. Deal with any security alert (i.e. at sign-in on the website), and then, on the Security page of your account, check whether two-step verification is enabled for that account.

If two-step verification is enabled, you can’t use your webmail account password to sign-in to Windows Live Mail. You have to either (a) disable two-step verification (which is done on that Security page), and save that change; or (b) generate a special “app” password (a second password) and use that when opening Windows Live Mail. That process is explained in greater detail at:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12409

Although I don’t have such an account, I’m told that for ATT/Yahoo accounts the new security procedure they have recently started using is called “secure mail key”, and disabling that is a solution to this problem.

Open your ATT/Yahoo mail account on their website, using your browser (instead of accessing the account in Windows Live Mail). Sign-in in webmail, then go to your account’s Security settings page. Disable the setting labelled ‘secure mail key’, then save your changes. Log out of the account.

It should now be possible to access your ATT/Yahoo e-mail account using Windows Live Mail.

Where you have removed a Yahoo account from Windows Live Mail, to add it back it’s necessary to apply the above fix, to enable Windows Live Mail to connect to the Yahoo server, which it needs to do in order to read and download the folder structure of your account, and to download the existing messages.

Alternatively, the following article explains how to use their “Secure Mail Key” in Windows Live Mail, instead of your current password:

https://www.att.com/support/article/email-support/KM1240308

This Yahoo page (about third-party app passwords) might also be helpful:

https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN15241.html

This article tells you the Server settings you must now use with an ATT/Yahoo mail account:

https://www.att.com/support/article/email-support/KM1086159

What they don’t tell you is that you will need, at minimum, to restart your computer after applying their fix. Some users are reporting, additionally, that the “secure mail key” doesn’t work in the first 24 hours after being created, so try it again after that.

Signing-in (i.e. the first of the two stages) only affects which calendar and which contacts list are displayed. If you sign-in successfully, what you see is the contacts list belonging to the Microsoft account you are signed-in with. If you don’t sign-in, you see a default contacts list.

While you are on the Security page of your Microsoft account, check whether an error is being reported there. If there is indeed an alert there (saying that your Microsoft account has an error), click the box. The error warning should then clear, and WLM should report that you are successfully signed-in to your Microsoft account.

To sign-in (i.e. the first of the two stages), or to sign out, you might use the right-most button on the ‘Home’ tab of the ribbon, but I don’t advise it. It is best NOT to use that button at all. If it’s once used, Windows Live Mail will nag you forever about it: every time you launch the program it will require you to take an extra step.

Where to find that button? The top line of the Windows Live Mail program window, commonly known as the ribbon, shows 4 tabs labelled ‘Home’, ‘Folders’, ‘View’ and ‘Accounts’. If you click on the ‘Home’ tab to open it, at the right-hand end of that tab is a button labelled (initially) “Sign In”.

If you are NOT signed-in, by clicking on that button you sign-in. If you ARE signed-in, by clicking on that button (it will be labelled “Sign out”) you sign out.

If you receive an error message that says “the connection to the server has failed” or that specifies error number 800ccc0e (i.e. the SECOND of the two stages), this indicates a problem with the settings used to log-on to the e-mail server (e.g. incorrect server names or port numbers).

The problem is that the program can’t RECEIVE new messages (so can’t update the Inbox folder). In technical terms, the e-mail settings are called IMAP, POP3 and SMTP — it is the IMAP and POP3 settings which control receiving messages (the SMTP settings control sending messages). IMAP and POP3 are alternatives, so your computer is using only one of them (probably IMAP, which is by far the most common).

It’s possible that the IMAP (or POP3) settings in Windows Live Mail have been corrupted, but it’s much more likely that your e-mail service provider has made a change to its service and has failed to inform you. In both cases the solution is the same. Namely, make sure the settings are correct:

1. Open Windows Live Mail (WLM). In the left-hand pane (i.e. the folders pane), right-click on the name of your e-mail account (e.g. yourname @hotmail.com). Then click on ‘Properties’.

2. If there are 5 tabs shown, and the 5th tab is labelled ‘IMAP’, your account is an IMAP account and therefore you must use only IMAP settings. If there are only 4 tabs shown, and the ‘IMAP’ tab is missing, your account is a POP3 account and therefore you must use only POP3 settings.

3. In your favourite browser, go to the website of your e-mail provider. It will publish its current IMAP and POP3 settings on its website. If you don’t see them, search the website for the words IMAP and POP3.

4. Alternatively, do a Google search. For example, if you have a Hotmail account do a Google search for the three terms IMAP, POP3 and HOTMAIL. Or if you use Gmail, do a Google search for the three terms IMAP, POP3 and GMAIL.

5. Make sure that Windows Live Mail’s settings for incoming mail are all IMAP settings (if it’s an IMAP account), or are all POP3 settings (if it’s a POP3 account). A common error is to accidentally have a mixture of both: make certain you ONLY have one or the other.

6. Make sure the server names are spelled correctly. Make sure you have entered the correct port numbers. It’s easy to mis-type, so check all of them carefully for mistakes.

Alternatively, if all the settings are correct the likelihood is that your email service provider has introduced a new technology, such as OAUTH.

You can search this forum for the terms OAUTH and OAUTH2 (as there are solutions already posted in other threads), or post a further message on this thread asking for specific help with OAUTH. There are some simple solutions — often they get overlooked, as it isn’t always obvious that the cause of the problem is the OAUTH protocol.

Sign-in : Sign-in Automatically

To sign in automatically, without being prompted for a password, in Windows Live Mail do as follows:

1. Right-click on the name of your e-mail account in the folders pane. In the drop-down list which then appears, click on “Properties”.

2. Select the tab labelled “Servers”.

3. Type your account details into the boxes marked “Email username” and “Password”, or verify that the existing details stored in those boxes are correct (in the box misleadingly labelled “Email username”, what you actually need to put is your email address).

4. Tick the box labelled “Remember password”.

5. Click on “Apply”, then click on “OK”.

Be careful not to change any of the other details on the Servers tab.

Sign-in : Can’t Sign-in (General)

If you can’t sign-in to your Microsoft e-mail account (for instance, you forgot your password), go to “When you can’t sign in to your Microsoft account” for troubleshooting suggestions –

https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/12429/microsoft-account-cant-sign-in

If you apply to change your password, Microsoft will not make the change you request for one month. In the meanwhile they will notify the account owner, by e-mail, and give him one month to object to the change (in case you are attempting to hijack someone else’s e-mail account). You won’t object, because you won’t receive their e-mail, as you are locked out of the account.

After the one month delay, you can use the new password you’ve nominated to sign-in to your e-mail account.

If you can’t reset your password, or an attacker changed your account settings, the recovery form at “Recover your Microsoft account” gives you a chance to prove that you own the account (this account recovery form is meant to be the last option to get you back into your account) –

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17875/microsoft-account-recover

If your account was deleted, there is additional advice here:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/account-was-deleted/d82bd0a4-0af3-4a60-9e73-39b31e64e2fa

Sign-in : Can’t Sign-in (Forgotten Password) (Change Password)

I do not know of any method for doing a password change in Windows Live Mail.

It’s my recollection, from long ago, that changing the password is only possible on the e-mail service’s website, in a web browser (such as Firefox or Chrome).

Open the website using a browser, then try to sign-in to your e-mail account. When it detects the wrong password has been typed, it will pop-up a window for changing the password.

If this is a Microsoft account, to prevent a malicious user hijacking your account the new password will not work for one month. In that time, the “real” user is notified by e-mail of your action, and given a month to object. But if YOU are the real user, you won’t be objecting because you won’t get the warning e-mail, as you can’t sign in to your e-mail account!

Once the password has been changed (i.e. usually one month later), use the new password in Windows Live Mail from then on.

Sign-in : Can’t Sign-in (Wrong Password)

If you can’t sign-in to your Microsoft e-mail account:

If you haven’t tried resetting your password, first go to “When you can’t sign in to your Microsoft account” for troubleshooting suggestions –

https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/12429/microsoft-account-cant-sign-in

If, however, you can’t reset your password, or an attacker changed your account settings, the recovery form at “Recover your Microsoft account” gives you a chance to prove that you own the account (this account recovery form is meant to be the last option to get you back into your account) –

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17875/microsoft-account-recover

More advice here:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/account-was-deleted/d82bd0a4-0af3-4a60-9e73-39b31e64e2fa

Sign-in : Endless sign-in loop (Wrong Password)

In my opinion, this loop is due to you signing-in with the wrong password.

Chances are, a new security protocol is in force, one that requires you to change your password. Gmail has done exactly this, and some providers are following Gmail’s lead.

Go to the e-mail service’s website. Investigate what new password procedure they are using.

This should be your first step, before trying anything else.

Probably you must create a new password (actually an additional password), on their website, because they have recently updated their security procedure.

What you are trying to do is sign-in to your e-mail account on their website, and there change the password that you use for Windows Live Mail. They probably now demand that you have two passwords, your existing one (used to sign-in on their website) *and* a new one (used to sign-in in Windows Live Mail).

From now on you must use an “app password” to sign-in in Windows Live Mail, as though Windows Live Mail is an “app”! Once created, you type the 2nd password into Windows Live Mail instead of your original password.

You have to do the following –

1. Sign-in to your e-mail account on their website.
2. Go to your account settings.
3. Look for the Security settings.
4. Look for “app password” (or similar).
5. When it asks for your account password, type in the original password.
6. Specify the application (“app”) in which you will be managing e-mail,
which will be “Windows Live Mail” (but they might know it
as “Windows Essentials” or “Windows Live Essentials”).
7. Specify your Operating System (e.g. Windows 7).
8. Then generate the password (which will only work in Windows Live Mail).

If you think you’ve already done the above, go through your account’s security settings on the website anyway, and check that “allow less secure apps” really is turned ON. I’ve known it get turned off without the user’s permission!

If your e-mail account actually is with Gmail –

1. Tell Gmail to allow access by less secure apps:
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6010255

2. If that alone doesn’t fix the fault, obtain and use an App password:
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/185833

If your e-mail account is with Yahoo, obtain and use an App Password:

https://help.yahoo.com/kb/new-mail-for-desktop/generate-manage-third-party-passwords-sln15241.html

This Yahoo page (about third-party app passwords) might also be helpful:

https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN15241.html

Alternatively, if the e-mail service you use tells you they have no new security procedure, your PC has probably been infected by some type of virus or malware. Do an urgent antivirus scan of your computer, using any popular antivirus program.

In that situation there is a possibility that malware has successfully stolen your sign-in credentials, so you should IMMEDIATELY change your sign-in password as a precaution.

Alternatively, uninstall Windows Live Mail and reinstall it. There is a possibility that the program or its registry entries have been corrupted (probably by a virus, perhaps by user-error, maybe by mere bad luck).

Make a backup copy of your messages before uninstalling, i.e. copy to your desktop the WLM messages folder (including all of its contents and subfolders). That folder is named “Windows Live Mail”, and this is its default location:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For %username% substitute the name of the current user.

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

1. Copy that line of text to the clipboard.
2. Open a command window: press Windows key + the R key
to open a Run box, type CMD then press the Enter key.
3. Then right-click inside that command window, and
click on ‘Paste’ to insert the copied text.
4. Press the Enter key (the folder in which the current
user’s e-mail messages are stored will open).
5. Do NOT rename or move this folder!! Make a copy of
the folder and all of its contents and subfolders
(e.g. copy it to the Desktop), so that two identical
sets of files exist: if anything goes wrong, you will
need to replace the original folder with the copy.

Reinstalling the WLM program should not affect the messages folder, but better safe than sorry. If all goes well, you can delete the backup copy of your messages once WLM is fully working and you are satisfied that all your e-mails have been fully restored.

Alternatively, mad as this might sound, try just ignoring the sign-in request. X it out. Windows Live Mail just might work perfectly without you ever signing-in.

The signing-in process is only done in order to give you access to some data stored in your account on the e-mail provider’s website: specifically, it only gives you access to your contacts list and to your on-line calendar (if you don’t use those optional parts of the WLM program, you might not even know what I’m referring to).

Sending and receiving e-mails is NOT handled by the signing-in process. The e-mail functions are handled by a separate process, which is why you have to log-on to the e-mail server separately: for that reason, in order to send and receive e-mails the only action you need to take is to log-on to the server.

Alternatively, if this problem occurred immediately after installing a Windows 10 update, reinstall Windows 7. :-)

Ha ha, joke: but if this is a Windows 10 problem, try posting for advice in a Windows 10 forum. I use Windows 7, so can’t comment on the problems of Windows 10.

Actually, Windows 10 updates only occasionally have any effect on old Win32 programs such as Windows Live Mail.

Sign-in : Endless sign-in loop #2 (Wrong Password)

In my opinion, this loop is due to you signing-in with the wrong password.

This fault is commonly (but not always!) associated with the error numbers 800ccc90 and/or 800ccc92.

Chances are, a new security protocol is in force, one that requires you to change your password. Gmail has done exactly this, and some providers are following Gmail’s lead.

Go to the e-mail service’s website. Investigate what new password procedure they are using.

This should be your first step, before trying anything else.

If you have another PC which uses WLM to access the e-mail account in question, and in it WLM is working normally, my advice to you is to delete (or rename) the WLM folder on the problem machine. That folder is named “Windows Live Mail”, and this is its default location:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For %username% substitute the name of the current user.

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

Then copy the WLM folder from another PC to the affected machine, and substitute it for the deleted folder.

You could spend forever chasing so-called solutions to this type of endless sign-in loop. My above advice gives you a quick and easy fix.

If this was a Gmail account, I would be giving you different advice. But you use an e-mail service I’ve never heard of.

Alternatively, you can go on the website of your e-mail service and find out what their requirements are. They seem to have implemented a new security protocol, so one approach would be to ask them what steps you must take in order to comply with it. And then take those steps.

If the e-mail service you use tells you they have no new security procedure, your PC has probably been infected by some type of virus or malware. Do an urgent antivirus scan of your computer, using any popular antivirus program. There is a possibility that malware has successfully stolen your sign in credentials. You should IMMEDIATELY change your sign in password as a precaution.

Alternatively, uninstall WLM and reinstall it. There is a possibility that the WLM program has been corrupted (probably by a virus, perhaps by user-error, maybe by mere bad luck).

Make a backup copy of your messages before uninstalling, i.e. copy to your desktop the entire WLM messages folder (with all its contents and subfolders):

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For %username% substitute the name of the current user.

Reinstalling the program should not affect the messages folder, but it is better safe than sorry. Once WLM is working normally again, you can then delete this backup copy of the messages.

If you need help to reinstall Windows Live Mail, ask here. Or search this forum for the term windowsliveessentials2011 (Windows Live Essentials 2011 is the name of the installer program needed).

If this problem occurred immediately after installing a Windows 10 update, reinstall Windows 7. :-)

Ha ha, joke: but if this is a Windows 10 problem, try posting for advice in a Windows 10 forum. I use Windows 7, so can’t comment on the problems of Windows 10.

Actually, Windows 10 Updates only occasionally have any effect on old Win32 programs such as Windows Live Mail.

Sign-in : Gmail account (Server will NOT accept password)

If you are using a Gmail account with Windows Live Mail, you must create a new password, on the Gmail website, because Gmail has recently updated its security procedure.

The following procedure is what someone who has a Gmail account told me. I can’t test it, I don’t have Gmail. But I have had reports of success in using it.

What you are trying to do is sign-in to your Gmail account on their website, and there change the password that you use for Windows Live Mail. Gmail demands that you have two passwords, your existing one (used to sign-in on their website) *and* a new one (used to sign-in in Windows Live Mail).

Gmail demands that from now on you must use what it calls an “app password” to sign-in in Windows Live Mail. It thinks Windows Live Mail is an “app”! Once created, you type the 2nd password into Windows Live Mail instead of your original password.

You have to do the following –

1. Login to your Gmail account on their website.
2. Go to your Google account.
3. Go to Security.
4. Sign-in to Google.
5. Go to “app password”.
6. Then it will ask your account password. Type in the password.
7. Specify the application in which you will be using Gmail,
which will be “Windows Live Mail” (but Gmail might know it
as “Windows Essentials” or “Windows Live Essentials”).
8. Specify your Operating System (e.g. Windows 10).
9. Then generate the password (which will only work in Windows Live Mail).

This error may show up as Error ID 80194194, or Server error 404.

Error code 80194194 is due to network, machine configuration, or software configuration issues. Such issues can arise because of a Windows update.

If you do not have a Gmail account, to cure the error:

(a) Delete any e-mails which are stuck in the Outbox folder of Windows Live Mail; or

(b) Re-configure your e-mail account in Windows Live Mail (e.g. reconfigure it to use the IMAP protocol instead of POP3 or DeltaSync); or

If the error re-occurs after a future Windows update, repeat the cure.

Sign-in : AT&T account (Server will NOT accept password)

This error may show up as Error ID 0x800CCC90 or 0x800CCC92.

If you get an error message on an ATT/Yahoo account saying – in any terms – that the server will NOT accept your password, proceed as follows.

This fix is also necessary where you have removed a Yahoo account from Windows Live Mail, and wish to add it back, to enable Windows Live Mail to connect to the Yahoo server: which it needs to do in order to read and download the folder structure of your account, and to download the existing messages.

Although I don’t have an ATT/Yahoo account, I’m told that the new security procedure they have started using is called “secure mail key”, and that disabling it is a solution to this problem.

It should now be possible to access your ATT/Yahoo e-mail account using Windows Live Mail.

Alternatively, the following article explains how to use their “Secure Mail Key” in Windows Live Mail, instead of your password:

https://www.att.com/support/article/email-support/KM1240308

This Yahoo page (about third-party app passwords) might also be helpful:

https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN15241.html

This will fix the problem by creating an additional password. In future, you use that additional password to sign-in to the Windows Live Mail program (instead of your existing password).

You will still need your existing password, so that you can (optionally) sign-in to your email account on their website. In practice you might only use the website occasionally, to fix problems.

What they don’t tell you is that you will need, at minimum, to restart your computer after applying the fix. Some users are reporting, additionally, that the “secure mail key” doesn’t work in the first 24 hours after being created, so try it again after that.

This article tells you the Server settings you must now use with an ATT/Yahoo mail account:

https://www.att.com/support/article/email-support/KM1086159

Alternatively, the following procedure has previously helped some users.

The AT&T mail server (sbcglobal.net) has recently been changed to require a SECURE password for connecting to Windows Live Mail. To generate that secure password:

1. Firstly, open your e-mail account by signing-in on their website (instead of opening the Windows Live Mail program).

2. Secondly, carry out the steps listed at:

https://www.att.com/esupport/article.html#!/email-support/KM1240308

3. Thirdly, carry out the steps listed at “Set up or Update AT&T mail – Windows Live Mail”:

https://www.att.com/support/article/email-support/KM1010509/

This will fix the problem, by creating an additional password. In future, you use that additional password to sign-in to the Windows Live Mail program (instead of your existing password).

You will still need your existing password, so that you can (optionally) sign-in to your email account on their website. In practice you might only use the website occasionally, to fix problems.

Sign-in : iPhone (Server will NOT accept password)

It’s not surprising that it won’t work!

Windows Live Mail will only run on Windows — the clue is in the name! It cannot be run on an Android operating system. Therefore it cannot be run on an iPhone.

Whatever e-mail app you are running on your iPhone, it can’t be a Windows app such as Windows Live Mail. So nothing I can suggest will help you, because I can only help with Windows Live Mail.

Sign-in : To help protect your Online Id account you must sign-in again

Error message:

“To help protect your Online Id account you must signin again.”

Windows Live Mail (WLM) distinguishes between signing-in to a Microsoft Account (to load the account-specific contacts list and calendar), and logging-on to a mail server (to send and receive e-mail). If you are being asked to sign-in, this has nothing to do with your e-mail account; it indicates there may be a problem in your Microsoft Account.

If you receive this “online ID” error message, so can’t sign-in, you can try the following (although probably these WON’T solve it): fiddling with the settings for two-factor authentication; and scanning your computer for malware.

But I’ve received reports that a solution posted by user Rick_E works: open the Mail app in Windows 10, and fix your account there by re-entering your password at the prompt. As soon as Rick_E did that, he was able to immediately sign-in to WLM.

Rick_E said: ‘After changing my Windows account password and successfully signing-in to my Windows account on-line, Windows Live Mail sign-in kept failing… [so] I opened the Mail App in [Windows 10] and a dialog indicated that my Outlook account needed “updating”. After “updating” it in the Mail App, Windows Live Mail was fixed and allowed me to sign in as expected. Apparently the Mail app “update” successfully propagated my new Windows account password to the mail side of things.’

If you are using Windows 7, visit “https://account.live.com” in your web browser, e.g. Firefox or Internet Explorer, and sign-in there to your Microsoft Account (the account you sign-in with in Windows Live Mail), and deal with any alert there (i.e. in webmail).

Rick_E’s solution can only succeed if the Windows 10 mail app (the program commonly called ‘Mail for Windows 10’) reports that your Outlook e-mail account needs “updating”. That is to say, his solution can only fix that specific case: where you open the Windows 10 mail app, and doing so causes an error message to pop-up, saying that your Outlook account needs “updating”.

This has NOTHING to do with general updates to Windows 10. It is a specific error message, only seen (if at all) when you open the Windows 10 mail app.

If you don’t see that pop-up, you don’t have the same fault that Rick_E had.

WARNING –

The strange wording of the error message indicates that the message hasn’t passed through Microsoft’s language checks. This may indicate your computer is infected by a virus or malware, attempting to steal your account credentials. It may well already have stolen them! Scan your computer for viruses and for malware immediately. And once WLM is working normally, change your password(s).

Rob Brown (a Microsoft MVP) suggests the following security precautions:

Whether or not any of these find anything, you MUST also check with ALL the other methods he suggests.

A. How do I find and remove a virus –
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/how-find-remove-virus

B. TDSSKiller.exe –
http://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/solutions?qid=208280684
Download it. Right-click on it, then select “RUN AS ADMIN”. It will show any infections in the report after running. If it won’t run, change its filename from tdsskiller.exe to tdsskiller.com then try again.

C. Microsoft Safety Scanner –
http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx

D. Malwarebytes (free) –
http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free

E. SuperAntiSpyware Portable Scanner (free) –
http://www.superantispyware.com/portablescanner.html?tag=SAS_HOMEPAGE

F. AdwCleaner –
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/

G. Hitman Pro –
A second opinion scanner, designed to rescue your computer from malware (viruses, trojans, rootkits, etc) that have infected your computer despite all the security measures you have taken (such as anti virus software, firewalls, etc):
http://www.surfright.nl/en/hitmanpro

H. Zemana –
Scroll down to “Free – Advanced Malware Detection and Removal” (also effective against Rootkits and BootKits):
https://zemana.com/en-US/AntiMalware

The Microsoft MVP recommends these additional sources of help:

What is Windows Defender Offline –
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/what-is-windows-defender-offline

Windows Defender Offline system requirements:-
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/windows-defender-offline-system-requirements

Some online free scanners –
http://www.eset.com/onlinescan/

Other free online AntiVirus scans –
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=antivirus+free+online+scan&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g1

Sign-in : Timeout Occurs

When trying to sign-in, a time-out occurs while communicating with the server.

The amount of time that Windows Live Mail waits for the server to respond can be set on the “Advanced” tab of the account’s Properties dialogue. Try setting this to the maximum (5 minutes).

Alternatively, if your account uses POP3, set up a new account using IMAP. Many e-mail service providers no longer spend much effort on maintaining their POP3 servers, because few users connect by POP3. If you have no particular reason to use POP3 (there are some legitimate ones), you might get better service using IMAP.

Sign-in : Account Locked

The “Account Locked” message you quote might be fraudulent, generated by a virus or by malware.

Try signing-in to your mail account on the website of your e-mail provider (i.e. in webmail), to find out. If you can open your account in webmail, you can then read any messages received from your e-mail provider, to learn whether there is really a problem with the account.

Don’t make the problem worse though: NEVER click on a link in an e-mail.

Come back here and give full details of the problem — if a problem really exists.

In that case, the message may indicate your computer is infected by a virus or malware, attempting to acquire your account credentials – and it may well already have done so. Scan your computer for viruses and for malware immediately. And once WLM is working, change your password(s).

Rob Brown (a Microsoft MVP) suggests the following security precautions:

Whether or not any of these find anything, you MUST also check with ALL the other methods he suggests.

A. How do I find and remove a virus –
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/how-find-remove-virus

C. Microsoft Safety Scanner –
http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx

D. Malwarebytes (free) –
http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free

E. SuperAntiSpyware Portable Scanner (free) –
http://www.superantispyware.com/portablescanner.html?tag=SAS_HOMEPAGE

F. AdwCleaner –
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/

H. Zemana –
Scroll down to “Free – Advanced Malware Detection and Removal” (also effective against Rootkits and BootKits):
https://zemana.com/en-US/AntiMalware

The Microsoft MVP recommends these additional sources of help:

What is Windows Defender Offline –
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/what-is-windows-defender-offline

Windows Defender Offline system requirements:-
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/windows-defender-offline-system-requirements

Some online free scanners –
http://www.eset.com/onlinescan/

Other free online AntiVirus scans –
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=antivirus+free+online+scan&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g1

To enable someone to help further, please say which version of Windows your computer is currently running, and which version of Windows Live Mail you have.

To find the Windows Live Mail program version and build, open Windows Live Mail. Then, with the program displayed on the screen, do the following on the keyboard –

1. Press: Alt+F
2. Press: B

And say which e-mail service you use: e.g. Hotmail, Gmail, etc.

And describe what you were doing when the problem arose, and give the full text of any error message displayed, including the error number (an 8-digit number). The error number identifies the exact error that is occurring, and is usually essential for solving your problem.

Did this error occur immediately following a Windows update?

Please note that if you are running any other e-mail program such as Outlook, Outlook on the web, or Mail for Windows 10, I only use Windows Live Mail so can’t help with those.

Logging on : Secure Password Authentication (Error 800CCC90 #1)

Error message (0x800CCC90):

“Windows couldn’t log on to the e-mail server using secure password authentication”

Very few mail servers support Secure Password Authentication these days. Right-click on the account name in the Windows Live Mail folder pane, then select ‘Properties’. On the ‘Servers’ tab, select “Log on using clear text authentication”, then click ‘Apply’, then click ‘OK’.

Now try again to send and receive.

Logging on : Incorrect Password (Error 800CCC90 #2)

Error message (0x800CCC90):

“An incorrect password was entered”

This error number, combined with this particular error message, usually indicates that Windows Live Mail (WLM) is configured to connect using Secure Password Authentication.

Now try again to send and receive.

Alternatively, I’ve been seeing this error reported unusually often just recently, and I became suspicious when I noticed that all the affected users reporting this error seem to have POP3 accounts.

Although my advice to you may seem somewhat non-technical, I suggest you consider – as a last resort – curing this fault by switching from POP3 to IMAP, since there don’t seem to be reports of IMAP accounts being affected.

You keep the same e-mail address, and the same version of Windows Live Mail, but you create a new account inside Windows Live Mail: one which uses IMAP.

It’s not a trivial change. But if you ask here, I can supply all the necessary instructions on how to do it. There may be other alternative steps you can take, and if one of them succeeds so much the better; but as a last resort it does look as though switching from POP3 to IMAP may be a complete cure.

Logging on : 2-step Verification (#1)

Should I use 2-step verification? In other words, should I switch off access by “less secure” apps including Windows Live Mail?

Windows Live Mail can be a little “temperamental”. Therefore I strongly recommend the maxim: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If WLM is now working to your satisfaction, don’t alter its settings.

There is a lot of rubbish talked about 2-step verification (also known as “two factor authentication”). You are better off with a really strong password: one that includes letters and numbers, is genuinely random (not a dictionary word), and consists of at least a dozen characters.

That will give you a decent level of protection, without the absurdity of Microsoft phoning you every time you try to use the software, to ask if it’s really you.

Perhaps 2-step is worthwhile on your credit card, but do you really need it on your e-mails?

Logging on : 2-step Verification (#2)

I got it to work by doing this, as I had 2-step Verification enabled:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12409/microsoft-account-app-passwords-and-two-step-verification

How to create a new app password –

To create a new app password for an app or device, take the following steps
(You can repeat these steps to create an app password for as many apps or
devices as you need):

1. Go to the “Security basics” page and sign in to your Microsoft account.

2. Select “More security options”.

3. Under “App passwords”, select “Create a new app password”. A new
app password is generated and appears on your screen.

4. Enter this app password where you would enter your normal Microsoft account
password in the application.

Note:
Once you have created and entered an app password for a given app or device,
you usually won’t need to do it again.

[https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/i-cant-connect-
to-thunderbird-with-my-hotmail/3bb71e37-2ed3-4400-bfea-93e9be7da85c]

Logging on : 2-step Verification (#3)

If you can’t access your e-mail in Windows Live Mail, sign-in to your e-mail account on the E-mail Service Provider’s website instead (i.e. using your browser, not Windows Live Mail).

For example, if you are using Hotmail –

Go to https://account.live.com and sign-in there to the Microsoft Account that you would normally sign-in with in Windows Live Mail (as recommended at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12409).

Deal with any security alert at sign-in. Once signed-in, go to the Security settings page in your account. Check whether two-step verification is enabled (also known as two factor authentication). When two-step verication is enabled, you can’t use the account password to sign-in to Windows Live Mail.

Therefore you have two alternatives:

1. Disable 2-step verification. Then save the changes. It should now be possible to log-in to your account in Windows Live Mail normally (i.e. using the original password), and without having to open the website to do so.

Special instructions for Google’s Gmail –

Google regards Windows Live Mail as a ‘less secure app’ because it doesn’t support OAuth, Google’s preferred authentication method. If you recently made changes to (or perhaps even just visited) your Google account, this will have triggered an audit of account security which detects that you’re using a ‘less secure app’ to access Gmail and blocks it.

If this is the reason why Gmail is suddenly rejecting your credentials, the answer is to allow ‘less secure apps’ to access your Google account:

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6010255

There is no difference security-wise between signing in to Gmail in a browser and having Windows Live Mail do it for you. In both cases, a secure tunnel is created between your computer and the Gmail server, through which your credentials (username and password) are transmitted. This connection will be secured by TLS1.2 in both cases. Google is just making life difficult for Windows Live Mail users.

These instructions are courtesy of user ¡Firedog on another thread.

2. Alternatively, generate a special password for use with Windows Live Mail. It’s a second password: two step verification means having two passwords. It’s NOT a replacement for your Account password – that remains the same.

Follow the on-screen instructions carefully to generate this extra password. The process is different for each Service Provider.

When you’ve generated a 2nd password, you use it when you start Windows Live Mail (but nowhere else). It should now be possible to log-in normally to Windows Live Mail.

You can also read on their FAQ page about how to use 2-step verification with their service.

Special instructions for Gmail –

If you use Google’s Gmail, this second password is what Gmail calls an “app password” (but is more widely known as “2-step verification”):

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833?hl=en

Gmail thinks the Windows Live Mail program is what it calls an “app”. Gmail requires you to use a special password to connect an “app” to the Gmail server. The procedure is:

1. Sign-in to your Gmail Account on their website.

2. Select: Security

3. Under “Signing in to Google”, select “App Passwords”.

4. If you don’t see the option “App Passwords”, it might be due to one of the following reasons:

(a) 2-Step Verification is not set up for your account.
(b) 2-Step Verification is only set up for security keys.
(c) Your account is accessed through your employer, school, or other organization.
(d) You have Advanced Protection turned on.

If so, you must deal with that issue before proceeding to step 5, below. If 2 step verification is not set up on your account, there is probably no point proceeding further, as your problem must be something else.

5. At the bottom of the drop-down list, choose “Select app”. In the list that appears, click on the app you are using (‘Windows Live Mail’ or its alternative title, ‘Windows Live Essentials’). Select ‘device’ and choose the device you’re using. Then select ‘Generate’.

6. Follow the on-screen instructions to enter the App Password. The App Password is the 16-character code in the yellow bar on your device.

7. Select: Done

Logging on : Changing the Phone Number : 2 step verification

Sign-in to your e-mail account on the E-mail Service Provider’s website instead (i.e. using your browser, not Windows Live Mail).

For example, if you are using Hotmail –

Go to https://account.live.com and sign-in there to the Microsoft Account that you would normally sign-in with in Windows Live Mail (as recommended at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12409).

Deal with any security alert at sign-in. Once signed-in, go to the Security settings page in your account. Check whether two-step verification is enabled (also known as two factor authentication).

Disable 2-step verification. Then save the changes. It should now be possible to log-in to your account normally. In theory, it should now be possible to do normal actions, such as put in a new phone number. It ought to then be possible to reactivate two-step verification, if desired, based on the new phone number.

Logging on : Authentication – Does WLM support OAuth?

Windows Live Mail (WLM) does NOT support OAuth (nor X0Auth2).

As Windows Live Mail doesn’t support OAuth, you must enable “Allow less secure apps…” (on the e-mail service’s website), in order to access Gmail or Yahoo or any other service that uses OAuth by default.

That is to say, when you change it (on the website), so that it no longer uses the default setting (OAuth), WLM will begin working again.

Additional: I am seeing reports which suggest that Yahoo now only uses OAuth, nothing else; so OAuth is now the only option, not the default option. WLM can’t use OAuth. If the reports are correct, the only way to continue using WLM is to switch to any service that’s not Yahoo (e.g. Hotmail/Outlook or Gmail).

Currently, Outlook.com does NOT require OAuth. But Outlook.com does require a secure connection: so you WON’T be able to connect on port 143. A Hotmail account must therefore be configured as follows in order to work:

1. Right-click on the account name in the WLM folder pane, and select “Properties”.

2. On the “Servers” tab –

a. Change the incoming (IMAP) server name to: outlook.office365.com
b. Ensure that the e-mail username is your full Hotmail address
c. Select: Log on using clear text authentication
d. Select: My server requires authentication

3. On the “Advanced” tab –

a. For both incoming and outgoing mail, select:
“This server requires a secure connection (SSL)”
b. Change the server port for incoming mail to: 993
c. Change the server port for outgoing mail to: 587 or 25

4. Click “Apply”, then click “OK”.

5. Remove any unsent messages from the Outbox (below the account folders in the WLM folder pane). Then close Windows Live Mail and wait ten minutes while the program does its housekeeping and stores the new security settings.

6. Re-start the WLM program, then compose a new message with a unique subject, and send it to yourself (i.e. send it from the account in question to that same account). Post any new error message here.

Windows Live Mail cannot Receive or Send

This problem relates to Error Numbers 0x800CCC90 or 0x800C013E

First, check that the Windows Live Mail settings are correct.

The following settings are for an account that uses IMAP. If you are using POP3 instead, wherever I mention IMAP you will treat me as meaning POP3, and in that case the server address you connect to must be one that mentions POP3 not IMAP.

In the left-hand folders pane in Windows Live Mail, right-click on the e-mail account’s name (e.g. someone @hotmail.com), then click on “Properties”. The settings are found on three of the tabs there: “Servers”, “Advanced” and “IMAP”.

The following settings are what you need with Hotmail.

If you use something other than Hotmail, do a Google search for its settings, but usually EVERYTHING will be the same EXCEPT the server address and port number. Alternatively, the correct settings you need to use will be available on the website of your Email Service Provider.

IMAP Settings (for Hotmail):

Incoming Mail –
Server type: IMAP
Server address: imap-mail.outlook.com (Port: 993)
SSL required: Yes
Authenticate using: Clear text
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp-mail.outlook.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

POP3 Settings (for Hotmail):

Incoming Mail –
Server type: POP3
Server address: pop-mail.outlook.com (Port: 995)
SSL required: Yes
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp-mail.outlook.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

The ‘Properties’ dialogue has 5 tabs, use these settings (for Hotmail) –

1. ‘General’ tab:

Do NOT tick: “Include this account when receiving mail or synchronizing”

2. ‘Servers’ tab:

Server Information –
My incoming mail server is a: IMAP
Incoming mail (IMAP): imap-mail.outlook.com
Outgoing mail (SMTP): smtp-mail.outlook.com

Incoming Mail Server –
Email username : someone @hotmail.com
Password : <Your password>
Tick the button: “Log on using clear text authentication”

Outgoing Mail Server –
Tick the box “My server requires authentication”

Settings > Logon Information –
Tick the button : “Log on using”
Account name : someone @hotmail.com
Password (optional): <Your password>
Tick box (optional): “Remember password”
Do NOT tick the box: “Log on using Secure Password Authentication”

3. ‘Security’ tab –

Leave all settings blank.

4. ‘Advanced’ tab –

Server Port Numbers –

Outgoing mail (SMTP): 25
Tick the box “This server requires a secure connection (SSL)”

Incoming mail (IMAP): 993
Tick the box “This server requires a secure connection (SSL)”

Sending –

Do NOT tick “Break apart messages larger than … KB”

5. ‘IMAP’ tab (will not be present if you are using POP3) –

Folders –
Tick the box “Check for new messages in all folders”

Special Folders –
Do NOT tick: “Store special folders on IMAP server”

Alternatively, the following solution was posted on another thread by WLMUser2020. It involves editing or creating three registry entries (so ensure you have a reliable registry backup before proceeding):

1. Close Windows Live Mail.

2. Create a restore point, using System Restore.

https://www.lifewire.com/hkey-local-machine-2625902

4. In the Registry Editor, navigate to this location in the registry:

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

5. Create the following three DWORD entries in that location:

Value name: RecreateFolderIndex
Value type: REG_DWORD
Value data: 1

Value name: RecreateStreamIndex
Value type: REG_DWORD
Value data: 1

Value name: RecreateUIDLIndex
Value type: REG_DWORD
Value data: 1

This will fix Windows Live Mail in Windows 10 v2004 and higher.

Make CERTAIN that you create DWORD entries. There are several other types: this solution FAILS if you create the wrong type. This is the procedure:

(b) Then modify the new entry’s value: right-click on the new entry, then click on “Modify”, then type in 1 as the new “value data”, then click on “OK”.

Do that three times, to create those three new entries.

If the three entries already exist, you only need to do step (b). The entries will (presumably) each have a value of 0. You must modify all three, so that they all have a value of 1.

6. Close the Registry Editor, then restart the computer. This step is ESSENTIAL. Windows will only re-load the registry when Windows itself starts.

7. Start Windows Live Mail.

Then the message display should be back to normal, and those 3 values in the registry should have reset themselves to 0 (and can be left like that).

Step 5 is essential, and was kindly contributed by user DKO777. He reported the following on another thread: “My Registry did NOT have any of the lines mentioned, so I had to create all three and set them to 1. Following a PC reboot these reverted to 0 and WLM worked normally”.

Do you really need a registry backup? If you can make one, do so: it never hurts to be cautious. But this is such a small change that in most cases you won’t need it, provided you are careful not to delete anything (this solution only asks you to add 3 entries, not to delete any).
In most cases, all you will need to do is modify 3 existing entries, by changing the value of each from 0 to 1. It certainly won’t harm Windows to make so minor an alteration.

If the foregoing does not fix the problem, you have made a mistake:

1. You have created the wrong type of entry in step 5 (you should have created DWORD entries); or

2. You have failed to restart the computer in step 6 (restarting just Windows Live Mail is not enough).

Alternatively, you can add entries to the Windows Registry using a .reg file, without having to open the Registry Editor program.

In Windows 7, create a plain-text file with a .reg file extension (name it, for example, WLM.reg) then copy-and-paste the following text into it –

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail]
“RecreateFolderIndex”=dword:00000001
“RecreateStreamIndex”=dword:00000001
“RecreateUIDLIndex”=dword:00000001

As you can see, the file contains one line for each new entry to add to the Registry. To run the file, right-click on it, then click on the option named “Install”.

If you are not running Windows 7, I’ll leave it to you to work out the details, as I only know how to do this under Windows 7. The method may be different on other versions of Windows.

In Windows 7, you create a new text file with a .reg file extension instead of the .txt extension. Name the file livemail.reg (for example).

You copy-and-paste into it the following 5 lines of text, then save the amended file –

To run that .reg file, you right-click on it, then click on the option “Install”.

Alternatively, the Windows 10 update 2004 breaks WLM (usually reported where WLM contains several e-mail accounts).

The Windows update numbered 2004 may create the state, reported by WLMUser2020, where new messages cannot be displayed. That fault, too, can be fixed by editing the Windows registry using the above procedure suggested by WLMUser2020.

I’ve received reports from other users that this registry modification initially fails to fix the problem (when WLM is tested, after initially applying the registry modification and restarting the computer, the fix fails), but it succeeds when tried for a second time. If the modification doesn’t work for you, go back and apply all 6 steps again. Then restart the computer.

I’ve received reports from other users that this registry modification is required if you upgrade a computer from Windows 7 to Windows 10, if Windows 10 includes the update numbered 2004 (as part of the Windows 10 build you installed, or as a separate update installed following the upgrade).

Alternatively, the error code 800C013E can indicate a problem with the Windows Live Mail store folder (the folder in which WLM stores its messages, calendars and account settings).

It may be enough merely to re-index it:

1. To open the Options dialogue, in Windows Live Mail select:
File > Options > Mail (or press the keys Ctrl+Shift+O)

2. On the “Advanced” tab, select: Maintenance

3. Change the setting for “Compact the database…” to 1
so that it does the compacting every time Windows Live
Mail is run.

4. Close that settings box, then close Windows Live Mail.

You should see a message about “Recovering unused disk space”. Wait for the program to finish doing that, then wait a few more minutes for the program to finish its housekeeping. In practice, this means waiting until your computer’s disk-access light stops flashing, which might take a few minutes.

5. Re-launch Windows Live Mail.

If simply re-indexing Windows Live Mail does not fix the problem, and if your store folder is complicated (many accounts, many calendars, many messages in many folders) user ¡Firedog suggests – on a separate thread – that it may be simplest to just create a new store folder and repopulate it:

1. While viewing your message list in Windows Live Mail, press keys Ctrl+Shift+O for the Options menu. On the “Advanced” tab, click on “Maintenance”, then click on “Store folder”. Copy the path shown for the location of the store folder.

2. Close Windows Live Mail, then wait a few minutes (the program will continue to run in the background while it does its “housekeeping”).

3. Press the Windows key + E to open an Explorer window, then paste or type the path you copied at step 1 into the address bar, then press Enter. This should open the store folder.

4. Right-click on the folder’s name in the navigation pane, and select “Rename”. Rename the folder “Live Mail Backup”.

5. A repair should check that all the program files are present-and-correct and properly registered where necessary. To do this, close all running programs, then press the Windows key + R, then type WLARP in the box that opens, then press the Enter key. In the window that opens, select “Repair all Windows Essentials programs”.

6. When it finishes the repair, restart the computer.

7. Launch Windows Live Mail and wait until the program settles down before doing anything. Then press Ctrl+Shift+T to start the “Add your email accounts” wizard, then follow the on-screen prompts to add your e-mail accounts again.

8. Click once on “Working online” on the status bar, then disconnect from the Internet, to prevent interference from e-mail downloads. Next go to File > Import Messages (or press keys Alt+F then I). Point the wizard at the “Live Mail Backup” folder. Don’t interfere while the import is going on.

When it has completed, open Windows Live Mail. Your messages will be in a folder called “Imported folders”, a sub-folder of “Storage folders”.

Alternatively, if none of the foregoing solutions fixes a 800C013E error, I suggest a clean reinstall of Windows Live Essentials 2011, as follows –

1. Uninstall Windows Live Essentials by following the steps at this link:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/essentials-uninstall-ui

2. Delete the following folders for a clean installation:

For 32 bit
C:\Program Files\Windows Live
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Windows Live

For 64 bit
C:\Program Files(x86)\Windows Live
C:\Program Files(x86)\Common Files\Windows Live

3. Reinstall Windows Essentials 2011:
https://archive.org/details/windowsliveessentials2011_201908

See above for the section concerning WLM’s settings. When reinstalling the program, those are the settings you will need.

Alternatively, here is an 8-part guide to fixing the 800C013E error on a computer running Windows 10:

https://windowsreport.com/fix-windows-live-mail-wont-open/

I use Windows 7, so can’t give you any assistance in fixing Windows 10 faults.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/all/windows-
live-mail-error-code-0x800c013e-after/77fcb37a-0d1f-4256-abab-cfc1ea01f0e1

Windows Live Mail cannot Receive or Send : Totally non-functional

Which is it? You can’t have lost all e-mails if you can still see very old e-mails.

Open WLM. Then press Alt+F followed by B to see the program’s version and build number. Then post that information here.

How to deal with this depends on what type of account is involved, POP3 or IMAP.

If you’re not sure which of them you have, in WLM right-click on the e-mail account’s name (in the folders pane), then click on “Properties”. The type of account is shown at the top of the “Servers” tab. Also, the “properties” box for a POP3 account has only four tabs, and for an IMAP account it has five tabs.

Who is the e-mail service provided by? This is usually evident from the part of your e-mail address after the “@” symbol (e.g. yourname @hotmail.com).

If you are not able to send or receive mail, what happens when you try?

When the WLM program is unable to send or receive, it will almost always display an error message explaining what went wrong. Remove any unsent messages from the outbox (below the account folders in the folder pane), then compose a new test message with a unique subject and send it to yourself (i.e. from the account that’s misbehaving to the same account).

Post here any error message displayed. You can click on an error message to select it, then use right-click to copy it to memory, then right-click again to paste it into the text entry box here.

When you reply, please say which version of Windows you are using.

Windows Live Mail cannot Receive or Send : iCloud Account

When Windows Live Mail is unable to send or receive, it will almost always display an error message explaining what went wrong.

Force it to generate the necessary error message: remove any unsent messages from the Outbox (below the account folders in the folder pane), then compose a new test message with a unique subject and send it to yourself (i.e. from the account that’s misbehaving to the same account).

Post here any error message. You can click on an error message to select it, then use right-click to copy it, and again to paste it into your reply here.

When you reply, please give the build of the program and your version of Windows:

a. To find the program’s version and build, open Windows Live Mail then
on the keyboard press Alt+F and B.

b. To find your operating system, press the Windows key + R, type WINVER
into the box, then press Enter.

If you’ve enabled two-factor authentication on your iCloud account, you’ll need to generate an app-specific password to use for your iCloud account in Windows Live Mail:

1. Sign in to your Apple ID account page.
2. Select “Generate Password”, below “App-Specific Passwords”.
3. Follow the instructions.

Warning: iCloud e-mail does NOT support POP3. You must use IMAP: if you attempt to connect to it using POP3, Windows Live Mail will be unable to send or receive any e-mails on your iCloud mail account.

Windows Live Mail cannot receive, but it sends OK

All e-mail programs (including Windows Live Mail) use one port to send messages, and a different port to receive them.

This error, where you can receive but not send (or the other way round), is a classic sign that you are specifying the wrong port number for the one which is not working.

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that because you didn’t alter the e-mail settings, the port number can’t have changed. Corruption can occur from many causes.

Check in Windows Live Mail (WLM) that your settings are correct.

In the left-hand folders pane, right-click on the e-mail account’s name (e.g. someone@ hotmail.com), then click on “Properties”. The settings are found on three of the tabs there: “Servers”, “Advanced” and “IMAP”.

WLM uses either IMAP or POP3. I’ll give the settings for both, but you only need those for the one you actually use. If you have the tab named “IMAP”, you are using IMAP; but if that tab is not present, you are using POP3.

The following settings are what you need with Hotmail.

IMAP Settings (for Hotmail):

Incoming Mail –
Server type: IMAP
Server address: imap-mail.outlook.com (Port: 993)
SSL required: Yes
Authenticate using: Clear text
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp-mail.outlook.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

POP3 Settings (for Hotmail):

Incoming Mail –
Server type: POP3
Server address: pop-mail.outlook.com (Port: 995)
SSL required: Yes
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp-mail.outlook.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

Windows Live Mail cannot send, but it receives OK

All e-mail programs (including Windows Live Mail) use one port to send messages, and a different port to receive them.

An error where you can send but not receive (or the other way round) is a classic sign that you are specifying the wrong port number in the e-mail settings for the service (send or receive) which is not working.

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that because you didn’t alter the e-mail settings, the port number can’t have changed. Corruption can occur from many causes.

These account settings aren’t stored in the Windows registry. Each account has a configuration file named “account{GUID}.oeaccount” in the account’s sub-folder within the store folder (i.e. a file with the file type .oeaccount).

I’ve never actually known an .oeaccount file get corrupted, but there’s always a first time.

It’s an XML file (readable in Notepad), which contains all the account settings. These settings are viewable in the account’s Properties: in the left-hand folders pane of Windows Live Mail, right-click on the e-mail account’s name (e.g. someone @hotmail.com), then click on “Properties”. The settings are found on three of the tabs there: “Servers”, “Advanced” and “IMAP”.

Check that your settings are correct.

The following settings are what you need with Hotmail.

IMAP Settings (for Hotmail):

Incoming Mail –
Server type: IMAP
Server address: imap-mail.outlook.com (Port: 993)
SSL required: Yes
Authenticate using: Clear text
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp-mail.outlook.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

POP3 Settings (for Hotmail):

Incoming Mail –
Server type: POP3
Server address: pop-mail.outlook.com (Port: 995)
SSL required: Yes
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp-mail.outlook.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

Alternatively, an SMTP error means that WLM cannot send. This usually means it can receive okay.

An intermittent error in connecting to SMTP suggests that every time you manually correct the problem, an automatic process undoes your corrective action on the next reboot. Or on the process’s next auto-update or next scan.

Because there are so many possible causes, none of which have anthing to do with WLM, I can’t guess at what program on your computer is really causing this. You may need to post in a Windows 10 forum for advice.

On a practical level, your approach should be to disable one of the processes that may be causing this, and see if the fault then reoccurs. Don’t disable a whole bunch of processes: temporarily disable them one at a time, which is the surest means of finding the correct one.

Your main antivirus program has to be the most likely candidate, and is the obvious starting point.

This problem can be caused by enabing the Virtual Private Network (VPN) feature in your anti-virus program. For example, this VPN option is a new feature in McAfee’s “Live Safe” anti-virus program. Set VPN to “Off” to be able to send e-mails. If VPN is set to “On”, it stops WLM sending e-mails.

Second choice will be any anti-malware program(s) you might be running. Other candidates include any firewall running, such as Windows Defender. Other candidates include any browser plug-ins or add-ons running. Test for these by closing the running program or service in question before starting WLM.

Note – If you are using POP3 instead of IMAP, try the foregoing fix. But there are additional factors to consider with a POP3 account, so the chances of fixing this fault using the advice above are greatest if your account uses IMAP. I may need to give you extra advice, if you are using POP3.

Alternatively, if you can receive e-mails but can’t reply or create new ones, and get a “Try again later” message, this may be because you are using a foreign language version of Windows Live Mail 2012, i.e. your installed version is written in a language other than English.

If the active display language of the Windows operating system is English (maybe because of a recent change you’ve made), that can cause this error in a non-English language version of Windows Live Mail.

Windows Live Mail cannot send, but it Receives OK : POP3 Account

Look on the website of the e-mail service that you are using, to see whether they have made any recent change, such as introducing a new server address or port number. The most likely cause of “can receive, can’t send” is that the send settings (but not the receive settings) are now incorrect because of a change made by the e-mail service you use.

The following settings are what I normally suggest for POP3 –

Right-click on the account name in the folder pane, then select “Properties”.

1. On the “Servers” tab make sure of these matters –
Ensure that the “Email username” is your full e-mail address.
Tick/check “Log on using clear text authentication”.
Tick/check “My server requires authentication”.

2. On the “Advanced” tab be sure to do these things –
Tick/check “This server requires a secure connection (SSL)” for incoming and outgoing mail.
Set the server port for incoming mail to: 995

3. Click “Apply” then “OK”.

I use IMAP, I’m not as familiar with POP3. Obviously, only alter the settings for outgoing mail (i.e. for send only). The most important things to do are:

a. Make certain that on the ‘Servers’ tab the box labelled ‘My server requires authentication’ (next to ‘Outgoing mail server’) is ticked/checked.

b. Make certain that in the ‘Outgoing Mail Server’ window (the window that opens when you click the ‘Settings’ button on the ‘Servers’ tab) the option to use secure authentication is NOT selected. This is what forces PLAIN authentication.

When you are sure it is set to use PLAIN authentication, test whether it can send. Remove any unsent messages from the outbox (below the account folders, in the folder pane), then compose a new test message with a unique subject, and send it to yourself (from the affected account to the same account).

A failure to send can be caused by a SINGLE faulty message stuck in the outbox: the program will refuse to send anything, because the faulty message is blocking the outbox, until that message is deleted.

Post the error message in your reply: click on the error message to select it, then use right-click to copy it, then use right-click again to paste it into the text entry box here in your reply.

I hope to see you post here an error number! That is the 8-digit number which is usually included in an error message. That number identifies the exact cause of the problem, and can be essential for curing the problem.

Windows Live Mail cannot send (Error 800CCC0E)

If you receive an error message that says “the connection to the server has failed” or that specifies error number 800ccc0e this indicates a problem with the settings used to log-on to the e-mail server (e.g. incorrect server names or port numbers).

The problem is that the program can’t send new messages. In technical terms, the e-mail settings are called IMAP, POP3 and SMTP — the IMAP and POP3 settings control receiving messages, the SMTP settings control sending messages.

It is possible the SMTP settings have been corrupted in Windows Live Mail; but it is more likely that your e-mail service provider has made a change to its service, but has failed to inform you. In both cases the solution is the same. Namely, make sure the settings are correct:

1. Open Windows Live Mail (WLM). In the left-hand pane (i.e. the folders pane), right-click on the name of your e-mail account (e.g. yourname @hotmail.com). Then click on ‘Properties’.

2. If there are 5 tabs shown, and the 5th tab is labelled ‘IMAP’, your account is an IMAP account. If there are only 4 tabs shown, and the ‘IMAP’ tab is missing, your account is a POP3 account. Both types use SMTP to send mail. Look at the ‘Servers’ tab and the ‘Advanced’ tab for the current SMTP settings.

3. In your favourite browser, go to the website of your e-mail provider. It will publish its current SMTP settings on its website. If you don’t see them, search the website for the word SMTP.

4. Alternatively, do a Google search. For example, if you have a Hotmail account do a Google search for the terms SMTP and HOTMAIL. Or if you use Gmail, do a Google search for the terms SMTP and GMAIL.

5. Make sure that Windows Live Mail’s settings for outgoing mail are all SMTP settings.

6. Make sure the server names are spelled correctly. Make sure you have entered the correct port number. It’s easy to mis-type, so check all of them carefully for mistakes.

Windows Live Mail cannot send (Can’t send to one specific Email Service)

Windows Live Mail (WLM) is working normally, except that it can’t send mail to one particular e-mail service (the service is that part of the e-mail address after the “@” symbol). But e-mails sent to all other services arrive successfully.

If a copy of the message is in your “Sent items” folder, Windows Live Mail has done its job and the message has been accepted by your mail server for onward transmission to the addressee. It has then been stopped at one of the servers it passes through on its way to its destination.

There can be several reasons for this. But whichever reason it is, this is not Windows Live Mail’s fault. Accordingly, you can’t fix it by making a change in Windows Live Mail.

The reasons why it was stopped can include:

1. There is something within the message body that causes a spam filter to block the message.

To test for this possibility, compose a short plain-text message (with no attachments), with a unique subject, then send it to the intended recipient’s account and to your own. Does he receive it? Do you?

2. Your IP address (allocated to you by your Internet Service provider), or the address of your mail server (allocated by your e-mail service), is on a blacklist/blocklist.

To test for this possibility, visit the web page “mxtoolbox.com/WhatIsMyIP/” and click on “Get Blacklist Status”. If there is a listing, follow the links to find out why the address is listed on a blacklist.

If a copy of the message is stuck in your “Outbox” folder (i.e. has not reached the “Sent items” folder), the fault might be in WLM, but it might alternatively be a user error (typically, an attachment error).

This can occur if an attachment is larger than the maximum size permitted by your e-mail service, perhaps because you forgot to allow for the fact that an attachment is one-third larger than the file it contains (due to the so-called ‘encoding overhead’).

Does the fault still occur if you re-send the e-mail but *without* including any attachment? If so, you have identified the cause of your problem.

Windows Live Mail cannot send (Can’t send when Travelling)

When travelling (i.e. when away from home), it’s not necessary to use the SMTP server belonging to the ISP you are using.

The most common reason people have difficulty sending e-mail when away from home is that their WLM account is set up to use unauthenticated SMTP, often over port 25: many Email Service Providers (ESPs) won’t allow this, because that setting makes it easy for spammers. To ensure your account will work anywhere, set it up as follows.

Right-click on the account name in WLM’s folder pane, and select “Properties”.

1. On the “Servers” tab –

a. Ensure that the Email username is your full e-mail address.
b. Select: Log on using clear text authentication.
c. Select: My server requires authentication.

2. On the “Advanced” tab –

a. Ensure that “This server requires a secure connection (SSL)” is selected for outgoing mail.
b. Ensure that the server port for outgoing mail is 465.

3. Click “Apply”, then click “OK”.

Remove any unsent messages from the Outbox (below the account folders in the folder pane), then compose a new test message with a unique subject and send it to yourself. Post any new error message in your reply to me.

As regards the Send settings, when away from home, you should use SSL (i.e. the Secure type): most major e-mail service providers now require it. As regards authentication, this is turned on by the setting “My server requires authentication”. Also, you must give a username (usually an e-mail address), and a password, which the service will recognize, i.e. belonging to one of the e-mail service provider’s account holders.

You’re seeing an error when trying to connect using SMTP because this is an alias for the IMAP server. The SMTP server is called smtp.xxxxxxx.net. You’ll find useful information on the e-mail service provider’s website.

For Comcast, that website is:

https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/email-client-programs-with-xfinity-email

Sending Test Message : Result unclear

Concerning my suggestion that you test the latest repair, by sending a message to yourself (i.e. from the faulty Account to that same Account), please clarify your reply.

Is the test message still in your “Outbox”? Or do you see it in the “Sent items” folder?

Does the same happen if you try again with a new test message?

Missing Messages : Installing on a Removable Disk

The program is only designed to be installed on Drive C:, with its storage folder on the same drive, which must be the drive on which Windows is installed.

You are asking for trouble if you do not keep both the Windows Live Mail program and the actual .eml message files all on your C: drive, along with your Windows folder.

Plugging in external or removable drives causes the drive letters to change. To you, they might appear not to have changed, but they will have. There’s almost no chance of Windows Live Mail working successfully if its storage folder is on an external or removable disk, because of the way Windows NT reassigns drive letters (whilst pretending it hasn’t).

Sooner or later, the drive letter of the disk in question will be reallocated to another device, and Windows Live Mail will be unable to find the correct storage folder, so will not be able to find the message files.

Missing Messages : All E-mails missing after installing Windows 10 (#1)

You need to make certain, at all times, that Windows Live Mail (WLM) is NOT set to delete messages from the server once read, or the program will delete messages from the server when marked as read: which would mean that ALL your old messages will be deleted!

Make sure, next, that the folders you are looking for are not just hidden: when viewing your message list in Windows Live Mail, press the two keys Ctrl and Y to see the entire folder list (including any hidden folders).

Alternatively, the WLM program can be set to hide messages which have been read — which will include ALL your old messages! To force the program to display them, on the ribbon click on “View”, then click on “Filter Messages”, then click on “Show All Messages”. This might not succeed (it depends on other settings), but is worth trying.

The ribbon is the top menu bar in the WLM program’s window (the menu which includes the tabs labelled ‘Home’, ‘Folders’, ‘View’ and ‘Accounts’).

1. There is a folder named “Storage folders” in Windows Live Mail, in the left-hand Folders pane (the final item at the foot of the pane). This is where any messages stored by you are kept.

Within it is a sub-folder named “Deleted items”. Folders deleted by you from your local disk can end up in there, rather than being deleted permanently (i.e. it’s like the Recycle bin in Windows).

Sometimes there is also a sub-folder named “Recovered items”: this is where missing messages commonly get moved to by the program. This only exists in limited circumstances. But if it does exist, select it, and then open it to view its contents (it won’t be empty unless *you* emptied it).

2. Alternatively, each ‘live’ top level folder in that left-hand Folder pane (i.e. those that sync to the online e-mail server) contains a sub-folder named “Deleted”.

Sometimes deleted items do end up there — but I’m not going to field-test this theory for you!! A deleted single .eml message often WILL end up there; but I don’t know for sure if a whole deleted folder will.

3. Alternatively, in Windows Live Mail a sub-folder exists under “Storage folders” named “Sent items”. This sub-folder is another local folder on your hard disk, so its contents do not get deleted if you delete a ‘live’ folder from the server.

Recent e-mails sent using WLM are saved in the “Sent items” sub-folder.

If you deleted a ‘live’ folder, all its sent e-mails probably survive in that sub-folder.

4. Alternatively, you can also restore a deleted folder from your backups, using drag-and-drop.

You must manually create the target ‘live’ folder in Windows Live Mail (WLM), then select one .eml file to go in it (i.e. select it in your local backup folder), then press CTRL and A to select all files in the backup folder, then drag-and-drop them onto the new ‘live’ folder in WLM.

5. If you are using Gmail, when you delete a message it is not truly deleted, but just has all labels except “all mail” removed from it.

Labels in Gmail are seen as folders in an IMAP program such as Windows Live Mail.

Log into your Gmail mailbox using a web browser (instead of Windows Live Mail), and see if your lost messages still exist at Gmail. If they do, you should be able to delete the account from Windows Live Mail and then re-add it, which should force the messages to sync again and show up in Windows Live Mail.

6. Alternatively, if you are running Windows, a Restore Point created on your hard disk by the System Restore program might contain the deleted folder. That folder is named “Windows Live Mail”, and this is its default location:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For %username% substitute the name of the current user.

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

By reverting the computer to an earlier state/date, sub-folders deleted under the ‘Windows Live Mail’ folder might be restored. I’ve never tried it for such folders, but it might be possible.

System Restore – First thing to do is check whether you actually have it turned on for the hard disk partition on which the e-mail folder is/was stored.

If you do have it switched on for that partition (called a “drive” or “volume”). the thing to do is check whether it has actually saved any data for that partition.

If it’s your C: partition, for example, any saved data will be a huge file in the folder “C:\System Volume Information” in C:\ root (a hidden folder, which you might need help merely opening to have a look in it).

If you’re running a business, get your IT department to resolve the problem by manually extracting the saved e-mails from that file (a complex procedure that I have not attempted, so can’t help with).

It’s not necessary to revert the entire system, or indeed any part of it. Individual files can be copied from (i.e. extracted from) the huge file, on to your desktop, if your IT support people are familiar with the manual procedure (and if the folder which was deleted is one for which data was saved by the System Restore process).

7. Alternatively, the messages themselves might exist, even though they are not being reported by Windows Live Mail. Look in the messages folder to find out. That folder is named “Windows Live Mail”, and this is its default location:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For %username% substitute the name of the current user.

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

8. Alternatively, use a file undelete utility (such as Recuva) to search for deleted files with the extension .eml — Windows Live Mail stores each message as a text file with a 16-character filename (similar to this example: 777469CD-00A9D71B.eml).

If this problem arose following a Windows 10 update/upgrade, I’ve no idea whether files deleted during such an operation are recoverable.

9. Alternatively, older messages may still exist on the on-line server. If you have, for example, a Hotmail e-mail account, use your web browser to access the account on the Hotmail website, currently known as Outlook.com — to see if the messages are still stored on the server.

Missing Messages : All E-mails missing after installing Windows 10 (#2)

Check in File Explorer (Windows key + E) whether you have a folder called “C:\Windows.old”.

If it exists, it may contain your old messages folder (holding the missing messages and much else). That folder is named “Windows Live Mail”, and this is its default location:

C:\Windows.old\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For %username% substitute the name of the current user.

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

To recover the missing e-mails:

1. Close Windows Live Mail.

2. Open Windows Explorer (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), and
make sure on its “View” tab that both “File name extensions” and
“Hidden items” are selected in the “Show/hide” section.

3. In Windows Explorer (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), navigate
to the following folder (for %username% substitute the name of the
current user):

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft

4. In the folder opened in step 3, rename the sub-folder called
“Windows Live Mail” to “Windows Dead Mail”.

5. Move the old messages folder (the folder named “Windows Live Mail”
which you found in the “Windows.old” folder) into the folder opened
in step 3 (i.e. into the folder that “Windows Dead Mail” is in).

6. Close Windows Explorer (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), then
restart the computer, then launch Windows Live Mail.

The Windows.old folder will automatically be deleted after ten days, so act quickly. You may want to check, too, whether there’s anything else in there that didn’t migrate to Windows 10!

Depending on what type of e-mail account you have, you may be missing all messages received since the upgrade. You’ll likely find them in sub-folders of the folder named “Windows Dead Mail”. You can drag them from there into the appropriate message list in the Windows Live Mail window.

Alternatively, check whether your stored messages were merely moved from one folder to another during the upgrade: when viewing your message list in Windows Live Mail, on the keyboard press Ctrl+Y to see the entire folder list: is there a folder named “Recovered items”? If there is, select it and then open it to view its contents (it won’t be empty unless *you* emptied it): this is where stored messages commonly get moved to.

Alternatively, use a file undelete utility such as Recuva to search for deleted files with the extension .eml (Windows Live Mail stores each e-mail message as a text file with a 16-digit name, similar to this example: 777469CD-00A9D71B.eml). I’ve no idea whether files deleted during an upgrade to Windows 10 are recoverable.

The AppData folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

Missing Messages : All E-mails missing after resetting Windows 10

Your messages may still exist on the e-mail service’s on-line server. If you have for, example, a Hotmail e-mail account, use your web browser to access the account on the Hotmail website, currently known as Outlook.com — to see if the messages are still stored on the server.

If so, you could re-install Windows Live Mail on your Windows computer, and re-download all your messages from the server.

Windows Live Mail 2011 –
https://archive.org/details/windowsliveessentials2011_201908

If you need help to reinstall Windows Live Mail, ask here. Or search this forum for the term windowsliveessentials2011 (Windows Live Essentials 2011 is the name of the installer program needed).

You’ll need to make certain, at all times, that Windows Live Mail is NOT set to delete messages from the server once read, or the program will delete messages from the server once you’ve read them: which would mean all your messages get deleted!

This problem arose because of a Windows 10 update/upgrade: I’ve no idea whether files deleted from your local disk during such an operation are recoverable.

One possibility is to use a file undelete utility (such as Recuva) to search the local disk for deleted files with the extension .eml — Windows Live Mail stores each message as a text file with a 16-character filename (similar to this example: 777469CD-00A9D71B.eml).

I’ve no idea whether the Windows 10 upgrade/update deleted any files. Use the file explorer in Windows 10 to search your local disk for .eml files. Set the ‘View’ setting in the Windows file explorer to show hidden files, before initiating this search.

Some Windows 10 updates/upgrades store the .eml files in a sub-directory of a folder named C:\Windows.old for a few days afterwards, but act quickly or that folder will be deleted without your consent. If any .eml files have survived, move them without delay to a folder that’s not a subdirectory of C:\Windows.old (to prevent them getting deleted when it gets deleted).

Missing Messages : WLM missing after installing Windows 10

Where an upgrade to Windows 10 has deleted Windows Live Mail (WLM), you have these options –

1. Access your e-mail as webmail, in your browser (e.g. Internet Explorer).

2. If you are using Windows 10, use the Windows 10 “Mail” app. It has
limited capabilities, but is easy to use.

3. Install an e-mail program:

a. Outlook (Office Outlook) (not free):

https://products.office.com/en-us/compare-all-microsoft-office-products-b?

b. Thunderbird (free):

https://www.thunderbird.net

c. eM Client (free):

https://www.emclient.com

d. Windows Live Mail (free):

https://archive.org/details/windowsliveessentials2011_201908

4. If the upgrade to Windows 10 was very recent, your previous mail, contacts, etc (from your original version of Windows Live Mail) will still exist in a sub-folder within the “Windows.old” folder.

Rescue that sub-folder, named “Windows Live Mail”, by moving it onto the Desktop immediately — otherwise it will be automatically deleted 10 days after the upgrade (when all the contents of the Windows.old folder are deleted). That sub-folder is normally located at:

C:\Windows.old\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For “%username%”, substitute the name of the current user.

If that folder is already deleted, you might recover it by using the program System Restore included with Windows 7/8/10.

Missing Messages : Messages Deleted from your E-mail account

IF YOU ARE USING MICROSOFT E-MAIL –

The webmail program, when the Microsoft e-mail service is opened in your web browser, now includes an option to recover some deleted messages.

Open Microsoft’s website in your web browser, sign-in to your e-mail account on their website, and open the Deleted Items folder in your account.

Then use the new option to restore (i.e. undelete) all recently deleted messages.

THIS OPTION IS NOT AVAILABLE IN WINDOWS LIVE MAIL: to use the restore function, you must sign-in to your e-mail account in a browser, on the Microsoft website, instead of using Windows Live Mail.

Missing Folders : Deleted Email Account

Error: When I opened Windows Live Mail (WLM), one of my two e-mail accounts was gone.
The e-mails themselves survive in a sub-folder named “recovered”.

The easy way to re-create a lost account is to create a new account in Windows Live Mail. If the e-mails (messages) all survive on the internet server, they can all be re-downloaded into a brand new (empty) account in Windows Live Mail, as follows.

Your messages may still exist on the e-mail service’s on-line server. Use your web browser to access the account on their website — to see if the messages are still stored on the server.

If you usually make a regular backup of your entire hard disk, do so now. If you never do that, at least make a backup copy of the following folder with all its contents (i.e. your messages), on your Desktop, as a safety measure in case anything goes wrong:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For %username% substitute the name of the current user.

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

You must make certain, at all times, that Windows Live Mail is NOT set to delete messages from the server once read, or the program will delete messages from the server once you’ve read them: which would mean ALL your existing messages get deleted!

Open Windows Live Mail. Before proceeding, select the option “WORK OFFLINE” on the ribbon. The ribbon is the top menu bar in the WLM program’s window (the menu which includes the tabs labelled ‘Home’, ‘Folders’, ‘View’ and ‘Accounts’). On the ribbon, go to: Home > Work Offline

If you create a new account within Windows Live Mail (WLM), using the IMAP protocol, WLM will sync to your e-mail account on the online server (i.e. will download all the ‘live’ folders present on the server, including all mail messages for the last few years):

a) Click on the “Accounts” tab on the ribbon, then click on the “E-mail” button.

b) It’ll launch the “Add new email accounts” wizard. Now provide required information such as your e-mail account address, password, display name. Then select/tick “Manually configure server settings”. Then click on “Next”.

c) On the next screen, select IMAP from the “Server type” drop-down list, and enter required incoming and outgoing server addresses and port numbers for your e-mail account:

IMAP Settings (for Hotmail):

Incoming Mail –
Server type: IMAP
Server address: imap-mail.outlook.com (Port: 993)
SSL required: Yes
Authenticate using: Clear text
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp-mail.outlook.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

IMAP Settings (for Hotmail) – Alternative:

Incoming Mail –
Server type: IMAP
Server address: outlook.office365.com (Port: 993)
SSL required: Yes
Authenticate using: Clear text
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp.office365.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

If you DON’T use Hotmail, the settings you need can be found on the website of your e-mail service provider.

d) Fix the duplicate IMAP folders before going on-line: see below
(select WLM’s option to WORK OFFLINE while doing this step)

Fix Duplicate Folders –

If you add an e-mail account that uses IMAP, Windows Live Mail automatically creates the following three duplicate folders:

# Deleted Items
# Sent Items
# Junk E-mail

The folders “Deleted”, “Junk” and “Sent” are original folders downloaded from the e-mail server. But “Deleted Items”, “Sent Items” and “Junk E-mail” are useless duplicates created by Windows Live Mail.

To remove the duplicate folders:

Select WLM’s option to WORK OFFLINE before doing the following. In Windows Live Mail:

1. In the folders pane, right-click on the e-mail account’s name. Then click on “Properties”.

2. On the “IMAP” tab, under “Special Folders”, untick “Store special folders on IMAP server”.

3. Click “OK”.

4. When asked for confirmation to refresh the folders list, click “Yes”. It’ll take a few moments to download and refresh the folders list. Then change back to WORK ONLINE.

5. Delete the duplicate folders manually: right-click on a duplicate folder, then select “Delete”.

Finally, download your e-mails:

Click on the Inbox folder in WLM. The message headers should start downloading.

Missing Messages: Messages keep showing up as Recovered Items

Q: Why do many of my E-mail messages keep showing up as recovered items?

Installing Windows 10, or installing a Windows 10 update, makes changes in the Windows system registry. These changes can affect Windows Live Mail (WLM), which also stores some of its settings in the system registry.

If those changes cause the Windows Live Mail database file to lose track of the location (i.e. the address) of some of your email message files, the WLM program corrects that problem by re-downloading the messages concerned, and puts them in a special location, namely the Recovered Items folder.

This might occur with any messages, but is most likely to occur with the most recent messages, as these are the ones most likely not to have yet been added to the WLM program’s database file.

This notifies you that a database file error has occured. This is a warning, intended to prompt you to do a repair of Windows Live Mail. If you are seeing an error message and an error number displayed, the error number is a clue to what type of repair is needed, and accordingly you should post it here and ask for advice on what to do to fix it.

Missing Folders : Inbox missing

Windows Live Mail (WLM) is only a shortcut to your e-mails. If it’s temporarily out of order, you can still go to the website of the e-mail provider (e.g. Microsoft), sign-in to your e-mail account there, and read your e-mails there.

Windows Live Mail 2011 has a fairly stupid option that lets you hide folders!

If you’ve lost a folder, but the WLM program still works, i.e. still opens, chances are you’ve only hidden it from users, not deleted it.

When viewing the message list in Windows Live Mail, press the keys Ctrl+Y on the keyboard simultaneously, to see the entire folder list.

Alternatively, the WLM program can be set to hide those messages which have been read — which will include ALL your old messages! To force the program to display them, on the ribbon click on “View”, then click on “Filter Messages”, then click on “Show All Messages”. This might not succeed (it depends on other settings), but is worth trying.

The ribbon is the top menu bar in the WLM program’s window (the menu which includes the tabs labelled ‘Home’, ‘Folders’, ‘View’ and ‘Accounts’).

Alternatively, if you accidentally or deliberately hide a “live” folder (one which synchronises with the online server), the folder will no longer be displayed, but nothing bad will normally happen to the messages in it (except you can’t see them or open them, nor add or remove any messages from that folder).

I’ve never had to un-hide such a folder, because I recognised going in that hiding one was a bad move!

But try searching the internet in Google, for “hide folder” or “unhide folder” alongside “Windows Live Mail”, to find out how to make the folder show up again.

I don’t know how to cure it, if the foregoing won’t, but that might be what has happened. Good luck on the search. *Please* post a solution here, if you find out how to do it! (I suspect that the solution will involve right-clicking on some special area of WLM, then clicking on an ‘unhide’ option that pops up!)

Alternatively, I’ve seen reports of this problem occuring because a user tried to create a sub-folder of the Inbox.

You may need to view your e-mail account on the online website of the e-mail company, to see whether the missing Inbox and sub-folder(s) still exist.

In my opinion you are NOT ALLOWED to create sub-folders of the Inbox, as the software doesn’t allow for that: if so, the e-mail provider or its software may have deleted any such sub-folders. I’ve never come across a case where a user has succeeded in creating a sub-folder of the Inbox or of any other ‘live’ folder (those folders which synchronise with the online server).

Alternatively, the folder named “Storage folders” (which is a folder on your computer, not on the internet) contains a “Deleted items” folder, and this may contain hidden items that you can’t normally see. Go to the “Deleted items” folder, and type in the search box a folder name that you can remember: another search box will open, with a dropdown arrow: choose “All email” and the e-mails that were in that folder will appear!

This might be a successful method to find the hidden items, *if* you can remember the names of your old folders. If only the Inbox folder is hidden, that seems fairly straightforward.

Create a new folder with a different name, and copy all of these rediscovered e-mails into it.

My best guess is that your Inbox folder is hidden, but I chanced on this novel way of opening folders while they still *remain* hidden. I was hoping to find a way to unhide the folders, not just find a way to access them whilst hidden! Still, if it works don’t knock it.

If you have an off-line backup of them, your messages will survive in that backup copy.

Missing Folders : WLM Storage Folders missing (#1) (Accidentally deleted)

You need to make certain, at all times, that Windows Live Mail is NOT set to delete messages from the server once read. Otherwise the program will delete messages from the server once you’ve read them: this would mean ALL your old messages get deleted!

Old messages may still exist on the on-line server. Use your web browser to access the account on the service provider’s website, to see if the messages are still stored on the server (if you have a Hotmail account, the website concerned is currently known as Outlook.com).

There is a folder named ‘Storage folders’ in the Windows Live Mail desktop program, and in it there is a sub-folder named ‘Deleted items’. Folders deleted from local storage end up in there, rather than being deleted permanently, as a safety feature (i.e. it acts like the Recycle bin in Windows).

Each of the ‘live’ folders, that sync to the online mail server, contains an individual folder named ‘Deleted’, and sometimes deleted items end up in it — but I’m not going to field-test this theory for you!! A deleted .eml message will end up there, but I don’t know for sure if a whole deleted folder will.

You can also restore a deleted folder from your backups, using drag-and-drop. You must manually create the target ‘live’ folder in Windows Live Mail (WLM), then select one .eml file to go in it (i.e. select it in your local backup folder), then press CTRL and A to select all files in the backup folder, then drag-and-drop them onto the new ‘live’ folder in WLM.

If you are using Gmail, when you delete a message it is not truly deleted, but just has all labels except “all mail” removed from it.

Labels in Gmail are seen as folders in an IMAP program such as Windows Live Mail.

Log into your Gmail mailbox using a web browser (instead of Windows Live Mail), and see if your lost messages still exist at Gmail. If they do, you should be able to delete the account from Windows Live Mail and re-add it, which should force the messages to sync again and show up in Windows Live Mail.

In Windows Live Mail (WLM), a sub-folder exists under “Storage folders”, named “Sent items”. This sub-folder is a local folder on your hard disk, so its contents do not get deleted if you delete a ‘live’ folder from the server.

Recent e-mails sent using WLM are saved in the “Sent items” sub-folder.

If you deleted a ‘live’ folder, those sent e-mails probably survive in that sub-folder.

Another possibility is that, if you are running Windows, a Restore Point created on your hard disk by the System Restore program might contain the deleted folder, which is a subdirectory of AppData –

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

By reverting the computer to an earlier state/date, sub-folders deleted under the ‘Windows Live Mail’ folder might be restored. I’ve never tried it for such folders, but it might be possible.

System Restore – First thing to do is check whether you actually have it turned on for the hard disk partition on which the e-mail folder is/was stored.

If you do have it switched on for that partition (called a “drive” or “volume”). the thing to do is check whether it has actually saved any data for that partition.

Another possibility is to use a file undelete utility (such as Recuva) to search for deleted files with the extension .eml — Windows Live Mail stores each message as a text file with a 16-character filename (similar to this example: 777469CD-00A9D71B.eml).

If this problem arose following a Windows 10 update/upgrade, I’ve no idea whether files deleted during such an operation are recoverable.

Another possibility is to open WLM, then on its menu bar click on ‘View’, then in the View menu select ‘Storage folders’. This will un-hide the folder named ‘Storage folders’ (below the ‘Outbox’ folder, in the folders list). Its sub-folders contain all the e-mails stored on your local disk.

I have no further suggestions. Folders, if deleted by you on the mail server, cannot be restored by any means known to me. You have no access to the server.

If you are not using Hotmail or some other type of Microsoft e-mail, even Microsoft can’t access the mail server. If so, there is no use posting in a Microsoft forum.

If you don’t use Microsoft e-mail, as they can’t help you with an e-mail problem, you might try posting in a forum for the type of e-mail you are using. Sorry if this sounds daft, but many people do use Windows Live Mail with non-Microsoft e-mail services such as Gmail.

Missing Folders : WLM Storage Folders missing (#2)

The “Storage folders” folder still exists, but no longer has the subfolders in it which the user created.

If it helps, in Windows Live Mail 2011 (I can’t speak for other versions) the option to right-click on a folder and hide it does not exist for the “Storage folders” item.

Hiding a folder, in the left-hand folders pane, can only be done for live folders — those which sync with folders on the Microsoft server — not for the “Storage folders” item or the sub-folders within it.

However, to see those folders which actually can be hidden, try this: when viewing the message list in Windows Live Mail, press Ctrl+Y to show the entire folder list.

The ribbon is the top menu bar in the WLM program’s window (the menu which includes the tabs labelled ‘Home’, ‘Folders’, ‘View’ and ‘Accounts’).

If you are looking for the folder in which the actual message files listed in Windows Live Mail are stored on your hard disk, in Windows Explorer, the .eml files themselves are located at –

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For %username% substitute the name of the current user.

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

One other possibility is to use a file undelete utility (such as Recuva) to search for deleted files with the extension .eml — Windows Live Mail stores each message as a text file with a 16-character filename (similar to this example: 777469CD-00A9D71B.eml).

If this problem arose following a Windows 10 update/upgrade, I’ve no idea whether files deleted during such an operation are recoverable.

Missing Folders : WLM Storage Folders missing (#3)

I recommend that you copy your entire Windows Live Mail folder tree to a backup location, at least once a week. Even a backup on the same hard disk would be okay.

Then if you lose files, they will still exist in your backup copy.

Probably best to keep only the latest backup copy, if you are sure you can easily spot that there are missing messages.

To restore missing messages from a backup –

1. Open Windows Live Mail (WLM).

2. Open the backup folder.

3. Drag-and-drop any missing individual message from the backup folder to a live folder in WLM (one of the folders that automatically synchronise), using the mouse. This will copy that message back to the on-line server.

Missing Folders : AppData folder missing

What you describe is impossible, so relax. If your appdata folder was deleted the computer would not be working, or not working normally. The folder is merely hidden — this is its normal state.

To see a hidden AppData folder –

1. Open any local folder on your computer.
2. Click on the ‘Tools’ menu item, then click ‘Folder options’
3. Click on the ‘View’ tab
4. Click on ‘Show hidden files, folders and drives’
5. Untick ‘Hide protected operating system files’, by clicking on it.
6. In the pop-up, click on ‘Yes’
7. Click on ‘Apply’

Then open the following folder:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For %username% substitute the name of the current user.

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

Alternatively, try this: when viewing the message list in Windows Live Mail, press Ctrl+Y to see the entire folder list.

The ribbon is the top menu bar in the WLM program’s window (the menu which includes the tabs labelled ‘Home’, ‘Folders’, ‘View’ and ‘Accounts’).

If your computer is not working normally –

If an antivirus program is reporting a virus infection, you are in need of advice about fighting a virus (or some type of malware). That is well outside what I can do for you.

If your problem is a virus or malware infection, not a simple problem with the use of Windows Live Mail, you are in the wrong forum.

I’d suggest posting a request for help on the antivirus program’s website, as you are using their program. Your payment for that software probably entitles you to free support from their technicians in wiping out the detected malware. So I suggest that contacting them for the support you’ve paid for is your next step.

Your problem, as described, appears to have nothing to do with Windows Live Mail.

This is not a general advice forum. You need to ask elsewhere for help about using the antivirus software sold to you. There is a help desk at their website, and if you have paid them for support it is best that you contact them. If their program is giving you options, but you are still having problems, it is possible you might have chosen the wrong option.

If it was my computer that was detecting malware and/or overheating as a result, I would certainly be (a) quarantining the malware, and (b) speaking to the antivirus company’s staff for advice. No harm will normally come from putting a program into quarantine, as that does not delete it.

Ultimately, their staff might be unable to assist: there are many types of virus/malware programs, and you will have to identify the specific type before anyone can give you information about it. You may thus be left with a simple choice: if some program is causing you a problem, should you delete it? A no-brainer?

If you can now find your AppData folder, does this resolve the problem you had with using Windows Live Mail?

If not, please describe the problem, relating to e-mail, and someone here can then try to advise you.

Missing Folders : Hidden Folders in WLM’s Folder List

When viewing the folders in Windows Live Mail, on your keyboard press the keys Ctrl and Y to see the entire folder list (including hidden folders).

The ribbon is the top menu bar in the WLM program’s window (the menu which includes the tabs labelled ‘Home’, ‘Folders’, ‘View’ and ‘Accounts’).

[If this doesn’t work, don’t panic!

There are lots of other possibilities. I can think of 3 other situations which can give this result, and there are various easy steps you can take. But I will need more information.

You seem to have forgotten to tell me which folder is missing!

If you need further help, that’ll be the first thing to tell me please.

Give me any further details you can, about what you were doing just before this problem arose – a description giving the best detail you can remember is always helpful. But the only essential information I need, in order to suggest how to proceed next, is which folder or folders are not visible.]

Reinstall WLM : Move WLM to a new computer (#1) (Move from a working computer)

1. Install Windows Live Mail –

On the new computer, install Windows Live Mail (WLM), using the instructions below. Make sure you install THE SAME VERSION that you have on your original computer.

How to Install WLM –

a. Get the installation program “Windows Live Essentials” (get the version you’re currently using):

Windows Live Mail 2011 –
https://archive.org/details/windowsliveessentials2011_201908

Windows Live Mail 2012 –
https://archive.org/details/wlsetup-all_201802

b. On the new computer, run the installation program “Windows Live Essentials”, choose the option ‘Windows Live Mail’, and install only the mail program. Do NOT start the new Windows Live Mail program!

2. Manually copy your old Windows Live Mail folder, with all its contents and subfolders, to the new computer.

a. It’s here:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For “%username%”, substitute the name of the current user.

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

b. Keeping the same folder name, copy that folder (with all contents and subfolders) to the following location on the new computer, substituting it for the folder of the same name that you’ll find there:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For “%username%”, substitute the name of the current user. Make sure this is the same as the user name on the old computer (i.e. use the same username on both computers).

3. If you now start Windows Live Mail, there is a fair chance that it will behave normally, i.e. just like on your old computer.

If you are using the same version of WLM on the new computer, it ought to recognise the WLM database you have copied from the old computer. With a bit of luck, your new computer can now run the old system successfully, because all the information will now be identical to how it was on the old computer.

If you are using an AF (Advanced Format) large hard disk on the new computer, you will likely get Error 0x8E5E0247 (“Your calendar contains corrupt data that is forcing WLM to close”), in which case there are additional steps for you to take, described in these links –

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c02219204

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/all/windows-live-mail-calendar-contains-corrupt-data/4e4eb047-c603-480c-aae4-67798cada343

Reinstall WLM : Move WLM to a new computer (#2) (Move from a non-working computer)

Open your e-mail account in your web browser, not in Windows Live Mail, to see if the e-mails are still there. If they are, you are best off doing the following on the replacement computer.

(Don’t ever do the following on the original computer, because it will wipe out – DESTROY – any locally saved e-mails that might exist in the local storage folder, inside your existing install of Windows Live Mail.)

On the new computer, install Windows Live Mail (WLM). Make sure you install THE SAME VERSION that you had on your original computer.

Then copy your entire WLM setup from your old computer, replacing completely the following folder on the new computer (and all its contents) with the same folder taken (copied) from the old computer:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For “%username%”, substitute the name of the current user.

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

If you use the same version of WLM on the new computer that was on the old computer, the new machine ought to recognise the WLM database you have copied from the old computer. With a bit of luck, your new computer can run the old system successfully, because all the information will now be identical to how it was on the old computer.

If the hard drive out of the old computer is put into an external drive enclosure (and is in good working order), when that external drive is attached to the new computer all the Windows Live Mail messages will be in the default folder at:

X:\Users\{olduser}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

where X:\ is the drive letter of the old hard disk (in practice, this may be drive F: or G:), and {olduser} is the name of the Windows user account on the old computer. Those messages can then be copied from that location to the C: drive on the new computer.

Reinstall WLM : Install WLM after upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10

If it’s less than 10 days since you upgraded, your old copies of Windows files should still be available in the folder “C:\Windows.old”

If the folder “C:\Windows.old” still exists, it may contain your old WLM folder with the missing messages and much else. Unless you moved it, the old folder would be this:

C:\Windows.old\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For “%username%”, substitute the name of the current user.

I suggest the following procedure:

1. Close Windows Live Mail.

2. Open Windows Explorer (called ‘File Explorer’ in Windows 10), and make sure on the View tab that both File name extensions and Hidden items are selected in the Show/hide section.

3. Copy or move the old folder from Windows.old to this new location:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

4. Close Windows Explorer (called ‘File Explorer’ in Windows 10).

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

The “C:\Windows.old” folder will be automatically deleted after ten days, so act quickly. You may want to check whether there’s anything else in there that didn’t migrate to Windows 10.

This procedure will ensure that your historic files (messages, calendars, and user wordlists) remain intact. To get full use of them, you would have to install Windows Live Mail.

Contacts is a different matter altogether:

• If you normally sign-in in Windows Live Mail, your contacts should still be available at contacts.live.com and so also in the “Windows 10 People” app used by the program “Mail” in Windows 10.

• If you normally used Windows Live Mail without being signed-in, it is more complicated –

(a) To get full use of the contacts, you would have to install Windows Live Mail.

(b) You would then have to rescue the folder called ‘Contacts’ from this location:

C:\Windows.old\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts

by moving it to this new location (replacing the folder named ‘Contacts’ already there):

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\Contacts

Reinstall WLM : Program cannot locate .msi file

If Windows reports an attempt to access an .msi file, when you try to start Windows Live Mail (WLM), this indicates Windows thinks Windows Live Mail is not installed.

An .msi file is a “MicroSoft Installer” file. This error means Windows is trying to install the program, but the installer file is not present, or at least is not where Windows can find it.

If you are certain Windows Live Mail is already installed, the link you are clicking on (hoping to start the program) no longer points to the program’s .exe file. That link might be all you need to fix; but, alternatively, open the program’s folder and click on the actual .exe file to launch the program.

On my computer, running Windows 7, that .exe file is here –

“C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Live\Mail\wlmail.exe”

Make a new shortcut to that file.

Windows Live Mail 2011 (WLM 2011) will run on any version of Windows from Windows 7 onward.

If you need an installation program, i.e. a setup file, download Windows Live Essentials from the Internet Archive (WLM 2011 is one of several programs included in the installer, and when you run the installer it gives you an option to choose which programs to install):

https://archive.org/details/windowsliveessentials2011_201908

If you need help to reinstall Windows Live Mail, ask here. Or search this forum for the term windowsliveessentials2011 (the name of the Windows Live Essentials installer program).

Windows Live Mail 2009:

This version was released on 8 January 2009. This is the last version that supports Windows XP.

Windows Live Mail 2011:

This version was released on 30 September 2010, along with the Windows Live Essentials 2011 suite. It requires Windows Vista or newer; Windows XP is not supported.

If you wish to use Windows Live Mail, you are strongly recommended to install Windows Live Mail 2011, and to use the IMAP protocol with it. This arrangement has the widest compatibility. The only situation in which it will not work is for those using Windows XP.

If the installation of Windows Live Mail fails, you might need to ask your question in a Windows 10 forum instead. You are currently in a forum which answers questions about how to use Windows Live Mail, an e-mail program. But an installation failure indicates a problem with Windows 10: that type of fault does not relate to how to send or receive e-mail.

Users in a general Windows 10 forum may be better able to help. I can’t assist, because I’m running Windows 7, so know nothing about the problems of using Windows 10.

You can find a more appropriate forum through the ‘Ask a Question’ link at the top of this page.

Reinstall WLM : WLM cannot display NEW e-mails (WLM can’t receive)

The computer has gone back several years: it displays only older e-mails and older files.

Open your e-mail account in your web browser, not in Windows Live Mail (WLM), to see whether the e-mails are still there. If they are, you are best off doing the following, BUT DO IT ON A DIFFERENT COMPUTER.

Don’t do the following on the original computer, because it will wipe out – DESTROY – any locally saved e-mails that might exist in the local storage folder in your existing install of Windows Live Mail.

If you do it on the original computer, you must make a backup copy of your old Windows Live Mail folder *before* taking any action. That folder is located at –

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For “%username%”, substitute the name of the current user.

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

On a different computer, install Windows Live Mail (WLM), using the instructions below. Make sure you install the SAME version that you had on your original computer.

I have a suggestion: this time use IMAP.

In my experience, POP3 is a basketful of headaches. IMAP by contrast is a convenient and well designed protocol. If your e-mail service has an IMAP server you may find life easier by using it. Your e-mail service can tell you what IMAP settings its server requires (or Google can).

Changing from POP3 to IMAP is not a trivial experience, it is procedurally straightforward, but can be long and tedious (exporting all your e-mails from the old WLM installation, creating a new account in Windows Live Mail, then importing all your e-mails into the new WLM account).

In your case, you are going to have all that hassle anyway, as you struggle to reconcile your old e-mails with the new install.

How to Install WLM –

Get the installation program “Windows Live Essentials”:

https://archive.org/details/windowsliveessentials2011_201908

Run the installation program, choose the option ‘Windows Live Mail’, and install only the mail program.

If you create a new account within Windows Live Mail using the IMAP or POP3 protocol, WLM will sync to your Hotmail account on the online server (will download all the ‘live’ folders present on the server, including all mail for the last few years):

1. Click on the “Accounts” tab on the ribbon, then click on the “E-mail” button.

3. On the next screen, select IMAP (or POP3) from the “Server type” drop-down list, and
enter required incoming and outgoing server addresses and port numbers for your e-mail
account (if you use something other than Hotmail, get the necessary settings from the
website of your e-mail service, or from your existing Windows Live Mail installation):

IMAP Settings (for Hotmail):

Incoming Mail –
Server type: IMAP
Server address: imap-mail.outlook.com (Port: 993)
SSL required: Yes
Authenticate using: Clear text
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp-mail.outlook.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

IMAP Settings (for Hotmail) – Alternative:

Incoming Mail –
Server type: IMAP
Server address: outlook.office365.com (Port: 993)
SSL required: Yes
Authenticate using: Clear text
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp.office365.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

POP3 Settings (for Hotmail):

Incoming Mail –
Server type: POP3
Server address: pop-mail.outlook.com (Port: 995)
SSL required: Yes
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp-mail.outlook.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

4. Fix the duplicate IMAP folders before going on-line: see below
(i.e. select WLM’s option to WORK OFFLINE while doing this step)

Advantages of IMAP over POP3 –

POP3 and IMAP still work for Hotmail and Live accounts, but you have to make a new
account (using the ‘Manually configure server settings’ option), and choose the type.

IMAP works well, although you have to re-configure the Junk mail folder, in the Live
Mail settings, to get it to the right place – see below.

In the case of POP3 (which has to be enabled in the Outlook.com options first),
you will only get your Inbox mail (if mail goes to the Junk folder, for instance,
you’ll never see it).

Fix Duplicate IMAP Folders –

If you add an e-mail account using IMAP, Windows Live Mail automatically creates
the following duplicate folders:

Deleted Items
Sent Items
Junk E-mail

The folders “Deleted”, “Junk” and “Sent” are original folders downloaded from the
e-mail server. But “Sent items”, “Deleted items” and “Junk E-mail” are useless
duplicates created by Windows Live Mail.

The built-in feature in Windows Live Mail which creates special folders (see Step 2,
below), to store e-mails on the mail server, causes the creation of these duplicates.

To remove the duplicate folders:

1. Open Windows Live Mail.
2. Select WLM’s option to WORK OFFLINE (it’s on the ribbon).
3. In the folders pane, right-click on the e-mail account’s name,
then click on “Properties”.
4. On the “IMAP” tab, under “Special Folders”, untick “Store special
folders on IMAP server”.
5. Click on “OK”.
6. When asked for confirmation to refresh the folders list, click “Yes”.
It’ll take a few moments to download and refresh the folders list.
7. Manually delete the duplicate folders: right-click on a duplicate folder,
then select “Delete”.

Reinstall WLM: NET Framework 3

You try to install Windows Live Essentials 2012, but run into an error message saying you need .NET Framework 3 in order to do so. However, you know that .NET version 4.5 is already installed.

Solution –

The .NET framework is weird. It is quite possible to have .NET 4.5 installed, but .NET 2.0 and 3.0 aren’t.

Press the Windows key + R to open a Run box, type optionalfeatures into the box then press Enter to open the “Windows Features” dialogue. Enable .NET Framework 3.5 then click on “OK”. Then try running the installer again.

Reinstall WLM : Synchronising Existing Messages

You can’t expect your old storage location to work after you have reinstalled the program.

You have to reinstall the program and then manually add any files in your old storage location to the new one — by dragging and dropping them from a Windows folder onto a folder in Windows Live Mail.

This will upload the .eml files to the server, if you add them to a live folder in Windows Live Mail. It will not, if you add them to a sub-folder of “Storage folders”.

Reinstall WLM : Password

If you’ve bought a new computer or tablet, etc, you will need your existing Windows Live Mail (WLM) password, to enable you to install WLM on the new device:

1. Open the WLM program on your old computer.

2. Go to the left-hand pane (showing the folder list).

3. Right-click on the account name (e.g. yourname @hotmail.com), then select “Properties”.

4. Write down the details displayed on the “General” tab, the “Servers” tab, the “Advanced” tab, and (if it’s present) the “IMAP” tab. You need these details to put into WLM on your new device.

You won’t be able to see or retrieve the password. It’s encrypted for security. If you can’t remember it, you’ll have to visit the website of the e-mail service concerned (usually apparent from the part of your e-mail address after the ‘@’ symbol), and look for instructions for resetting your password.

If you can state here which e-mail service you use, someone may be able to point you in the right direction.

Add a new Account : Switch from POP3 to IMAP (#1)

If your Windows Live Mail (WLM) account uses POP3, create a new account that uses IMAP.

Disadvantages of POP3 –

Many e-mail service providers no longer spend much effort on maintaining their POP3 servers, because few users connect by POP3. If you have no particular reason to use POP3 (there are some legitimate ones), you might get better service using IMAP.

One major disadvantage of POP3 is that it has to be enabled in webmail, on the server’s website, before it can be used by Windows Live Mail.

Another major disadvantage of POP3 is that you will only get your Inbox mail (if mail goes to the Junk folder, for instance, you’ll never see it: which can be harmful because not all mail in the junk mail folder is genuine junk).

To switch to using the IMAP protocol, *before* taking any action you must make a backup copy of your Windows Live Mail (WLM) messages folder, or export all your messages.

The messages folder is located at –

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For “%username%”, substitute the name of the current user.

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

Reinstall Windows Live Mail (WLM), using the instructions below. Make sure you install the SAME version that you had originally.

Your e-mail service can tell you what IMAP settings its server requires (or Google can).

1. Export all your e-mails from the old WLM installation –

Before you begin:

• Create a NEW folder in a location of your choice. Messages must be exported to an empty folder.

To export e-mail messages from Windows Live Mail:

1. Open Windows Live Mail.

2. In the upper-left corner, open the “File” menu (by clicking on the small down-arrow), then click “Export email”, then select “Email messages”.

3. Select an export format from the listed choices, then click “Next”.

Choose an export format which is compatible with whatever program you intend using to view the exported messages.

If you intend to use the exported messages in a new installation of Windows Live Mail, in step 3 you should select ‘Microsoft Windows Live Mail’ as the export format. Some current Microsoft e-mail programs will recognise, and import, messages in that format, so that is often a good choice even if you intend to use the messages with some program other than Windows Live Mail.

Windows 10 Mail, for instance, has no import feature. I have seen it suggested that there are workarounds to solve this, but in my opinion the suggested solutions risk corrupting your Windows Live Mail installation and losing all your existing e-mail messages.

4. Click “Browse”, then browse to the folder in which you want to store the messages. Verify that the chosen folder is empty.

5. Click “Next”.

6. Select the message folders you want to export, then click “Next”. You will get a confirmation that the messages were successfully exported (if they were). When you see that confirmation, click “Finish”.

2. Install WLM –

Get the installation program “Windows Live Essentials”:

https://archive.org/details/windowsliveessentials2011_201908

Run the installation program “Windows Live Essentials”, choose the option ‘Windows Live Mail’, and install only the mail program.

If you create a new account within Windows Live Mail using the IMAP protocol, WLM will sync to your Hotmail account on the online server (will download all the ‘live’ folders present on the server, including all mail for the last few years):

a) Click on the “Accounts” tab on the ribbon, then click on the “E-mail” button.

b) It’ll launch the “Add new email accounts” wizard. Now provide required information such as your e-mail account address, password, display name. Then select “Manually configure server settings”. Then click on “Next”.

c) On the next screen, select IMAP from the “Server type” drop-down list, and enter required incoming and outgoing server addresses and port numbers for your e-mail account (the server address and port number will be different from the following if your e-mail account is not a Hotmail account):

IMAP Settings (for Hotmail):

Incoming Mail –
Server type: IMAP
Server address: imap-mail.outlook.com (Port: 993)
SSL required: Yes
Authenticate using: Clear text
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp-mail.outlook.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

IMAP Settings (for Hotmail) – Alternative:

Incoming Mail –
Server type: IMAP
Server address: outlook.office365.com (Port: 993)
SSL required: Yes
Authenticate using: Clear text
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp.office365.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

d) Fix the duplicate IMAP folders before going on-line: see below
(i.e. select WLM’s option to WORK OFFLINE while doing this step)

Fix Duplicate Folders –

If you add an e-mail account that uses IMAP, Windows Live Mail automatically creates the following duplicate folders:

Deleted Items
Sent Items
Junk E-mail

The folders “Deleted”, “Junk” and “Sent” are original folders downloaded from the e-mail server. But “Sent items”, “Deleted items” and “Junk E-mail” are useless duplicates created by Windows Live Mail.

To remove the duplicate folders:

On the device which has the duplicate folders (but NOT on any other device), select WLM’s option to WORK OFFLINE (it’s on the ‘ribbon’) before doing the following. In Windows Live Mail:

a) Right-click on the e-mail account’s name, then click on “Properties”.

b) On the “IMAP” tab, under “Special Folders”, untick “Store special folders on IMAP server”.

c) Click on “OK”.

d) When asked for confirmation to refresh the folders list, click “Yes”. It’ll take a few moments to download and refresh the folders list.

e) Manually delete the duplicate folders: Right-click on a duplicate folder, then select “Delete”.

3. Import all of the saved e-mails into the new WLM installation –

To import e-mail messages into Windows Live Mail:

1. Open Windows Live Mail.

2. In the upper-left corner, open the “File” menu, click “Import messages”.

3. Select an import format (Outlook Express 6, Windows Live Mail, or Windows Mail), then click “Next”.

4. Click “Browse”, then browse to where the messages to be imported are stored.

5. Click “Next”.

6. When you get a confirmation that the messages were successfully imported, click “Finish”.

Create more than one copy of the WLM message store, so that if anything goes wrong you still have the uncorrupted message store. For instance, you can import the WLM message store into the free Thunderbird e-mail program:

Download Thunderbird:

https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/

Import WLM files into Thunderbird:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1046033

If you are using Outlook 365 e-mail (“Office Outlook”), instead of WLM –

Office Outlook is a different e-mail program to Windows Live Mail. Office Outlook
has its own forum:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_outlook

To change from POP3 to IMAP in Office Outlook, try here:

https://www.hostpapa.co.uk/knowledgebase/change-account-pop-imap-outlook-2016/

You can convert WLM .eml files to .PST or .OST format, then import them into Office Outlook:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/import-or-copy-windows-live-mail-2012-folders-and/814796a6-f896-4309-a726-1c5733c4a105

Add new Account : Switch from POP3 to IMAP (#2)

Noel Burgess’s alternative method –

You can’t amend a POP3 account to use IMAP. You must create a new account in Windows Live Mail (WLM). This includes downloading all the messages on the server.

A. Deactivate the old POP3 account

Right-click on the account name in the WLM folder pane, then select “Properties”. On the “General” tab, deselect “Include this account when receiving mail or synchronizing”, then click “Apply”, then click “OK”. This ensures the account folders remain intact, with all their contents, during the transition.

B. Create a new IMAP account

1. When viewing your message list, press Ctrl+Shift+T to start the “Add your email accounts” wizard.
2. Enter your e-mail address, password, and the display name for outgoing messages.
3. Select “Manually configure server settings”, then click “Next”.
4. For the incoming server, select “IMAP” from the dropdown list.
5. For the incoming server address, type in the address and port number
supplied by your Email Service Provider.
6. Select “Requires a secure connection (SSL)”.
7. For “Authenticate using”, select “Clear text” from the dropdown list.
8. For “Log-on username”, enter the full e-mail address.
9. For the outgoing mail server address, type in the address and port number
supplied by your Email Service Provider.
10. Select “Requires a secure connection (SSL)” and “Requires authentication”.
11. Click on “Next”, then on “Finish”.

WLM will then connect, and then download the account folders and their contents. This can take some time if there are a lot of messages, and may stall. Be patient.

C. Remove the old POP3 account

You’ll need to manually copy (to the new IMAP account) some messages that are in the old POP3 account, including those in the old folders “Sent items” and “Drafts”, as those messages won’t be present on the online server. In WLM, select the messages to keep, then drag them into the equivalent WLM folder under the new IMAP account.

Once you’re sure all your messages have been downloaded, and that there are none in the old account that aren’t in the new account, you can right-click on the old POP3 account and select “Remove account”. This will remove the account from WLM and permanently delete all its messages: it’s irreversible, so make certain you want to do this. There’s no hurry: live with both accounts for a few days, to make sure everything is as you expect it to be.

Note about POP3 –

POP3 is a “fail-safe” protocol: if WLM encounters a problem when using POP3 to download a message, it will usually start downloading again from scratch, to ensure that every message is downloaded. Because of this, you can encounter duplicate messages, as it might download some messages more than once.

Add new Account : Export and Import Email Accounts

This tutorial will show you how to export (i.e. backup) and import (i.e. restore) your e-mail accounts in Windows Live Mail:

https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/115976-windows-live-mail-export-import-email-accounts.html

Database Fault: Mail.MSMessageStore

Error messages:

“Cannot display message — an unknown error has occured”

“Cannot delete message — an unknown error has occured”

This type of error usually means the program can’t find the message body, to display its contents, because it hasn’t been properly indexed.

The entries in the messages list (i.e. the message headers) are taken from the database file (the file named Mail.MSMessageStore), which contains an index storing the header items ( Subject:, From:, To:, Date: ) for each message, together with a pointer giving the location of the file containing the message’s body (that file’s path address).

When a message is selected in the message list, the WLM (Windows Live Mail) program consults the index in the database file for the location of the message body file.

If that index is incomplete, the WLM program can’t find the message file (an .eml file), in which case the message body displayed will be from a different message or from no message at all. But, in that event, the correct .eml message body file is usually not harmed.

Fix for faulty messages –

Fix a faulty e-mail message by using the mouse to drag it from Windows Live Mail (WLM) to the desktop, i.e. copy it to the desktop (or a temporary sub-folder created by you on the desktop).

Then drag it from the desktop back into the Storage folder in Windows Live Mail (or any sub-folder of the Storage folder, named whatever you choose), forcing WLM to re-read the message’s metadata.

This is a great fix, if you’ve only got a dozen faulty messages.

It’s less fun if you have thousands to fix. In that event, try selecting all the missing messages in a directory on your hard disk at once, by selecting the directory, then pressing CTRL and A simultaneously, then drag them all at once into the Storage folder (or a sub-folder of it) in Windows Live Mail.

Fix for missing messages –

To add a missing e-mail message to Windows Live Mail, drag it from any directory (on your hard disk) into the Storage folder in Windows Live Mail (or any sub-folder of it, named whatever you choose), thereby forcing WLM to index the metadata in the message.

This is a great fix, if you’ve only got a dozen missing messages.

It’s less fun if you have thousands to fix. In that event, try selecting all the missing messages in a directory on your hard disk at once, by selecting the directory then pressing CTRL and A simultaneously, then drag them all at once into the Storage folder (or a sub-folder of it) in Windows Live Mail.

Alternatives –

The most usual alternative is a full database recovery, which is not complicated but can take a tediously long time. So try the above quicker options first.

Database Fault: Force a full recovery

Error message:

“A problem has occurred while trying to open this message”

The error message you are seeing suggests corruption of the WLM database. Below are the suggestions I usually make to fix this. A message not opening, or not deleting, usually means the database is pointing at the wrong location, so fixing the database is necessary, using the procedure below.

The messages themselves are usually not corrupt, but the metadata for them in the index file (the database) has been lost. Therefore the affected messages can usually be opened, and, with some extra effort, fixed.

If something causes corruption of the Windows Live Mail (WLM) database, the backup database is substituted for the corrupted database next time you open WLM: it can’t open the corrupt database, so dumps it, and opens the backup copy instead.

The backup copy is inevitably somewhat out of date, so recent messages might be impossible to open. You may now be seeing the outcome of that situation.

Force a full recovery of database and messages (using the 5 steps below).

This will re-associate the message bodies with the correct headers (actually, step 3 deletes the old, erroneous, message headers; then step 5 creates new ones from the message bodies).

During a full recovery, the database (i.e. the file “Mail.MSMessageStore”) will be re-created, and all the folders/messages will be moved into subfolders of a folder in Windows Live Mail called “Recovered items”, which is found in “Storage folders” (this is a folder on your computer).

This is the 5 step procedure –

1. Close Windows Live Mail (WLM).

2. Navigate to the Message Store file –

C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\Mail.MSMessageStore

For %username% substitute the name of the current user.

The Message Store file (Mail.MSMessageStore), in its default location, is in a hidden folder. So to see it, “Show hidden files and folders” must be ticked under “Folder Options” in Windows Explorer.

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

3. Within the folder, you will find the database file: a file named “Mail.MSMessageStore”. Delete that file.

4. Also delete the backup of that file, in the sub-folder “Backup\new” (if it exists). The backup copy has the same filename. Sometimes that backup won’t exist: that’s normal in some situations.

After deleting the main file (in step 3), if there is a backup copy of that file in the “Backup\new” folder, the database will simply be restored from that backup, on the next restart of Windows Live Mail (and so the fault will not be fixed).

Accordingly, make sure that the backup file is not present, so that a full recovery of the database and messages will occur on the next restart of Windows Live Mail.

5. Re-start Windows Live Mail. When it is re-started, it will automatically re-create the database file (bear in mind, if there are a lot of .eml files this could take several hours), and all e-mail messages in the Message Store will be “recovered”, by moving them to appropriately named subfolders within a folder called “Recovered items” under “Storage folders” on your local disk.

(Any e-mail messages present on the online server may be re-downloaded during this step.)

You must wait for the new database to index all of your relocated messages (this may take hours of high processor usage). Do not close Windows Live Mail, nor move any messages out of the “Recovered items” folder, until the new index has been created (i.e. until processor usage has returned to normal).

Do not move any *folders* out of the “Recovered” items folder. Only move *files*. In Windows Live Mail, you can (optionally) create a new folder in the folders list, in the desired (local) location (i.e. only as a sub-folder of “Storage folders”), then move the recovered messages (.eml files) into it.

You can delete the “Recovered items” folder AFTER you have moved all of the messages out of it, but be aware that doing so will break the Quick views.

To repair the Quick views, see:

http://liveunplugged.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!F92775FC46A390CA!205.entry

The above will normally repair problems associated with the WLM database.

WLM cannot open ANY e-mails: Database Fault (Message could not be displayed #1)

Also known as: No content in the E-mails

Also known as: Cannot sync IMAP folders

If e-mail messages won’t open, the first fix to try is compacting the database in which the message data is stored.

Typical errors in this situation may include: the Windows Live Mail (WLM) program cannot synch the IMAP folders, and the program hangs when that’s attempted.

Try compacting the database file, using the following procedure –

1. Go to: Down Arrow > Options > Mail > Advanced > Maintenance
2. Select: Compact the database on shutdown every xxx runs
3. Set it to compact on every run, i.e. set it to 1
4. Save your changes. Then close Windows Live Mail.

The compacting will begin, and might take a long time, up to several hours if you have a lot of messages.

When it has completed, come back to this screen and reverse step 2: set a reasonable value instead, such as 15 (i.e. your best option is to choose a value which will cause the automatic compacting to happen at least once a fortnight).

Then re-start Windows Live Mail.

Alternatively, defragment the database.

Open a command window as administrator (type CMD in the Start menu search box, then, to open the highlighted Command Prompt shortcut in the search results, press Ctrl+Shift+Enter). Then type in it the following (including the quotes), and then press the ENTER key:

esentutl.exe -d “%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\Mail.MSMessageStore”

Alternatively, repair the database.

esentutl.exe -p “%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\Mail.MSMessageStore”

How to gain access to the file, if you get error 0x800C0155,n –

1. Find the name of the current user.

a. Open a command window as administrator: type CMD in the Start menu
search box; then to open the highlighted Command Prompt shortcut
in the search results press Ctrl+Shift+Enter.

b. In the command window, type: WhoAmI

2. Take ownership of the file. In the command window, type:

takeown /f “%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\Mail.MSMessageStore”

3. Give yourself full control of the file (using the current user
details from step 1). In the command window, type the following
(this is only an example), as one command on a single line:

icacls “%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\Mail.MSMessageStore” /grant “laptop-pc\Fred”:f

This example assumes the current user details returned at step 1
are “laptop-pc\Fred”, but you must use the actual details you found.

WLM cannot open ANY e-mails: Database Fault (Message could not be displayed #2)

Also known as: No content in the E-mails

Windows Live Mail (WLM) starts but cannot display *any* e-mails –

“Message could not be displayed. Windows Live Mail
encountered an unexpected problem…”

Repairing the Windows Live Mail installation won’t hurt anything, but might help if there’s a problem with one or more of the Windows Live Mail program files. A repair will check that all the program files are present and correct, and (where necessary) are properly registered.

Accordingly, this type of repair will put right any error in the file associations, by re-associating the .eml file type with the Windows Live Mail program in the Windows registry.

When it finishes, restart the computer. Then launch Windows Live Mail, and test it to find out whether the fault is fixed.

Alternatively, this error message can mean the program can’t find the message body, to display its contents, because it hasn’t yet been properly indexed.

When a message is selected in the message list, the WLM program consults the index in the database file for the location of the message body file. If that index is incomplete, the WLM program can’t find the message file (an .eml file), in which case the message body displayed will be from a different message or from no message at all. But, in that event, the correct .eml message body file is not harmed.

The usual reason for this fault is that Windows Live Mail (WLM) has not had enough time to index all the messages.

After performing any operation involving large numbers of messages (e.g. downloading, importing, moving, copying, or deleting them) it is vital to do all of the following, in this order:

1. Disconnect from the Internet, to avoid interference from scheduled sync operations.

2. Set the WLM program to “Work offline”, by clicking once on the “Working online” status message (do NOT use the button on the ribbon because it may not work as intended!).

The ribbon is the top menu bar in the WLM program’s window (the menu which includes the tabs labelled ‘Home’, ‘Folders’, ‘View’ and ‘Accounts’).

3. Allow the WLM program lots of time to record all the transactions that have taken place (watch your disk-activity status light, or use the Task Manager program in Windows, to monitor this).

4. Do not use the WLM program whilst the foregoing is happening.

5. When the indexing seems to have finished, close the WLM program. The program’s window will disappear, but the program will continue to run while it completes its close-down housekeeping process, which will take longer than usual, possibly several minutes. It’s important NOT to exit Windows nor re-start the WLM program while this is happening.

6. Restart Windows, then restart WLM. Additional housekeeping, perhaps unusually lengthy, will take place on this first re-start of WLM (watch your disk-activity status light, or use the Task Manager program in Windows, to monitor this): wait until it has completed before attempting to use WLM.

If the wrong message body is still being displayed, begin again at step 1, and go through the entire six step sequence for a second time.

WLM cannot open ANY e-mails: Database Fault (Message could not be displayed #3)

You open a folder in Windows Live Mail (WLM), and all the expected e-mails appear to be there: the subject lines, etc, show as expected.

But if you click on an e-mail to open it, it opens to the content of a different e-mail than the subject line indicates. You do the same with other e-mails, and each one opens the SAME incorrect e-mail.

Here’s a simple fix that works:

1. Use the WLM export e-mail function to export the e-mails from the misbehaving folder to a folder outside WLM: name it RESCUE.

2. In WLM create a new e-mail folder, with a different name, as a sub-folder in “Storage folders”.

3. In WLM open that new (empty) folder.

4. Reduce the size of the WLM window, so that it only occupies half the screen.

5. Open the folder named RESCUE (containing the exported e-mails), such that it occupies only the other half of the screen.

6. Use Drag-and-Drop to drag the exported e-mails (they’ll have names such as 0D944B10-0000002C.eml) from the RESCUE folder onto the new folder in WML (if drag-and-drop doesn’t work, use copy and paste).

7. In the new folder in WML, open some of the newly copied e-mails at random to check that the new copies are behaving properly (i.e. to be sure that the correct message is being displayed for each chosen header).

8. Close WLM, then wait ten minutes whilst the program indexes all the new e-mails. Then re-open WLM and repeat step 7, to make sure the new folder in WLM is behaving properly (i.e. to be sure that the WLM index file has been properly rebuilt).

9. Finally, in WLM, delete the corrupt storage folder from which you exported the damaged e-mails in step 1. Also delete the RESCUE folder created outside WLM.

Alternatively, install the Thunderbird e-mail program, then import the folders into WLM from there:

https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/

WLM cannot open ANY e-mails: Database Fault (Message could not be displayed #4)

Also known as: No content in the E-mails (Blank e-mails)

E-mails in the Inbox show their subject in the list of messages, but do not open when clicked.

There is probably nothing wrong with the saved messages. The message list is taken from a database index file, which tries to keep track of which messages are where. The index includes some header lines (Subject:, From:, To:, Date:) for each message, along with flags and pointers giving the message’s status and the location of a file (an .eml file) containing the message body.

When a message is selected in the message list, the program consults the index file to locate the message file, in order to retrieve the message body.

If the index is incomplete or corrupt, the program may not be able to find the correct message file, in which case the message body displayed may be that of a different message or of no message at all. However, the message file is unaffected.

To correct this problem, it is sometimes possible to persuade the program to re-index the stored messages (i.e. rebuild the index file):

1. Close Windows Live Mail. Then wait 5 minutes, for it to finish any housekeeping that may be going on.

2. Copy the following text to the clipboard:

@echo off

reg add “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /v RecreateFolderIndex /t reg_dword /d 1

reg add “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /v RecreateStreamIndex /t reg_dword /d 1

reg add “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /v RecreateUIDLIndex /t reg_dword /d 1

3. Open Notepad and paste the copied text into it, then save the file
to your desktop as reindex.bat (use the All files option to ensure
that Notepad doesn’t add the .txt extension to the file name).

4. Close Notepad, then double-click on the file on your desktop to run
it. You should see a command window flash open, then close again.

5. Start Windows Live Mail. The program may require an hour or more
(possibly several hours) to re-index all the message files, depending
on the speed of your computer and the number of messages involved.

Database Fault: Corrupted Messages

A fault in Windows 10 causes repeated corruption of the Windows Live Mail (WLM) database. Every time this happens, the backup database is substituted for the corrupted database next time you open WLM: it can’t open the corrupt database, so dumps it, and opens the backup copy instead.

The backup copy is inevitably a little out of date, so all e-mail messages that are on your hard disk but are not in the index in the old backup database (i.e. all the most recent messages) will be displayed in an unusual, “corrupt”, format.

The messages themselves are usually not corrupt, but the metadata for them in the index file has been lost. Therefore the odd-looking messages can usually be opened, and, with some extra effort, fixed.

WLM database file –

All of the vital settings are stored in the file “Mail.MSMessageStore”, a database file. The database file is located at:

C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\Mail.MSMessageStore

For %username% substitute the name of the current user.

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

A backup copy of the file is kept by the WLM program at:

C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\Backup\new\Mail.MSMessageStore

The program will automatically switch to using the backup file if the main database file becomes corrupted.

Fix for faulty messages –

Fix a faulty e-mail message by using the mouse to drag it from a folder in WLM onto the desktop (or a sub-folder of it), i.e. copying it. Then drag it from the desktop back into the Storage folder (or a sub-folder of it) in Windows Live Mail, thereby forcing WLM to re-read the message’s metadata.

This is a great fix, if you’ve only got a dozen faulty messages.

It’s less fun if you have thousands to fix. In that event, try selecting all the missing messages in a directory (on your hard disk), by selecting the directory, then pressing CTRL and A simultaneously, then drag them all at once into the Storage folder (or a sub-folder of it) in Windows Live Mail.

Fix for missing messages –

To find missing e-mail messages, search your hard disk for .eml files (e-mail message bodies).

Add a missing e-mail message to Windows Live Mail, by dragging it from a directory (on your hard disk) into the Storage folder (or a sub-folder of it) in Windows Live Mail, thereby forcing WLM to index the metadata in the message.

This is a great fix, if you’ve only got a dozen missing messages.

Fix for corrupt backup file –

If the backup database also is corrupt, the Windows Live Mail (WLM) program will fail to start.

In that event, the primary database file must be rebuilt. This is not difficult technically, but may be a very lengthy process.

Here is an alternative: an easier fix is for you to maintain a recent backup copy of the primary database file yourself, one which the WLM program has no access to, so cannot corrupt. You do it by manually copying the primary database file (to any folder outside WLM) once a day, in case of faults.

Database Fault: Recovering Files from “Recovered Items” folder

The database file (named “Mail.MSMessageStore”) is located at:

C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\Mail.MSMessageStore

All of the vital settings are stored in that file, a database file. But NO messages are stored in it.

A backup database file is kept by the Windows Live Mail (WLM) program at:

C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\Backup\new\Mail.MSMessageStore

The WLM program will automatically switch to using the backup file if the main database file becomes corrupted. If the backup file is also corrupt, the program will fail to start (in which event the database file must be rebuilt). Rebuilding the database file is not difficult technically, but may be a lengthy process.

The WLM program stores messages (i.e. individual .eml files) in two places.

There is a directory within WLM named “Storage folders”, which also contains sub-folders. In general, only those messages which you put there are stored in that directory. The messages stored there are saved permanently on your computer (termed “off-line” storage).

All other folders in WLM are “live”, i.e. are maintained as synchronous copies of directories on the online server. But depending on the settings you create in WLM, those folders may contain only the so-called “headers”, not the actual messages (which typically only exist on the on-line server).

The most important step is to open Windows Live Mail, then right-click on your e-mail account’s name (in the list of folders in the left-hand pane), then click on ‘Properties’, then look through all the tabs you’ll see there. Find and deactivate (untick/uncheck) the option, if present, that says “delete messages from the server when read” (or words to that effect).

If you fail to do that, the WLM program will delete all messages from the online server that are marked as read, i.e. it will delete ALL your existing messages from the server, including any that you try to put back there.

Next, where all your folders/messages are found to have been moved into the folder called “Recovered items” under “Storage folders” :

a. Close Windows Live Mail.

b. Navigate to the Message Store folder.

NB: The Message Store, in its default location, is a hidden folder, so “Show hidden
files and folders” must be ticked under “Folder Options” in Windows Explorer.

c. Within the Message Store folder, you will find the database file “Mail.MSMessageStore”.

Delete the backup of the database within the folder “Backup\new” (if a recent compaction of
the database has occurred, this backup may not exist).

d. Delete the database file “Mail.MSMessageStore”.

That’s the last time you access any files or folders using Windows Explorer (called File Manager in Windows 10). The rest of these instructions are only about doing things inside Windows Live Mail.

On the next restart of Windows Live Mail, a full recovery of the database and messages/folders will occur. You must wait for the new database to index all your moved message files (this may take several hours of high processor usage) before moving them out of the “Recovered items” folder.

Do not move any *folders* out of the “Recovered” items folder, only move FILES. Create a new folder, under Storage folders, and move the recovered messages (.eml files) to it. Only the folders under the folder named “Storage folders” are actually present on your computer.

You can delete the “Recovered items” folder when you have moved all of the messages out of it, if you prefer, but be aware that doing so will break the Quick views. To repair the Quick views, see:

http://liveunplugged.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!F92775FC46A390CA!205.entry

To restore a message to the server is a 2 step process –

1. Drag the message out of WLM onto the Desktop (or into an empty folder), using the mouse. This will copy it into a real Windows folder, but will leave the original file inside WLM also.

2. Drag the message file from that new folder, with the mouse, and drop it on any folder in WLM that syncs to the on-line server. The destination folder must be:

a. A folder inside Windows Live Mail.
b. A folder that is a sub-folder under your e-mail account.

This will fail if you have not changed WLM as specified above. At this stage WLM must be set so that it does NOT delete messages from the server once read.

Renaming Folders : Danger of renaming Live Folders

If you have Windows Live Mail installed on multiple devices, you will likely suffer data loss if you change a Live folder’s name.

The other devices will no longer match the changed folder settings on the online server, and the result will be that the folders in question get deleted on the other devices.

Sometimes it feeds back both ways, so that folders on the server get deleted too. You lose the renamed folders on each of the devices and on the server. That, in turn, causes the folder you renamed on the first device to be deleted too. At least, that’s what happened to me.

Then you have a genuine disaster which can’t be fixed, unless you have an offline backup to recover the lost messages from.

Inbox Headers incorrect

Windows Live Mail (WLM) displays MAIL HEADERS in the message list in the Inbox, instead of the normal list of e-mails.

This can happen if the Inbox page filter is set to “SORT by FROM”. That setting causes the WLM program to sort the e-mails using the sender’s details, instead of by the date of receipt. The sender’s details are stored in the e-mail message’s mail header.

The solution is to set the filter to use the option “SORT by DATE”, instead of “SORT by FROM”.

You may have to do this on the website of the e-mail service provider, by opening your e-mail account in webmail, i.e. using your web browser. Then go to the page that stores the account’s settings, and look for the option “Inbox page filter”.

Exporting Messages : All Messages

I have no idea whether it’s possible to import messages into your new e-mail service. The following explains only how to export them from Windows Live Mail (WLM).

Before you begin:

Create a new folder in a location of your choice. Messages must be exported to an empty folder.

To export e-mail messages from Windows Live Mail:

1. Open Windows Live Mail.

2. In the upper-left corner, open the “File” menu, click “Export email”, then select “Email messages”.

3. Select an export format (Outlook Express 6, Windows Live Mail, or Windows Mail), then click “Next”. Be sure to select a format recognised by your new e-mail service.

4. Click “Browse” and browse to where you want to store the messages. Make certain that the folder is empty!

5. Click “Next”.

6. Select the message folders you want to export, then click “Next”. You will get a confirmation that the messages were successfully exported. Click “Finish”.

7. Check that the messages were successfully exported, i.e. that they have retained the same folder structure as they had in Windows Live Mail. If they have not, it may be preferable to create a mirror backup manually, as described below.

Creating a Mirror Backup manually:

If you want to be sure of exporting your messages from WLM such that they retain the same folder structure they currently have, so you can recreate that structure if you later import them into WLM –

1. Use Windows Explorer (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10) to create a set of folders on your hard disk’s desktop (a folder ‘tree’) that has the same names and folder/sub-folder structure as the folders in your account in Windows Live Mail.

2. Use the mouse to manually drag all the messages in a particular folder in WLM into the equivalent folder on your desktop, in the folder ‘tree’ you created in step 1. This copies the messages to the desktop folder. Do this for each folder in WLM.

Click on the first/top message in a folder, then hold down the ‘Shift’ key and click on the last/bottom message in that folder, to select all the messages in the folder. Then, using the mouse, drag-and-drop all of the selected messages onto the destination folder on your desktop.

If you are backing up (exporting messages from) a “live” folder in WLM – one which automatically syncs with the online server – it will be necessary to first download the message bodies for all the messages in that folder. You can’t create a backup of a message in a “live” folder if only the message’s header is stored in WLM: the message’s body must also be downloaded, else it can’t be copied.

To import e-mail messages into the Microsoft Outlook application:

I don’t use Microsoft Outlook, but I’m told the export function in WLM can export to an Outlook profile if you use the “Exchange” option. A selected WLM folder (with its original structure) can be moved to the Outlook application, but I’m told there are two limitations:

(a) It can only move the Storage folder of a WLM e-mail account; and

(b) If there are more than about 550 message files in a single folder, the export stops and WLM closes (crashes). I can’t test any solutions for this problem, but it might be solved by redistributing your message files into a set of sub-folders under the Storage folder, each containing not more than 550 files.

To import e-mail messages into Windows 10 Mail:

I don’t use Windows 10, but I’m told the Mail program for Windows 10 has no import feature.

I have seen it suggested that there are workarounds to solve this, but in my opinion the suggested solutions risk corrupting your Windows Live Mail installation and losing all your existing e-mail messages.

However, Windows Live Mail can be installed on Windows 10. Ask here for advice if you need help doing that.

Alternatively, there is an online tutorial available, explaining how to export e-mail messages from Windows Live Mail:

https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/116162-windows-live-mail-export-import-email-messages.html

To import e-mail messages into Outlook 2021:

To export all your e-mail messages from Windows Live Mail to Outlook 2021, you MUST install the 32-bit version of Outlook 2021:

https://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/migratefromoewlm.htm

If you want to use the 64-bit version, remove the 32-bit version AFTER moving the messages and install the 64-bit version. No settings or data will be lost by doing this.

IMAP:
If you are using an IMAP account in Windows Live Mail, there is no need to move your e-mail messages. They are synchronised with the online mail server, so they already exist in both WLM and on the server. Just set up your IMAP account in Outlook, and Outlook will then download the e-mails from the server.

POP3:
If you are using a POP3 account in Windows Live Mail, your e-mails are stored on your computer only, not on the online server. So they need to be moved to Outlook (“migrated”). If you’ve configured the POP3 account to leave a copy of received messages on the server, that would not include sent messages, nor would the server have your folder structure.

Local Folders:
If you’ve created an additional folder structure in Windows Live Mail, separate from your IMAP or POP3 account, these must be moved to Outlook (“migrated”) as well.

Calendar and Contacts:
Neither IMAP nor POP3 support synching the Calendar and Contacts folders, so these are not present on the online server, hence they need to be moved to Outlook (“migrated”) too.

Move Windows Live Mail –

If Windows Live Mail is not on the same computer as Outlook, the simplest solution is to first (before doing anything else) install Windows Live Mail on the computer that has Outlook on it.

Then copy the entire Windows Live Mail message store folder to that computer, and substitute that copy for the (empty) WLM message store folder you’ve just created there.

To download Windows Live Mail:-

It’s one of several programs included in “Windows Live Essentials”. When run, the installer gives you an option to choose which program to install. Get it here:

https://archive.org/details/windowsliveessentials2011_201908

To find the location of the Message Store Folder:-

1. On your original computer, open Windows Live Mail and go to:
File menu > Options > Mail… > Advanced > Maintenance… > Store Folder…
2. Copy the path in the dialog you see (select the text with your mouse
then press CTRL+C on the keyboard).
3. Close WLM.
4. Open Windows Explorer on that computer, then paste the location path
into the Windows Explorer address bar (press CTRL+V on the keyboard).
Press the ‘Enter’ key on the keyboard to open the folder.
5. Copy all the files and folders in that location to a backup disk,
e.g. a CD/DVD, an external hard disk, or a USB Flash Drive.
6. Attach that disk to the computer containing Outlook; use steps 1 to 4
to find the WLM store folder on that computer; then copy the backed-up
files and folders, so that they replace the contents of the (empty)
store folder on the destination computer.

There are many ways to move the messages from one computer to another, but the above may be the easiest. If you need to use a different solution, read up on this topic at:

https://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/migratefromoewlm.htm

Move the Mail Messages –

Don’t use the Import function in Outlook. In most cases this will reset the “Received” time and date on each e-mail message. Instead, use the export function in Windows Live Mail (WLM).

1. Open Outlook.
2. Open WLM and use File > Export > Messages… to export the messages to Outlook.
a. In older versions of WLM, you’ll have to press the ALT button
on your keyboard to see the File menu, or click on the down-arrow.
b. In newer versions of Windows Live Mail, choose:
File > Export email > Email messages
3. When prompted to select the format you want to export email to, choose:
Microsoft Exchange
4. When prompted, confirm the information dialog that pops up
about exporting to Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Exchange.
5. Select which folder(s) you want to export to Outlook.
6. Now all you have to do is wait. The exporting could take a long time,
if you have a lot of messages stored in WLM.

Move the Contacts –

To move your contacts, you’ll first have to export them from WLM to a csv-file, which you then import into Outlook.

A. Export Contacts from Windows Live Mail

1. Click on the ‘Contacts’ button in the left bottom of the WLM window,
press CTRL+3 on your keyboard, to show the Windows Live Contacts window.
2. On the ‘Home’ tab, click on ‘Export’ then select: Comma separated values (.CSV)
3. Select a folder to store the export in, and name your export file.
Put it in your Desktop folder for easy access. You can delete the
file once everything has been imported into Outlook.
4. Click on ‘Next’.
5. Select all the fields (make sure you scroll down to see all fields).
6. Click on ‘Finish’.
7. Import the Contacts into Outlook – see below.

B. Import Contacts into Outlook

1. Start the ‘Import and Export’ Wizard in Outlook:-
a. Outlook 2007 and previous:
File > Import and Export…
b. Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013
File > Open > Import
c. Outlook 2016, Outlook 2019, and Office 365
File > Open & Export > Import/Export
2. Select: Import from another program or file.
3. Click on ‘Next’.
4. Select: Comma separated values (Windows)
5. Click on ‘Next’.
6. Browse to the location of the previously exported csv-file.
7. Click on ‘Next’.
8. Select your Contacts folder as the destination folder.
9. Click on ‘Next’.
10. Click on ‘Finish’.

Move the Calendar –

Windows Live Mail can’t any longer sync its Calendar with the Outlook.com/Hotmail.com online server (since 2016), and doesn’t have a Calendar export option.

The only way to keep the data is to forward the Calendar items one-by-one as e-mails. You will not be able to import the data into your Calendar folder in Outlook.

Exporting Messages : Selected Messages

The folders in Windows Live Mail (in the left-hand folder pane) do NOT exactly correspond to folders on your hard disk. I suppose it’s possible they might do so, on a new install of the program on a new computer, but I’ve never come across a case where this was actually so in practice.

Also, in the list view in Windows Live Mail (WLM), each message has a name based on the subject line in the e-mail; but on the hard disk, Windows Explorer (called File Explorer in Windows 10) only sees the real name of the corresponding .eml file, which is an alphanumeric string of random characters.

There is accordingly no easy way of telling which .eml file in a folder on the hard disk corresponds to which message in the list view in Windows Live Mail, nor of telling whether a particular hard disk folder contains all the messages in a particular WLM folder.

So it is not usually practicable to identify the messages present in a folder on the hard disk, using Windows Explorer (called File Explorer in Windows 10). Accordingly, copying a folder on the hard disk using Windows Explorer (called File Explorer in Windows 10) will typically not achieve the intended result.

Installing WLM on a new computer is not called for in the circumstances described by you. But it is a simple means of creating a copy of all your messages on another hard disk, and it would allow you to continue to use WLM to manage those files, thus it would involve a minimum of effort on your part.

The easiest type of backup is to simply copy the appdata folder to another hard disk (without copying or installing the WLM program). Just make a copy of the following data folder, with all its contents and subfolders, on any other disk –

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

You are guaranteed that all your locally stored files will thereby be backed-up. You might want to download all the messages stored on the online server into WLM, before you copy the appdata folder.

Exporting messages from WLM is probably your best option.

Before you begin, create a new folder on the hard disk, in a location of your choice. Messages must be exported to an empty folder.

To export e-mail messages from Windows Live Mail:

1. Open Windows Live Mail (WLM).

2. In the upper-left corner, open the “File” menu,
click “Export email”, then select “Email messages”.

3. Select an export format, then click “Next”.

4. Click “Browse”, then browse to the folder in which you
want to store the messages. Check that this folder is empty.

5. Click “Next”.

6. Select the message folder(s) you want to export, then click
“Next”. You will get a confirmation that the messages were
successfully exported. Then click “Finish”.

Alternatively, open any folder in WLM, then use your mouse to drag messages (individually or in groups) from that folder to any folder on the hard disk, i.e. any folder visible in Windows Explorer (called File Explorer in Windows 10).

Alternatively, there is an online tutorial available, explaining how to export e-mail messages in Windows Live Mail:

https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/116162-windows-live-mail-export-import-email-messages.html

Exporting Messages : Exporting to Mail for Windows 10

I don’t use Windows 10, but I’m told the Mail program for Windows 10 has no import feature.

I have seen it suggested that there are workarounds to solve this, but in my opinion all the suggested solutions risk corrupting your Windows Live Mail installation and losing all your existing e-mail messages.

It would only be safe to try doing so if you have a complete backup of Windows Live Mail, including a complete backup of all the .eml message files.

Alternatively, Windows Live Mail can be installed on Windows 10. Ask here for advice if you need help doing that.

Alternatively, you might try converting Windows Live Mail (WLM) .eml files to .PST or .OST format (two formats which are associated with Office Outlook):

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/import-or-copy-windows-live-mail-2012-folders-and/814796a6-f896-4309-a726-1c5733c4a105

If you convert your .eml files into .pst or .ost files, Mail for Windows 10 might recognise them.

Try converting a small number of files in the way suggested, and then test if Mail for Windows 10 can recognise them, to test this idea.

I’m running Windows 7, so I can’t try this out for you.

Exporting Messages : Before Reinstalling WLM

Before re-installing Windows Live Mail (WLM), export all the e-mail messages. For example, when switching from using the POP3 protocol to using IMAP:

1. Open Windows Live Mail.

2. In the upper-left corner, open the “File” menu, then click on “Export email”.

3. Select an export format (Microsoft Exchange, or Microsoft Windows Live Mail),
then click “Next”.

4. Save the messages.

After reinstalling Windows Live Mail (WLM), *import* all the saved messages into the new WLM:

1. Open Windows Live Mail.

2. In the upper-left corner, open the “File” menu, then click on “Import messages”,
then click on “Email messages”.

3. Select an import format (Outlook Express 6, Windows Live Mail, or Windows Mail), then click “Next”.

4. Click “Browse”, then browse to where the messages to be imported are stored.

5. Click “Next”.

6. You will get a confirmation that the messages were successfully imported. Then click “Finish”.

Importing Messages

Import messages into Windows Live Mail:

1. Open Windows Live Mail.

2. In the upper-left corner, open the “File” menu, then click on “Import messages”,
then click on “Email messages”.

3. Select an import format (Outlook Express 6, Windows Live Mail, or Windows Mail), then click “Next”.

4. Click “Browse”, then browse to where the messages to be imported are stored.

5. Click “Next”.

6. You will get a confirmation that the messages were successfully imported. Then click “Finish”.

Alternatively, there is an online tutorial available, explaining how to import e-mail messages in Windows Live Mail:

https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/116162-windows-live-mail-export-import-email-messages.html

Importing Messages : Import messages in “Windows Mail” format

There is an online tutorial available, explaining how to import e-mail messages saved in the “Windows Mail” format into Windows Live Mail:

https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3798-windows-live-mail-import-windows-mail-messages.html

Importing Messages : Location of Imported E-mails

Save your e-mails and folders by Exporting them from the Windows Live Mail (WLM) program on your Windows 7 computer to (say) a USB device. Then copy them from that USB device onto the Windows 10 machine. Then import them into the new installation of the WLM program.

The WLM program automatically puts imported e-mails in the WLM folder named “Storage Folders” (a local folder on your computer), as one or more new sub-folders.

The new installation of WLM will also download thousands of e-mails from the server. You already will have all of these, saved in “Storage Folders”, if you carried out the export and import I described.

When the downloading has completed, all the downloaded e-mail messages will be in the correct folders, an exact mirror of the folders in your account on the online server. Your new installation of Windows Live Mail will thus be ready for immediate use.

You have duplicated, in “Storage Folders”, all the folders and messages which you have also downloaded successfully from the online server.

Provided you had no messages stored off-line in “Storage Folders” (on your old computer) before you began, that folder (on your new computer) now contains only the same messages that are on the server. If that is so, you have a choice: you can delete everything in “Storage Folders”, or you can keep “Storage Folders” as a full backup of all your old e-mails in case anything goes wrong in future.

The Storage Folders are the ONLY folders which do not change to mirror changes in your online account on the server. All of the contents are held on your computer in permanent storage, unless you manually delete any messages yourself. Nothing else gets deleted from there.

Duplicate Mail : POP3 messages are re-downloaded

POP3 is a “fail-safe” protocol: if an e-mail program encounters a problem when using POP3 to download a message, it will usually start downloading again from scratch, to ensure that every message is downloaded.

Because of this, you can encounter duplicate messages, as it might download some messages more than once.

The alternative to using POP3 is to use the IMAP protocol, which doesn’t have this effect.

Duplicate Mail : Blocked Junk Mail is re-downloaded

1. Make sure that “Include this account when receiving mail or synchronising” is NOT ticked/checked, for any of the e-mail accounts in the Windows Live Mail (WLM) program:

(a) In the Folders pane of WLM, right-click on an account name, then select ‘Properties’.
(b) On the ‘General’ tab, untick “Include this account when receiving mail or synchronising”.
(c) Click on “OK”.

Then re-start Windows Live Mail. That may cure it.

2. Otherwise, install – or reinstall – Windows Live Mail 2011, which (unlike the 2012 version) doesn’t seem to have this problem (when initially installed, i.e. with the standard default settings). Do that on a different computer, as doing it may delete your existing locally stored backup e-mails in the local storage folder inside Windows Live Mail.

If you insist on doing it on the same computer, make CERTAIN that you move or rename the following folder first (containing your messages), or you will suffer data loss:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

For “%username%”, substitute the name of the current user.

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

Windows Live Mail 2011 can be downloaded here:

https://archive.org/details/windowsliveessentials2011_201908

If you need help to reinstall Windows Live Mail, ask here. Or search this forum for the term windowsliveessentials2011 (“Windows Live Essentials 2011” is the name of the installer program needed).

Make sure that “Include this account when receiving mail or synchronising” is NOT ticked/checked, for any e-mail account added to Windows Live Mail 2011.

You’ll need to use IMAP to sync to the online server. Not POP3 or Exchange Active Sync.

If it’s a Hotmail account these are the settings (if it’s not Hotmail, use the settings you were using on your old computer instead):

IMAP (incoming mail) –
IMAP server name: imap-mail.outlook.com
IMAP port: 993
IMAP encryption method: SSL
Tick the option “clear text authentication”.

SMTP (outgoing mail) –
SMTP server name: smtp-mail.outlook.com
SMTP port: 587
SMTP encryption method: TLS

Duplicate Mail : Deleted Messages are re-downloaded

1. To delete messages permanently in Windows Live Mail (WLM), bypassing the “Deleted items” folder, select them in the message list then press the keys SHIFT and DELETE simultaneously on the keyboard.

2. Alternatively, it sounds as though some fault is causing Windows Live Mail to fail to correctly contact the online server. The result of this fault is that the instruction to delete the messages, which you are inputting into WLM, is not being properly communicated to the server.

If it’s a webmail-based e-mail service, the solution might be to open your e-mail account in your web browser, on the e-mail service provider’s website, and delete the unwanted e-mails on the website, instead of in WLM. This one-off action will unambiguously delete them permanently.

There is no limit to the amount of messages Windows Live Mail (WLM) can store, except available disk space. But many other things would be going wrong if you had run out of disk space, so that’s unlikely, even if you see an error message which implies it might be the cause. Thus in practice there is no limit to the number of e-mails which WLM’s “Inbox” or “Deleted Items” folders can contain.

Duplicate Mail : All Messages are re-downloaded

Problem:

WLM downloads all the mail in my account each time I download mail. How do I
fix this so it only downloads new mail?

If you don’t have a reason to leave a backup copy of the e-mails on the online server, re-configure the server so that it deletes the messages once you’ve read them. Messages will then be stored only on your computer, not on the internet mail server.

The procedure is as follows –

1. Open Windows Live Mail
2. In the folders pane, right-click on the Account name
3. Click on “Properties”
4. Click on the “Advanced” tab
5. Untick/unselect “Leave a copy of messages on the server”
6. Click on “OK”

But if you do this, you will delete all mail on the online server. Only any unread messages will survive.

So if you later have any problem with Windows Live Mail, there will be no online backup of your messages to restore lost messages from. You thus risk losing all your emails – if, for example, you suffer a hard disk failure.

So it is ESSENTIAL that you make regular backups of your messages (daily or weekly), onto an external disk, e.g. save them on a USB-connected drive.

Message Rules : Block Junk Mail [Ad Hoc Blocking]

To block incoming spam in Windows Live Mail (WLM), right-click on the spam message, select “Junk email”, then select one of the two options for blocking new mail:

a. Block only the one email address (“Add sender to blocked senders list”); or

b. Block all messages from the originating domain (“Add senders domain to blocked senders list”).

New messages arriving thereafter which match that instruction will be deleted by the WLM message filters.

Message Rules : Create a Rule to Block Junk Mail [Mass Blocking]

Steps to create a message rule in Windows Live Mail –

1. Open Windows Live Mail.
2. Select the ‘Folders’ tab, then select ‘Message Rules’.
3. Select and tick the conditions that you would like to apply to incoming messages.

The trick to blocking unwanted spam is to set up the rule to automatically move matching e-mails to a folder other than the Inbox, typically to the Spam folder (officially known as “Junk Mail”).

Create a rule that tells the program to block any incoming message (e.g. move it to the “Junk Mail” folder) if the subject line contains a key word. You can specify any word, or a phrase. The program will scan the subject line of each e-mail received, and move it if the subject line contains that word or phrase.

There is additional advice about how to use message rules in WLM at this link:

https://wlmail.wordpress.com/rules/

Windows Live Mail’s message rules only work in POP3 accounts.

For IMAP accounts, set the rules in webmail, not in Windows Live Mail. Alternatively, create a new account in Windows Live Mail, one which uses POP3.

WARNING: There are many disadvantages in using POP3.

Disadvantages of POP3 –

One major disadvantage of POP3 is that it has to be enabled in webmail, on the server’s website, before it can be used by Windows Live Mail.

Another major disadvantage of POP3 is that you will only get your Inbox mail (if mail goes to the Junk folder, for instance, you’ll never see it).

Message Rules : Firedog’s advice

The following is the advice given by user Firedog about how to use message rules, which he originally posted at this link:

https://wlmail.wordpress.com/rules/

To open the Rules dialogue, click ‘Message Rules’ on WLM’s Folders tab. (In earlier versions, select: Tools > Message rules)

# WLM’s message rules only work with POP3 accounts. For IMAP accounts, set the rules in webmail.

# The “Apply this rule after the message arrives” rule is not significant.

# The actions ‘Delete from Server’ and ‘Do Not Download’ can only test information in the message header (From:, To:, CC:, Subject:, message size). If you test the text in the message body, or test whether it “has attachment”, the message must be downloaded for the test to be made, thus negating the blocking.

a. These rules must be the first ones in your list, or
else a preceding rule may cause the message to download.

b. “Do not download” should be a temporary rule. If you
just leave messages on the server, eventually your e-mail
account will be full, and you’ll not receive any new mail.

# The order of the rules is significant. Rules are processed in the order listed.

# In most cases, you should select the option ‘Stop processing more rules’, to avoid the rule being overridden by a subsequent one.

# There is no wildcard support (e.g. * or ?). However, matching is done based on the specified string appearing anywhere in the field. The matching is not case sensitive.

# To match on multiple terms (e.g. “blue” and “sky” rather than the phrase “blue sky”) you have to Add the terms one at a time to the rule (i.e. enter the first word, click the Add button, then enter the second word, click the Add button;etc.)

# Message Body rules check only the displayed text, so will not match HTML tags.

# To configure NOT, AND or OR logic, click on the Options button for the condition.

# After making any changes to a rule, you must use the “OK” button to close the main dialogue that shows the list of message rules. If you use the “Cancel” button or the “X” to close the dialogue, the changes you made are thrown away.

If the rule examines the ‘From:’ header, where that header contains both a ‘Name’ and an ‘Address’ field, on checking the ‘Address’ field the rule will not work if manually applied (‘Apply now’). Only the first field is checked, due to a bug.

The rule will work if automatically applied, as the message downloads from the server. It will work if checking the ‘Name’ field. And it will work if the ‘From:’ header in the message only contains ‘Address’ but not ‘Name’. To work around this bug, set up the rule to check for ‘Name’ OR ‘Address’.

Message Rules : POP3 and IMAP

To create a message rule, open the Rules dialogue in Windows Live Mail:

1. On the ribbon, click on the ‘Folders’ tab.
2. Then click on the label ‘Message rules’.

The ribbon is the top menu bar in the WLM program’s window (the menu which includes the tabs labelled ‘Home’, ‘Folders’, ‘View’ and ‘Accounts’).

Windows Live Mail’s message rules only work in POP3 accounts.

For IMAP accounts, set the rules in webmail, not in Windows Live Mail (i.e. open your e-mail account on the website of your e-mail service provider, using your browser). Alternatively, create a new account in Windows Live Mail, one which uses POP3.

WARNING: There are many disadvantages in using POP3.

Disadvantages of POP3 –

One major disadvantage of POP3 is that it has to be enabled in webmail, on the server’s website, before it can be used by Windows Live Mail.

Another major disadvantage of POP3 is that you will only get your Inbox mail (if mail goes to the Junk folder, for instance, you’ll never see it).

Images : How to Unblock an Image : Safe Sender List

Where one or more images in a received message is not displayed in Windows Live Mail, try the following procedure –

1. In Windows Live Mail, in the upper left corner of the program’s window, click on the small down-arrow. Then go to:

Options > Safety options > Security

2. Under “Download images”, make sure neither box is ticked/checked. Click on ‘OK’.

3. In the messages list, right-click on the message containing the blocked image. Select “Junk email”, then click on one of the following options:

Add sender to safe sender list

Add sender’s domain to safe sender list

Alternatively, it can be helpful to right-click on the image, or on the placeholder where it ought to be, and inspect the image’s actual url address.

In some cases, I’ve had to resort to opening the e-mail provider’s website in my browser, so as to open the message concerned in webmail, in order to discover the true url address of the missing image.

The point is that not every image will have a url address which is the same as the domain address from which the message was sent: image files can come from some other address.

It’s important to identify the actual domain where the image is coming from, because only by adding that address to the Safe Sender list will Windows Live Mail allow the image to be delivered. Don’t just assume that an image must have come from the most obvious domain address: adding that to the Safe Sender list won’t solve the problem if the image originates on some other domain.

If you succeed in finding the image’s true domain of origin, manually add that domain address to the Safe Senders list. In Windows Live Mail, in the upper left corner of the program’s window, click on the small down-arrow. Then go to:

Options > Safety options > Safe Senders

Images : Security – Blocked Images : Safe Sender List (Images won’t display) (Blocked Sender)

Each e-mail in the Inbox, when opened, states that there are images it isn’t displaying in order to protect you. There is no option to say “always show all images on all e-mails”.

Although I’ve used the program for many years, I’ve never come across a solution for this, and mine still does it. I think there is perhaps no cure. I also think this is being imposed by Windows, and so any cure lies outside the e-mail program entirely.

I suspect it’s a security issue, at the Operating System level, not a fault in the e-mail program.

You ought to see 2 options on an e-mail when opened, the other being “Add to safe senders list”.

Try clicking on that option.

In my case it seems to fix the problem during the current session only, but doesn’t seem to last after a restart of Windows. So it might make your current session easier.

It only works for e-mails received from that specific sender. But if he sends you a lot of messages (e.g. I get lots about this forum, all from MicrosoftAnswers@microsoft.com), it will fix all messages received from that particular sender.

For example, if you get a lot of e-mails from (say) Facebook, like I do, doing it once on one of those will fix all of them, at least in your current e-mail session.

Alternatively, the Windows Live Mail program includes a function which allows you to add users to a blacklist. The program has two opposite functions: it includes a “safe senders” list (i.e. a whitelist), a list of senders from whom mail will always be accepted; and it also includes a blacklist, a list of senders from whom mail will always be rejected (“blocked”).

If you have an issue with images – or any other type of file – being blocked in WLM when sent by e-mail, that might be because the e-mail message in question is sent from an address that is included on the blacklist stored in WLM.

To investigate the stored blacklist of blocked senders:
1. Open Windows Live Mail.
2. On the top menu line, click the down-arrow at the extreme left-hand end of the menu.
3. Then click on ‘Options’.
4. Then click on ‘Safety Options’.
5. Then click on the tab labelled ‘Blocked Senders’.

If you delete any entries from the Blocked Senders list, be certain to save your changes before returning to the main part of the program.

Alternatively, many things in your computer unrelated to Windows Live Mail can block files (including image files) that originate from specific ip addresses. If an image is sent from a blocked address, that image can’t be received by your computer.

For example, here is a list (but not an exhaustive list) of some processes in a Windows computer which can block reception of data from specific internet addresses: a firewall, such as Windows Defender; an anti-virus program; an anti-malware program; the HOSTS file; or various security software suites, including those known as “ip blockers”. That is NOT an exhaustive list.

This forum only deals with faults in Windows Live Mail (WLM). But the topic of ip blocking is not related to the WLM program: it does not occur because of some fault in that program. It has some other cause, probably related to some recent change you made to your computer in regard to security.

There are various advice forums where ordinary users answer questions about a wide range of software and hardware problems. Go back to the “Ask a question” page, and choose a different topic from the drop-down lists there.

You can find the “Ask a question” page through the following link –

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/newthread?threadtype=Questions

If that link no longer works, you can find the “Ask a question” page through the link of that name at the top of this page.

There you can get general advice about the computer security topic known as ip blocking.

Images : When Messages transfer from Outlook to WLM, pictures don’t download

I don’t know what you mean by “Outlook”.

Outlook is variously:

1. A program, part of “Microsoft Office”. The program is usually further identified by a year of release (e.g. “Outlook 2013”), or by an Office version number (e.g. “Outlook 15”).

2. An “app”, available for most mobile devices and included in Windows 10 Mobile.

Please state clearly which of these three alternatives you mean.

If your problem concerns Microsoft’s webmail based e-mail service now called Outlook.com, there is a lot of online help (a large collection of FAQs and How-To’s) –

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-help-with-outlook-com-40676ad0-c831-45ac-a023-5be633be798d?ui=en-us&rs=en-us&ad=us

One obvious point is to make sure you are exporting the messages from Outlook in a format that Windows Live Mail can understand. The picture format used by Outlook won’t work in Windows Live Mail, so you cannot just copy the messages.

You MUST use a proper EXPORT function from within Outlook, that saves the messages to a new folder in the format “Microsoft Outlook Express 6”, or “Windows Live Mail”, or “Windows Mail”.

Windows Live Mail can only import messages which are stored on disk in one of those three formats.

Before you begin:

• Create a NEW folder in a location of your choice. Messages MUST be exported to an empty folder.

Attachments : E-mail Attachment won’t open

This question appears to be off-topic.

This forum deals only with problems concerning the use of Windows Live Mail (WLM). It can’t solve problems concerning an attachment you’ve received which won’t function: a document or image file that won’t open, or a program that won’t run.

That error is occuring because of a fault in the program which opens or runs that type of file. The ONLY type of file WLM can open is an .eml e-mail message.

And WLM is NOT a web browser: you cannot use it to download files (i.e. where an e-mail contains only a link to a file, in other words contains only a web address, instead of attaching that file to the e-mail, WLM can’t download that file). So the question appears to be off-topic on that point also.

You might need to find a more suitable forum in which to ask this question.

If, however, this is a genuine problem with WLM, give the FULL text of the error message, plus a more detailed description of what is occurring.

Attachments : E-mail Attachment won’t send

When you send an attachment: if that attachment violates the rules of your e-mail service provider, the message will not be sent. It will sit in the Outbox, as WLM repeatedly tries to send it, and the service repeatedly refuses to accept it: this cycle will continue forever, blocking WLM from sending any messages at all, unless you delete the faulty message from the Outbox.

To do so you may have to use your web browser to open the website of the e-mail service you are using, then sign-in to your account on their website, then attempt to delete all the files in your Outbox.

If you then re-try sending an e-mail with an attachment, make certain that the size of the attachment file is less than the maximum file size allowed for an attachment by your e-mail service. This type of user error does NOT indicate a fault on the part of Windows Live Mail.

Do not use WLM to send multiple messages with attachments. If you re-try sending an e-mail with an attachment, make certain you only send a single e-mail with an attachment, not several at once. The e-mail service might make various mistakes if you ignore this simple precaution, such as multiplying the size of the attachment by the number of e-mails sent and mistakenly concluding that you are sending an attachment that violates the attachment maximum size limit.

If the size of any attachment exceeds your e-mail service’s size limit for attachments, that will cause Windows Live Mail to freeze-up. If that happens, the problem e-mail will sit in Windows Live Mail’s outbox, so the problem will keep recurring. I suggest rebooting (i.e. restarting) your computer, as that should allow you to get Windows Live Mail open, and you must then delete all the items in the WLM program’s Outbox.

Attachments : Prohibited file types

If you can’t send, or can’t receive, an e-mail that has a JPG file as an attachment, there is an easy fix, as follows. This fix should solve two different problems:

(a) The user is unable to send an e-mail that has a JPG (or GIF)
image file as an attachment; and

(b) The user is unable to open or download an attachment in an e-mail
received, where that attachment is a JPG (or GIF) image file.

Where the user is unable to download received picture files (.gif or .jpg images), which are included in the main body of the message but cannot be accessed, the program issues this warning:

“Prohibited file type. This message contains an attachment
whose file type is considered dangerous. This file has
been deactivated.”

The files in question are .gif and .jpg files, i.e. are not included in the “unsupported files” list.

To fix both problems, open Windows Live Mail (WLM), then proceed as follows:

1. In the WLM program window, on the toolbar, click on:

File (the down-arrow) > Options > Safety Options

2. Click on the ‘Security’ tab.

3. Untick/uncheck this option:

“Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could
potentially be a virus”

4. Save the change, then restart the WLM program.

This will not fix any e-mails you have already received, but will fix future e-mails. If you have an old e-mail from someone, in which you want to open such an attachment: firstly, apply the fix; then, secondly, have them send the e-mail to you again.

The above solution is for WLM 2011 and 2012. In earlier versions of WLM (e.g. WLM 2009), in step 1 go to:

Menus > Safety Options > Security tab

Attachments : Attaching picture folder to an e-mail

You can’t attach a folder to an e-mail message. You can only attach individual files.

Sending many pictures at once by e-mail is bound to cause problems, unless they’re unusually small. Your e-mail service provider will impose limits on the size of messages, as will the recipients’ providers, and they may well all be different. If you attach a 1,000kB image file to an e-mail message, this will increase the size of the message by more than 1.3MB because of what is called the ‘encoding overhead.’

You have a few workarounds:

1. Compress the files before attaching them.

2. You can then right-click on the .zip file and select: Send to > Mail recipient

3. Send several messages instead, each with a subset of the pictures. To be on the safe side, don’t add more than 7MB of attachments to any single message. Compressing them, as above, will help achieve this.

4. Much the best workaround: add the pictures to a folder at OneDrive, then use the options at OneDrive to send a link to the folder (i.e. only the address of the folder, not any files at all) to the intended recipients of the pictures.

Attachments : “One or more of the pictures…” error

Use Notepad to change the contents of src=”…” to the text inside the angle brackets in the “Content-ID:” header of the attachment. This fault can occur when the message is repeatedly forwarded using a variety of differing e-mail programs.

This is simple enough when the HTML is encoded as QP, but of course there’s an extra step or two if it’s encoded as B64. There’s no apparent correlation between the “wlmailhtml:” url and the CID of the attachment it refers to.

Attachments : E-mail Attachment won’t display

Some attachments (.xls files, ,pdf files, .mp3 files) are not visible in WLM. But when accessed in a browser on the website of your e-mail service provider (such as https://mail.google.com) these attachments are visible and accessible.

This symptom usually indicates that the sender is using Office Outlook to send e-mail in Outlook’s own RTF format. Attachments are “encapsulated” in a file called winmail.dat, which will not be recognised as a file attachment by Windows Live Mail (WLM).

No e-mail program other than Outlook (or Exchange Client) can decode these encapsulated attachments. But some webmail services (e.g. Outlook Mail, Gmail) have that capability, so the attachments can be downloaded from the website of your e-mail service provider (if it is one of webmail services which can cope with these encapsulated attachments).

Alternatively, there are plenty of free utilities available on the internet that can decode winmail.dat files.

However, the better solution is to persuade the sender to stop using a format that his correspondents can’t make use of. RTF should only be used within the corporate environment, unless the sender knows for certain that the recipient is using Office Outlook.

There is a thorough explanation in the following article, which also explains how the sender can avoid frustrating users like you:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/290809/how-e-mail-message-formats-affect-internet-e-mail-messages-in-outlook

The problem lies with the sender, who has to change his settings to allow correspondents not using Outlook to access attachments he sends. Alternatively, access Gmail in a browser, as Gmail is able to unravel these attachments.

Attachments : Messages sent are split into multiple parts

I attach one file to an e-mail, and send it, but the recipient gets (say) 25 copies and cannot open any of them.

Messages you send will be broken apart if your account is configured to do so. Each message will have a unique subject, ending with an indication of which part of the original message it contains, e.g. “Broken message [12/25]” (meaning, in this example, part 12 of 25 parts).

Few recipients will know how to deal with this old-fashioned way of avoiding message size limits.

If this is what you’re seeing, right-click on the account name in the WLM folders pane, then select “Properties”. On the “Advanced” tab, deselect “Break apart messages larger than…”

Then try sending the attachment to yourself.

In your case, the original attachment looks very like part of a message which has been broken apart. Windows Live Mail adds the [part.no./no.of parts] suffix to the file name in [square brackets], with the two numbers separated by a slash. For example: [10/32]

If you examine the message headers, you’ll see that the “MIME content-type:” is “message/partial”. Many mail programs and services will reject this type of message.

This behaviour will stop happening if you deselect the option to “Break apart…”, which dates from the age when e-mail couldn’t reliably handle messages larger than 100KB. It’s no longer necessary.

You have to fix it, by changing a setting in Windows Live Mail, which is only doing what you’ve instructed it to do. The following article explains how to deal with partial messages in Windows Live Mail:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/livemail-email-read/
recombine-attachments-in-windows-live-mail-2012/37c5865c-3505-464a-bb38-06f2e6920da1

“When I send or forward a video or pdf, the message gets garbled, creating a massive
amount of random alphanumeric characters, which the recipient can’t open.”

It sounds as if you’re breaking apart large messages. Right-click on the account name in the folder pane, then select ‘Properties’. On the ‘Advanced’ tab, deselect “Break apart messages larger than…”

Some mail services (notably Outlook.com) won’t accept partial messages, so this setting could also cause some messages to fail to be delivered at all.

Attachments : Prevent them slowing down WLM

Here are a few suggestions to prevent attachments slowing down Windows Live Mail (WLM), any of which might help. I don’t suggest using them all.

A. Try compacting the database every 15 runs. I open and close WLM enough times every day that it compacts every few days. Choose an interval that compacts it once a week perhaps.

Click on the small down-arrow in the upper left corner of WLM. Then go to: Options > Mail > Advanced. In the box “Maintenance and Troubleshooting”, click on Maintenance. Set the option “Compact the database on shutdown every X runs” to 1 and allow it to happen once, then change it to (and leave it at) every 15 runs.

B. If you receive large attachments, it can be a good idea to save those elsewhere on the hard drive, or on another drive, and to delete the e-mail message, to keep your mail folders from becoming too large.

C. Because the Inbox folder is accessed more frequently than the others, it can help avoid problems if you keep the number of messages in it down, by creating other folders (which of course won’t be accessed so frequently), and move some old messages to them. For instance, I have folders named Old Inbox 2018 and Old Inbox 2019.

D. I don’t receive many attachments, and if they are small (less than 500KB) they don’t seem to cause a problem, so I do nothing about them. But if any big attachments arrive, 1MB or larger, I move the e-mail into a separate folder, named ‘Attachments’ (after saving the attachment to my Desktop).

This gets them out of the Inbox, so they no longer slow down my use of the Inbox.

I then use the option to remove all downloaded message bodies, on the Attachments folder, so that the attachment is not stored by WLM at all. It’s still on the server in case I need it. But because it’s not in WLM (which is only storing the message header, not the message body) it doesn’t cause the program any problems.

Printing Errors : Messages truncated when printed

Windows Live Mail messages are okay when viewed, but are truncated when printed (to PDF or to any printer).

You don’t mention whether this is a recent development.

Were you previously able to print your messages successfully? If so, what recent changes have you made to Windows Live Mail?

Consider (a) undoing any changes you made to Windows Live Mail, or (b) reverting the computer to an earlier state by using System Restore to take the computer back to a saved restore point.

If you haven’t made changes to Windows Live Mail, the problem can’t be due to the program itself, because it was last updated in 2012. Any change can only be one you made, so – if you have not done so – the likelihood is it’s due to some change entirely unrelated to Windows Live Mail.

In that event, look into changes in your Adobe pdf software, or in your printer software.

It’s possible the problem is caused by Windows 10, if the fault is affecting both printing to .pdf and printing to the printer. Did the problem arise immediately after a Windows 10 update? For a Windows 10 problem, you would need to post for advice in a Windows 10 forum.

Windows Updates rarely have any effect on old Win32 programs like Windows Live Mail, and I’m not aware of any such effects in recent years.

It’s not enough to check your printing preferences.

This type of problem typically occurs because you have different printer drivers on the new computer.

A printer driver is a file, often a .dll file, installed by the printer manufacturer, or by Windows 10. A solution thus might be achieved by installing on the new computer the driver files current in your old computer.

At the level of the crudest hack, you would copy the driver file(s) from the old computer to the new computer, and substitute them for the faulty ones (if both drivers have the same file name, but are different versions of the driver, this might work).

At a more sophisticated level, you would uninstall the faulty drivers in the Windows Control Panel, using the option called Device Manager (if Windows 10 has one), and then you would install the printer software which you currently have on your old computer (if you still have the original installation program).

Printing Errors : Unable to print some (NOT all) e-mails

This concerns the inability to print some, but NOT all, e-mails in Windows Live Mail.

There appears to be one similarity between all the e-mails which refuse to print. They all contain a link to an image file, which is supposed to display within the e-mail, but the picture does not appear. That fact is marked by an ‘X’ in a box appearing where the image ought to be.

If you edit the image link out of the unprintable e-mail, the e-mail will print in Windows Live Mail without any further problem.

The images concerned are almost certainly ones which have faulty links: the image file has been deleted or moved from its original location. The link is therefore dead, but Windows Live Mail keeps trying to download from it: this renders the print function inoperative, as the print cycle can’t start until everything in the e-mail is fully downloaded. In other words, it’s a vicious circle.

Other e-mail programs, such as Outlook, are also unable to download the image, but they are programmed to stop trying after a while, so the e-mail then becomes printable. But there is no such timeout in Windows Live Mail.

An e-mail in Windows Live Mail can be dragged onto your desktop using the mouse, where it becomes an .eml file. This file can be opened in Notepad, edited to delete the image link, saved, and then dragged back into Windows Live Mail for printing.

Alternatively, use the following workaround: copy all the e-mail’s content, then past it into a Word document (or into a document for any other word processing program), where it will print out just fine.

These suggestions were posted on another thread by the user “robolovsky”.

Printing Errors : Font Size wrong when Printing e-mails on paper

Windows Live Mail has an option for changing the font size. If you increase the font size, printing from the program will thereafter use the new, larger, font so that e-mails will print out with the text in a larger size.

In Windows Live Mail –

1. Go to: Down Arrow > Options > Mail > Compose > Font Settings (Mail)
2. Set a new font size
3. Save your changes: click “OK”, then click “OK” again
4. Restart Windows Live Mail

Fonts

To change the font used to display received messages:

In Windows Live Mail –

1. Go to: Down Arrow > Options > Mail > Read > Fonts
2. Click the button labelled ‘Fonts’, then select a font from the list
3. Save your changes: Click “OK”, then click “OK” again
4. Restart Windows Live Mail

This selects a font which is installed on your Windows operating system. The WLM program is merely accessing the Windows fonts folder. You may, of course, install any additional fonts you wish in the Windows fonts folder, so that WLM can use them.

To install a font in the Windows Live Mail program:

1. Download the font and unzip it.
2. Put the font file in this folder (on Windows 7):
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Live

It now displays in the WLM font list. But it cannot be set as the WLM default font, so it must be selected manually by you each time:

3. Create a new e-mail message (e.g. press CTRL + N)
4. In the ‘New Message’ window, click in the message text space.
5. In the ‘New Message’ window, click on the ‘Message’ tab.
6. In the ‘New Message’ window, in the ‘Font’ box, click on the arrow
(where the current font is named), and then select a different font
in the drop-down list which appears.

All the fonts, including the font you added, are listed in the drop-down list which displays in step 6.

Fonts : Plain Text

To display received messages in plain text in WLM:

In Windows Live Mail –

1. Go to: Down Arrow > Options > Mail > Read
2. In the section ‘Reading Messages’, click the button ‘Read all messages in plain text’.
3. Save your changes: Click “Apply”, then click “OK”

Fonts : Change Font Size

Problem –

Font too small to read, or too large to show all of the message.

How to change the font size in WLM –

1. For text in the folders pane, on the ribbon, in the message list, in the calendar window, in the contacts list, and in the RSS feeds: increase the screen DPI.

To do this on Windows 10, select:

Settings > Ease of Access > Display > Make everything bigger

2. For received plain text messages displayed in the reading pane or in a message window:

a. In Internet Explorer, on the View menu, click “Text size” and select a size (Alt+V then X).
b. In Internet Explorer, increase the zoom (press the Ctrl key and the + key).
c. In Windows Live Mail, when viewing the message list, press Ctrl+Shift+O for Options.
On the “Read” tab, click “Fonts”. Then select a font and font size for the encoding
you need: I recommend you use either ‘Western European’ or ‘Unicode’.

Even if you don’t use Internet Explorer, Windows Live Mail DOES (to display messages).

3. Received HTML messages (in the reading pane or in a message window): Some of the above methods may alter the size of the text in the messages. It depends on how the sender formatted the message.

4. Messages you compose: When viewing the message list, press Ctrl+Shift+O for Options. On the “Compose” tab, click “Font Settings”. Then select the size you want.

Alternatively –

1. In WLM, open a received e-mail message for reading.
2. In the toolbar at the top of the message window, select the ‘Message’ tab
(if it’s not selected by default).
3. In ‘Actions’, click on the option labelled ‘Encoding’.
4. Select: ‘Western European (Windows)’

In step 4, there is also an option ‘More’. It allows you to choose a number of other alternative settings. Experiment with these to find a choice you prefer.

The ‘More’ option also allows you to access a choice labelled ‘User Defined’. That choice will use the settings you, as the user, have specified elsewhere in WLM.

As a workaround, Windows has a program called “magnify” –

In Windows 7, you will find this program at:

%windir%\system32\magnify.exe

Later versions of Windows also have this useful tool. In Windows 10, invoke it by pressing and holding the Windows key, then pressing the “?” key. Turn it off by pressing both the Windows key and the Escape key simultaneously.

The magnify program enlarges an area of the screen, making it easier to read the text in that area. This might help you to read text on screen, where the text is too small, if the text is only an e-mail (it’s not as useful with large areas of text).

Signatures

In a new message, go to: Insert > Signature

Windows Live Mail (WLM) has to be able to find at least one .html signature file (a file with the .html extension containing a signature in html format). If it can’t, the Insert > Signature option will not be active.

Which .html signature file to use for which account is specified in WLM’s options. Press the keys Ctrl+Shift+O on the keyboard to display the “Options” window, then select the “Signatures” tab.

You can store signatures (.html signature files) wherever you wish, so long as the correct location for each one is specified in WLM’s settings. The file name must also be correct: having changed the name of your .html signature file, you must also change the WLM setting to that new name.

On the “Signatures” tab, click on the “Advanced” button to specify the location and name of each .html signature file.

Signatures : Backup and Restore

OPTION ONE : Backup the Signatures

1. In the Windows Start Menu, type REGEDIT in the search box, then press the ENTER key.

2. If prompted by UAC, click on ‘Yes’ (in Windows 7) or ‘Continue’ (in Windows Vista).

3. In RegEdit, navigate to the following location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\signatures

4. If you only have text signatures to backup –

A) In the left-hand pane of RegEdit, right-click on the ‘signatures’ key,
then click on ‘Export’, then save the REG file to your desktop.

NOTE: Each numbered subkey (e.g. 00000000, 00000001, 00000002), under the
signatures key, represents one signature stored for Windows Live Mail

B) Save the exported .REG file somewhere convenient. This .REG file is the backup
of all of your text signatures.

C) Close RegEdit.

5. If you have any HTML or HTM file signatures to backup –

A) Create a new folder on your desktop. Name it, for example, WLM Signatures Backup.

B) In the left-hand pane of RegEdit, right-click on the ‘signatures’ key, click on
Export, then save the .REG file in the new folder.

NOTE: Each numbered subkey (e.g. 00000000, 00000001, 00000002), under the
signatures key, represents one signature stored in Windows Live Mail

C) In the left-hand pane of RegEdit, click on each number subkey (e.g. 00000000,
00000001, 00000002) under the ‘signatures’ key, one at a time, if it uses a
.htm or .html file, and make a written note of the file location for each one.

NOTE: You will need to know where each .htm or .html file is, so that you can
back-up the file, and so you can put it back later when restoring the
file signature in step 3 of OPTION TWO below.

D) In Windows Explorer, navigate to each .htm or .html file one at a time, copy
each .htm or .html file, and paste it in the new folder. When finished,
close Windows Explorer.

E) Save the new folder somewhere convenient. This folder contains the exported
.REG file and the .htm/.html files, so is the backup of all of your text
and/or file signatures.

F) Close RegEdit.

OPTION TWO : Restore the Signatures

1. If you only have text Signatures to restore –

A) Right-click on the exported .REG file (from step 4 in OPTION ONE above),
then click on: Merge > Yes > OK

B) Close RegEdit.

2. If you have any HTML or HTM file Signatures to restore –

A) Open the new folder created in step 5 of OPTION ONE above. Right-click on each
.htm/.html file in it, one at a time, then click on ‘Properties’ and make sure
the file is NOT blocked — if any file is marked ‘blocked’, click on ‘unblock’.

B) Use copy-and-paste on each .htm/.html file in the new folder, one at a time,
to move them back to their original location (from step 5C above).

NOTE: If you have lost or forgotten the location of where a .htm/.html file
is supposed to be, try this:

Right-click on the .REG file in the new folder, then click on ‘Edit’.
You will see the file path location listed for each signature file.

C) When finished, right-click on the exported .REG file in the new folder
(from step 5A in OPTION ONE above), then click on: Merge > Yes > OK

Your signatures have now been restored into Windows Live Mail.

Contacts : Default Contacts List

The default contacts (the ones you see when you’re NOT signed-in to Windows Live Mail) are stored in this database:

C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\Default\DBStore

For %username% substitute the name of the current user.

The contacts – and calendar – do not sync to the online server any more. Microsoft made changes to its website in 2016 which broke that capability. So any contacts data you store in the program is only stored in one place:

(a) When you’re offline, contacts changes you make are stored locally on your computer; or

(b) When you’re online, contacts changes you make are stored on the online server.

Contacts : Lost the Contacts list

You might try exporting the contacts list from Windows Live Mail, to test whether the contacts data is still stored where it should be:

1. Open Windows Live Mail.

2. In the lower-left corner, select “Contacts” (or press CTRL+3).

3. On the ribbon (“Home” tab), click “Export”.

The ribbon is the top menu bar in the WLM program’s window (the
menu which includes the tabs labelled ‘Home’, ‘Folders’, ‘View’
and ‘Accounts’).

4. Select a file format in the drop-down menu (I suggest option a):

a. If exporting multiple contacts, select .csv (comma separated
values) to export them all to a single .csv file.

b. If exporting only one or two contacts, select .vcf (business
card format) to export them as individual files.

5. Click “Browse”, then select a folder to save your contacts in.

6. Type a file name, then click “Save”.

7. Click “Next”, then select the check boxes next to the fields to
export. Only the fields selected are exported. Select *all* the fields
(scroll down to see all fields).

8. Click “Finish”.

Now you have a .csv file that you can import into the e-mail program of your choice.

Contacts stored locally on your computer are stored under Windows Live (not Windows Live Mail), in a hidden system folder:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts

For %username% substitute the name of the current user.

That folder is hidden by default. You have to elect to show “hidden files, folders and drives”, in Windows 7’s “Explorer” (called “File Explorer” in Windows 10), to be able to see it.

The following command opens that folder, in Windows 7, even if it’s not in the default location (a single command, that must be copied and pasted as a single line):

FOR /F “TOKENS=4* SKIP=1” %A IN (‘REG QUERY “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail” /V “Store Root”‘) DO @CALL explorer %A %B & EXIT

If you can open that folder, don’t monkey with its contents. Make a copy of the folder on your desktop, it contains one (or more) ESE database files. Your contacts are in that file.

There are quite a few programs that can read an ESE database file. I suggest NirSoft DatabaseView –

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/esedatabaseview.zip

ESE Database View is a simple utility that reads and displays the data stored inside an Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) database (also known as “Jet Blue”), an .edb (Extensible DataBase) file.

It displays a list of all tables available in the opened database file, allows you to choose the desired table to view, and then when you choose a table it displays all records found in the selected table.

ESE Database View also allows you to select one or more records, and then:

(a) Export the selected records to a comma-delimited, or tab-delimited, or html, or xml file; and/or

(b) Copy the selected records to the clipboard (press Ctrl+C), then paste them into Excel or another spreadsheet program.

Where WLM is re-installed:

1. You have the option to transfer the locally stored contacts data, by simply moving the entire DBStore folder to the new location of WLM. Do this while no Windows Essentials programs are running.

2. Once the folder is moved, right-click on “Start”, select “Run”, type WLARP into the box, then press “Enter”. Follow the prompts to repair the Windows Live Mail installation. This will, with luck, fix up the substituted database so that it can be read by Windows Live Mail.

3. To launch Windows Live Mail afterwards:

1. Right-click on “Start”, then select “Run”.
2. Type the following into the box: wlmail.exe /startcontacts
3. Press “Enter”.

To import your Windows 7 contacts into Windows Live Mail:

1. Open Windows Live Mail (WLM).

2. In the lower-left corner, select “Contacts”.

3. On the ribbon, click “Import”.

4. Select the file format that matches the contacts (.csv or .vcf).

Alternatively, in step 4, you can instead click on “Address book
for current Windows user” to import your entire Windows 7 address
book contacts. Windows Live Mail has a separate set of contacts,
it doesn’t share the Windows 7 ones (so that if you lose the WLM
contacts, your Windows 7 contacts survive).

5. Click “Browse”, then select the folder containing the exported
contacts.

6. Click “Next”, then select the check boxes next to the fields you
want to import.

7. Click “Finish”.

Neither IMAP nor POP3 supports syncing the Contacts folder.

You have to make any desired changes to your Contacts manually. See above for manually importing and exporting the contacts.

To add a new contact, on the “ribbon” go to:

Home > Items > Contact

If you are in the Contacts screen (click “Contacts” in the bottom left-hand corner of Windows Live Mail), to add a new contact manually, go to: Home > Contact

You have at least two different contacts lists in Windows Live Mail:

When you’re NOT signed-in with a Microsoft Account, the account button (the right-most button on the Home tab of the ‘ribbon’) reads “Sign in”, and the contacts list you see is the default list.

When you ARE signed-in with a Microsoft Account, the account button reads something other than “Sign in”, and the contacts list you see is the one that belongs to the account you’re signed-in with.

NB: The signed-in list is supposed to synchronize with the one at
contacts.live.com, so that any change you make to this list in
Windows Live Mail will propagate to the online list, and vice
versa. Sadly, this is no longer reliable because of changes at
Outlook.com in recent years.

Use the button to change your signed-in state, and hence the contacts list you see. If you sign in with a different Microsoft Account, you’ll see a different contacts list. There is no connection between the different contacts lists you see in Windows Live Mail.

You export the Contacts list, but the program only exports part of the list:

If, for example, you have 500 contacts but the export procedure only exports 90 of them, there is probably something strange about item number 91 that causes the export to stall.

Windows Live Mail has never been very good at dealing with errors: in your situation, it just stops the process at the corrupt item, leaving you with a partial export.

Try exporting just that one item. It probably can’t be exported, which would indicate that it’s corrupted. If so, delete that corrupt item, and then run the export procedure again.

Contacts : Move the Contacts list to new computer

I had a problem importing contacts to my new PC. WLM only allowed me to import 600 of my 4,000 contacts. I never found out why. However, I found a solution, and now have my 4,000 contacts on the new machine.

1. On your old PC, find this folder:

“C:\Users\%Username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\Default”

2. Copy the folder and its entire contents to a temporary location (a USB memory stick, a data DVD, or any other way of transferring the data to the new PC).

NB: The folder contains several sub-folders, which will all appear to be empty, but which actually contain various hidden folders and files (usually including several versions of the file contacts.edb). So you might seem to be copying empty folders, but don’t worry about it – just follow these instructions. They work!

3. On your new PC, find this folder and delete it:

“C:\Users\%Username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\Default”

4. Replace it with the folder of the same name copied from your old PC.

You have now moved your entire contacts list. WLM will behave as if you were still using the old PC, because you have created an exact duplicate of all the contact details on it.

Contacts : Export and Import the WLM Contacts

How to export and import WLM Contacts:

https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/200318-windows-live-mail-export-import-contacts.html

Contacts : Import Windows Contacts

How to import Windows Vista or Windows 7 contacts (and Contact Groups) into Windows Live Mail:

https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3818-windows-live-mail-import-windows-7-vista-contacts.html

Contacts : Edit the Contacts list

Open Windows Live Mail.

In the bottom left-hand corner of the WLM program window, there is a row of icons. Hovering the cursor over each icon will show the name of the function that icon selects.

Click on the “contacts” icon (or press CTRL+3). This will display the contact details stored in Windows Live Mail.

Double-click on a contact in the displayed list to open the edit function.

After making any changes, click on ‘Save’ to save the changes.

The contacts stored here are NOT the same as your Windows 7/8/10 contacts. This program keeps its own list, populated from e-mails the program has sent.

Any changes made here will NOT change your Windows 7/8/10 contacts. And vice versa: you can’t change the details stored in this program by changing the general Windows contacts.

Contacts : Can’t Delete Contacts

In practical terms, what you must do is track down where the contact details are coming from.

If you are seeing identical contact details in the e-mail account to those in your ordinary Windows contacts list, the place where you will find those contacts stored is most likely the default location for general Windows contacts –

C:\Users\%username%\Contacts

where they are stored as a set of files with the extension .contact — it should be possible to delete those files, if you don’t want them available to other Microsoft programs that form part of Windows.

Deleting them will probably also affect Microsoft Office 365, if you have it. I do not, but I’m told that it makes use of these default .contact files. If you have it, you probably already know that.

One thing to consider, if you do have it, is that opening Office365 (or any other version of Office you have) will probably enable you to view the default list of contacts stored by Windows, as most versions of Microsoft Word seem to be able to access the default contacts.

That might tell you whether your problem does stem from the Windows default contact details.

If you are using Windows 8 or Windows 10, bear in mind that Microsoft did not anticipate that you would be running Windows Live Mail, which is a Windows 7 program, so did not take any precautions against Windows 8 or Windows 10 interfering with it.

There is always a possibility that on your computer Windows Live Mail is – or once was – set up to manage more than one e-mail account which was actively using contacts, and that some fault in Windows is causing the contacts from one account to be applied to all e-mail accounts currently present.

Windows 7/8/10 use NTFS permissions. It’s possible for any file to accidentally get assigned a set of access permissions that don’t allow the file to be accessed for deletion. If you can find the file, and it refuses to delete, you can go to the ‘Ask a question’ page on this forum (there is a link at the top of this page) for help with Windows file permissions.

That is not a Windows Live Mail issue, so is best asked in a general Windows forum (where users will be more knowledgeable about that problem), not in this forum (which is specifically about e-mail problems only).

Contacts : Add a Group Contact

To add a group contact to Windows Live Mail 2012 –

What are known as “groups” in other e-mail programs are called “Categories” in Windows Live Mail. You’ll find some advice in these Articles:

https://00wffq.db.files.1drv.com
https://1drv.ms/b/s!Aofky0_NNFsnlYc29ZpCYxyD3VZ_QA
https://answers.microsoft.com/wiki/605fb6c1-0e34-41b2-8fc3-c5d9fcbe01ae

Categories in Windows Live Mail 2011/2012 are a powerful aid to organizing contacts as well as helping with addressing messages to distribution lists. There can be as many categories as you like, and any contact can belong to any number of categories. However, membership of a category is not recorded in the individual contact’s data, so there are some shortcomings of the category mechanism. Here are some suggestions for getting the most out of categories and for working around the shortcomings.

Create a category –

To set up a category, switch to the ‘Contacts’ window by pressing Ctrl+3 or by clicking the address book icon at the foot of the folder pane. In the ‘Home’ section of the ribbon, click ‘Category’ then fill in the form that appears.

The ribbon is the top menu bar in the WLM program’s window (the menu which includes the tab labelled ‘Home’).

Naming categories –

It’s tempting when creating a new category simply to give it the obvious name – Work, say. While this makes sense for naming contact groups or folders in other programs, it’s not particularly helpful in Windows Live Mail. When addressing a message, clicking “To…” will produce a picklist¹ of all contacts and categories in alphabetical order, so the “Work” category would appear near the bottom of this list between (say) William Wilberforce and Worley Meadow Association.

When you’ve found it, select it: all its members will be inserted into the “To…” box.

There are few restrictions on the choice of name, but it can’t exceed 60 characters. I give my categories names that start with (unique) numbers. This has several advantages:

• Numbered categories will sort neatly in the left-hand pane of the contacts window.
• When you click the “To…” button in a message compose window, the categories will be at the top of the list.
• To address a message to everyone in a category, just type its number in the “To…” box.

You might find pseudo-sub-categories useful. A category called ’33 Choir’ could include all players, but ‘335 Basses’ only the big boys. Type 3 in the “To…” box, and you’ll include all your Church contacts; type 33 and you’ll only get choir members, and typing 335 will show only the basses.

Preserving category affiliation –

A recurring complaint is that there is no straightforward way to preserve category data when exporting contacts for backup, say. Unfortunately, most users don’t realize this until it’s too late. One way to make it possible to reconstruct categories after a contacts list has taken a tour through the export-import mill is to insert some indication of category affiliation – a key – in a contact data field.

Taking the Church example above, I would add the three-digit number at the beginning of the Notes field for each contact. Because the Notes field is searched by the address box word-wheel,² typing ‘3’ into the To… box would not only list all the Church categories, it would also list all of the members of those categories. Again, type the next digit to restrict the list to choir members and the third to reveal only the basses, both as a group and individually.

With the key in the Notes field, the information will be included in the file when contacts are exported. This means that when those contacts are imported, you can make use of the key to re-create categories.

In the contacts window, click View as > List so that the contacts fields are displayed in columns. You can change the order of columns by right-clicking on a column heading and selecting the one to show. Clicking once on the Notes column heading will sort all the contacts by key, making it easy to select those that belong together in a category. Just click on the topmost, then hold Shift down and click on the bottom one to select those that belong to a category, then right-click to copy them to the appropriate category.

This is fine for new contacts, but adding something to the data for existing contacts will be very tedious for a long list, because each would have to be opened, edited and saved. If you can find your way around an Excel spreadsheet, you could automate this process to a certain extent. It only has to be done once, and you then have a contacts list with built-in category information.

Windows Live Mail 2012 has a fault that makes using categories slightly problematic. There is a procedure that avoids the fault with a few extra keystrokes:

1. In the “message compose” window, click the “To…” button.
A dialogue headed “Send an Email” opens.
2. Select a category and then one of the To->, Cc-> or Bcc->
buttons; the category name displays in the corresponding field.
3. Click on the “+” beside the category name. All the names
in the category should be displayed in the entry field.
4. Click “OK”. The dialogue will close, returning focus to the
“message compose” window, with a fully-populated address list
in the appropriate field.

[1] A contact picklist is the one that appears when you click the “To…” button in a new message window or start typing in the “To…” box. It may look different from the list you see in the contacts window.

• It will show matching contacts’ Name³ and email address(es), in alphabetical order of Name.
• Only contacts with an e-mail address will be shown.

[2] Incremental search, also known as a ‘word-wheel’, is a mechanism that finds matches for what you type as you type. It is not case-sensitive. The more characters you type, the closer the match and the shorter the list of possible matches. It starts searching at the beginning of the indexed terms, so it won’t find matches within indexed terms. For example, to locate Billyboy, you must type b i l . Typing b o y will not find it.

[3] “Name” is the value shown and transmitted in the “To:” line of a sent message. It is constructed by Windows Live Mail from the contact data fields, and consists of the first match found when scanning the data fields, which it scans in the following order:

1. Nickname
2. First name + Last name (in the order specified at Sort by in the Contacts window)
3. First name or Last name
4. Company
5. E-mail address

NB: Nicknames should thus be assigned with circumspection. If you normally refer to the headmistress as ‘the old dragon’ and think this would be a good term to remember her by, assigning Dragon as her nickname would mean that she would see “To: Dragon” in any e-mail you sent to her.

Notes:

This advice was originally posted by ¡Firedog, in the following thread, in 2016 (and there may be additional useful detail in that other thread) –

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/all/windows-live-mail-2012-searching-for-contacts/6bd8d47d-5552-47d6-bea7-54732a03585c

Sending messages to categories has always been problematical in Windows Live Mail 2012. You’ll find instructions for a reliable workaround in the article “Send a group email in Windows Live Mail 2012” –

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/all/send-a-group-email-in-windows-live-mail-2012/cd98d675-e117-4425-bc44-09c10b8bb18f

Contacts : What happened to Contact Groups?

This is user ¡Firedog’s advice, originally posted at:

https://wlmail.wordpress.com/contacts-1/groups/

What you’re looking for is now called “Categories”.

Categories are not the same as the old ‘groups’; you have one list of contacts, but each of those contacts can belong to as many categories as you want, and you can have as many categories as you want. Think of them as labels.

1. Open the Contacts window: press Ctrl+3 or click the address-book icon at the foot of the folder pane.

2. Click the “Home” tab on the ribbon. The ribbon is the top menu bar in the WLM program’s window (the menu which includes the tab labelled ‘Home’).

3. Click on “Category”.

Give the new category a name, then select its members. If you give it a name starting with a number, it will appear at the top of ‘contact picker’ lists¹. If you don’t, it will appear in alphabetical order in those lists (so a category called “Friends” will appear in the list between contacts called “Fred Bloggs” and “Frisbee Industries Inc”).

To send a message to all members of a category, just start typing its name in the “To…” box of the new message window. If its name starts with a number, it will probably appear straight away ready for selection.

To exclude one or more members from the distribution, click on the ‘+’ sign to reveal all the addresses, then click on the ones you want to remove and press DEL on the keyboard.

To send to only a few members of a category, open the Contacts window and select the category in the left-hand pane. Use Ctrl+Click [press the CTRL key and click on an entry] to select the ones you want to send the message to, then click the “Email” button on the ribbon.

¹ https://wlmail.wordpress.com/contacts-1#Note-2

Contacts : Using Categories

This is user ¡Firedog’s advice, originally posted at:

https://wlmail.wordpress.com/contacts-1/using-categories/

To set up a category, switch to the contacts window by pressing Ctrl+3 or clicking the address book icon at the foot of the folder pane. In the “Home” section of the ribbon, click “Category” and fill in the form that appears.

The ribbon is the top menu bar in the WLM program’s window (the menu which includes the tab labelled ‘Home’).

Naming categories

It’s tempting when creating a new category simply to give it the obvious name – “Work”, say. While this makes sense for naming contact groups or folders in other programs, it’s not particularly helpful in WLM. When addressing a message, clicking “To…” will produce a “picker list”¹ of all contacts and categories in alphabetical order, so the “Work” category would appear near the bottom of this list between “William Wilberforce” and “Worley Meadow Association”. And even when you’ve found it, all you can do is select it, which means that all its members are inserted into the “To…” box.

There are few restrictions on the form of a category name, except that it cannot exceed 60 characters – that’s quite a lot of text. I give my categories names that start with (unique) numbers. This has several advantages:

# Numbered categories will sort neatly in the left-hand pane of the contacts window.
# When you click the “To…” button in a message compose window, categories will be at the top of the list.
# To address a message to everyone in a category, just type its number in the “To…” box.

¹ https://wlmail.wordpress.com/contacts-1/#Note-2

You might find pseudo-sub-categories useful, too. A category called ’33 Choir’ could include all players, but ‘335 Basses’ only the big boys. Type 3 in the To… box, and you’ll include all your Church contacts; type 33 and you’ll only get choir members, and typing 335 will show only the basses.

Preserving category affiliation

Taking the Church example above, I would add the three-digit number at the beginning of the “Notes” field for each contact. Because the “Notes” field is searched by the address box word-wheel¹, typing 3 into the “To…” box would not only list all the Church categories, it would also list all of the members of those categories. Again, type the next digit to restrict the list to choir members and the third to reveal only the basses, both as a group and individually.

¹ https://wlmail.wordpress.com/contacts-1/#Note-1

With the key in the “Notes” field, the information will be included in the file when contacts are exported. This means that when those contacts are imported, you can make use of the key to re-create categories.

In the contacts window, click “View as > List” so that the contacts fields are displayed in columns. You can change the order of columns by right-clicking on a column heading and selecting the one to show. Clicking once on the “Notes” column heading will sort all the contacts by key, making it easy to select those that belong together in a category. Just click on the topmost, then hold Shift down and click on the bottom one to select those that belong to a category, then right-click to copy them to the appropriate category.

This is fine for new contacts, but adding something to the data for existing contacts will be very tedious for a long list, because each would have to be opened, edited and saved. If you can find your way around an Excel spreadsheet, you could automate this process to a certain extent. It only has to be done once, though, and you then have a contacts list with built-in category information.

Windows Live Mail 2012 has a fault that makes using categories slightly problematical for some users. There is a tried and tested procedure that avoids the fault with a few extra keystrokes:

1. In the message compose window, click the “To…” button. A dialogue headed “Send an Email” opens.
2. Select a category and then one of the To, Cc or Bcc buttons; the category name will be displayed in the corresponding field.
3. Click on the “+” beside the category name. All the names in the category should be displayed in the entry field.
4. Click “OK”. The dialogue will close, returning focus to the message compose window with a fully-populated address list in the appropriate field.

Contacts : How do I export Contacts from a Category?

This is user ¡Firedog’s advice, originally posted at:

https://wlmail.wordpress.com/contacts-1/export-category/

To export contacts from WLM for backup or for use in another application or service, switch to the Contacts window (press Ctrl+3 or click the address book icon at the foot of the folder pane), then click the Export button on the ribbon. You can choose to export comma-separated values or vCards (one .vcf file per contact).

The ribbon is the top menu bar in the WLM program’s window (the menu which includes the tab labelled ‘Home’).

The problem with Export is that it’s all or nothing. You can’t select which contacts to export, nor export just a single category. But here’s a way to do that in Windows 7:

1. Reduce the size of the WLM window so you can see an empty part of the desktop. Right-click in this empty space and select “New > Folder”. Call it VCF.

2. Type or copy %userprofile% into the start search box and press Enter. This will open the folder containing the Windows Contacts folder. Windows Contacts is a legacy from Vista, usually only of value in Windows 7 if you need to keep contacts synchronized with some other devices. Most people are unaware of this folder, and it’s usually empty (apart, perhaps, from a special “Me” contact reflecting your Windows user account).

3. For safety’s sake, right-click on the Contacts folder in the navigation pane and select “Copy”. Now right-click on its containing folder (your Windows user name) and select “Paste”. You should see a new folder called “Contacts – Copy”.

4. Click on the Contacts folder, click in the right-hand pane and press Ctrl-A to select “All”, then press the Delete (or DEL) key on your keyboard. You now have a nice empty Contacts folder.

5. In the left-hand pane of WLM’s Contacts window, select the category you want to export, click on a contact and press Ctrl+A.

6. Left-click, hold and drag all the contacts across and drop them on to the VCF folder on your desktop. This will create VCF files for each contact in the category.

7. Return to the Windows Contacts folder you emptied at step 3 and click “Import” on the menu bar. Select “vCard” and click “Import”.

8. Browse to the VCF folder on your desktop and select all its contents to import.Your Windows Contacts folder now contains .contact files for each member of your WLM category, and you can now use “Export” on the menu bar to create a CSV file for this category. To create a CSV file for a different category, start again at step 4. You should empty the VCF folder ready to accept the next batch.

9. When the process is complete, you can delete the VCF folder on your desktop.

10. To restore Windows Contacts to the state they were in before embarking on this process, delete the “Contacts” folder and rename the “Contacts – Copy” folder to “Contacts”.

There are some shortcomings in the export process:

# Neither WLM nor Windows Contacts will export more than one (the preferred or primary) email address per contact, even though the data are present in both the VCF file and the .contact file. WLM will not export the business fax number, but Windows Contacts will.

# It’s not a good idea to import or export the “Name” field. If the fields “Nickname”, “First name”, “Middle name” and “Last name” are populated, programs will usually be able to work out what “Name” should be, so using it in an import/export exercise might simply lead to confusion. A contact with no personal names – e.g. a company – will be shown in WLM by the company name.

# A VCF file will normally contain all the contact data, so this is a good format to use for sharing or transferring only a small number of contacts. Most mail clients will offer to add the contents of a VCF file to its contacts list.

# If the CSV file will be taking a trip through a spreadsheet program like Excel, take the opportunity to add some category affiliation¹ data to each contact. If, for example, you put a keyword or number into a field like “Notes”, you may be able to sort contacts by this field. You would then see all contacts with the same keyword/number grouped together.

¹ https://wlmail.wordpress.com/using-categories/#preserving

More about categories here –

What happened to contact groups:
https://wlmail.wordpress.com/faq/groups/

Calendar #1

To find solutions for many common problems concerning the Windows Live Mail calendar, open the following link in your browser (this link displays all the threads on this forum which relate to the Calendar):

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/livemail-calendar?sort=LastReplyDate&dir=Desc&tab=All&status=all&mod=&modAge=&advFil=&postedAfter=&postedBefore=&threadType=all&isFilterExpanded=false&page=1

Calendar #2

To view the Calendar, switch to the Calendar window by pressing Ctrl+2 or by clicking on the Calendar icon at the foot of the folder pane.

To add a New Event, in Windows Live Mail press Ctrl+Shift+O > Connection and then select “Stop Signing In”: after doing so, you can then add a New Event.

You have several different calendars available in Windows Live Mail; one is the default calendar you see when you’re not signed-in; and another is the one you see when you are signed-in (this is the calendar belonging to the Microsoft account you signed-in with).

Once upon a time, an account calendar stored locally in your computer would synchronize with the one at calendar.live.com, so you saw the same entries in Windows Live Mail and in the online calendar. The synchronisation stopped working years ago, when the service it used was discontinued; the online calendar no longer contains the entries you add in WLM, and vice versa.

What I mean is, you have 2 calendars (more, if you have multiple accounts setup in WLM). Probably, what you are looking at is not the calendar you think it is. You might not be seeing your calendar entries because you are looking at the wrong calendar. For example, if you have been saving your entries in the off-line calendar (stored on your computer), you will see an empty calendar if you now look at the on-line one — because the two don’t sync any more.

Make sure you are really looking at the one stored in your main local account in WLM, and not (a) the one stored online, nor (b) one stored in some other e-mail account in WLM.

You will see only your on-line calendar entries if you sign-in, using the button at the right-hand end of the ribbon in WLM. The ribbon is the top menu bar in the WLM program’s window (the menu which includes the tabs labelled ‘Home’, ‘Folders’, ‘View’ and ‘Accounts’).

In future, it may be better to use the online calendar, as it will be available to you from any computer with an Internet connection, and also from your smart phone. Accordingly, beware of that button.

If you accidentally sign-in (to the “work online” state), while you are “signed in” only the signed-in Calendar is displayed (the online calendar): all your calendar entries will vanish if they’re stored in your off-line Calendar. When you log-out/log-off, your offline calendar will immediately reappear (but you may not realise it’s that simple).

If you accidentally sign-out (to the “work offline” state), you become perpetually offline, with no access to any calendar entries stored in the on-line calendar (unless you click the button again).

The description in the bottom-right corner of the program window refers to whether you are connected to the e-mail server or not.

It reflects whether the WLM program thinks it can reach the mail server — so it’s really a means of telling you the status of your internet connection. But it’s only a status bar. You CANNOT use it to control your internet connection, it can only report the connection’s status.

All the Calendars still exist!

You can store entries in any calendar you choose. But the calendars no longer sync with one another. Any entries added to the online calendar will not get added to your local calendar.

Make sure you are really looking at the Calendar stored in your main local account in WLM, and not (a) the one stored online, nor (b) one stored in some other e-mail account in WLM.

If you click the ‘work offline’ button on the ribbon you should see the calendar stored locally, and if you click that button again – it’s now labelled “work online” – you should see the calendar stored online.

They do not sync now.

You use the button labelled “work online/offline” to choose which calendar you see – the online one, or the local one for the e-mail account you have selected in WLM.

Calendar : Missing Entries

If you have missing entries in the Calendar (i.e. in the calendar which is stored on your local disk, not the one stored online), those entries might still survive on your local disk in a backup location:

1. Close the Windows Live Mail program.

2. Go to: Start > Control Panel > Folder Options

3. On the “View” tab, select “Show hidden files, folders & drives”, then click ‘OK’.

4. In Windows Explorer, open this folder:

“C:\Users\%username%\Appdata\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\Calendars”

5. Open the sub-folder that contains your e-mail account (such as: yourname @Hotmail).

6. Right-click on the folder named “DBStore”, then select “Properties”, then
select “Previous Versions”. Do you have a previous version listed there?
If it is older than the date your problem occurred on, your missing calendar
entries might be preserved in it.

7. To save it: click on the older version; then click on “Copy…”; then copy
it to your desktop.

8. To restore it: click on the older version, then click on “Restore…” to
over-write the current (faulty) version.

Alternatively, go to Start > Search, and search for SYSTEM RESTORE.

Open System Restore in the list of search results, then click on “Next”. Do you have a Restore Point listed there? If it is older than the date your problem occurred on, restoring that Restore Point might restore the old version of the Calendar, containing your missing calendar entries.

If your computer is in good working order, restoring any Restore Point shouldn’t normally cause you to lose e-mail messages, pictures, or other personal data. But it’s prudent to always do a full backup of your personal data before using System Restore, just in case of problems.

E-mail Address : Forgotten E-mail address (#1)

If the online service which provided you with your e-mail address no longer exists, you’ll have to create a new e-mail account.

For example, if you go to Microsoft’s website at https://outlook.live.com/mail/ they will guide you through the steps to set up a new e-mail account.

If you use Windows Live Mail for sending e-mail, open that program. In the left-hand Folders pane, right-click on the name of your account, then click on ‘Properties’.

That will open the ‘Properties’ window, which has various tabs. It normally opens at the default tab, named ‘General’. Your e-mail address is shown as one of the items on that tab. Probably the password will be stored there too, in most cases.

If only the password is unavailable that can be cured. In that event, ask here for additional advice about resetting your password.

Your previous e-mails may be saved in sub-folders within the Folders pane (but that will depend on how you have previously handled your mail).

If you were in the habit of saving messages as you received them, they will still exist in those sub-folders, even if you can no longer contact the online server run by your former e-mail service.

E-mail Address : Forgotten E-mail address (#2)

If you cannot remember your e-mail address, and cannot remember your password, there is no solution.

You must simply create a new e-mail account, e.g. on Microsoft’s website (https://outlook.live.com/mail/).

But if Windows Live Mail is installed on your computer, open it. Your e-mail address is stored in Windows Live Mail: in the left-hand Folders pane, right-click on the account name, and then select ‘Properties’.

The default tab will open, and on it will be information about your account including the e-mail address you’ve been using previously. Probably the password will be stored there too, in most cases.

If only the password is unavailable, that can be cured. In that event ask here for advice about resetting your password.

E-mails go to my Alternative e-mail address when sent to my Main e-mail address

This will only happen if you have configured one of your two accounts to transfer messages to the other (“message forwarding”). For example:

a. You may have set the other account to collect (“aggregate”) messages from your main account.

b. You may have set your main account to forward messages to the other account: there are two ways of
doing this at the website.

I could possibly help you find out what’s happening, if you post here the headers of a message addressed to one account but delivered to the other. To do this –

1. Select the message in the message list and press Ctrl+F3.
This should reveal the message source.

2. Highlight from the top down to the first blank line, then
press Ctrl+C to copy the highlighted portion.

3. Click “Reply” below this post at the Microsoft Community website,
click inside the reply box, then press Ctrl+V to paste it there.

Use x to obscure any personal information you don’t want to make public.
In e-mail addresses, please ‘x’ out the part before the ‘@’ symbol, and/or
change the ‘@’ symbol to ‘#’ – otherwise we won’t be able to see which
address is which, because the forum software will hide the whole address.

4. Add any other comments you want to make, then click on “Submit”.

E-mails are sent to Junk

Problem: Some e-mails I receive are delivered to the junk mail folder, even though the sender’s address has been added to my “Safe Sender” list.

All e-mails you receive are NOT in fact received by you.

They are received by your e-mail service supplier, not by you. The supplier’s e-mail server may have rules which require that messages from certain blacklisted sources will always be marked as junk.

The server may also have rules which require that messages containing certain words or phrases in the subject line will always be marked as junk.

These rules are decided by the e-mail service supplier, not by you.

If Windows Live Mail finds messages marked as junk on the server, it must download them to your computer as junk mail, i.e. it has to put them in the junk folder on the local computer.

Alternatively, messages received will be marked as junk — hence stored in the junk folder — if you have created rules in Windows Live Mail that require messages from certain sources, or messages containing certain words in the subject line, to be treated as junk.

Windows Live Mail can only create these ‘message rules’ for an e-mail account if the account uses the POP3 protocol. If you are NOT using that protocol, local rules can’t be the source of the trouble. Hence you can be sure this is not the cause if you are using (for example) an IMAP account.

Alternatively, messages received will be marked as junk — hence stored in the junk folder — if you or someone else has created rules in webmail that require messages from certain sources, or messages containing certain words in the subject line, to be treated as junk.

To discover whether such rules have been created without your consent, you will have to open your e-mail account in webmail, i.e. access your e-mail account in a web browser such as Firefox or Internet Explorer, on the web site of the e-mail service provider.

The on-line web interface for your webmail account will have a section identified as “Settings”, which will control what are typically described as ‘message rules’. Any rules defined by the service, by default, will be shown there.

These are some typical scenarios, explaining why what you are experiencing might be occuring.

Deleted Messages NOT being stored in Delete folder

When deleting an e-mail from the Inbox, or some other Windows Live Mail (WLM) folder, it is not put in the WLM “Deleted” folder.

Go to: File > Options > Mail > Advanced. Make sure that the option “Use the Deleted Items folder for IMAP accounts” is ticked/checked.

Alternatively, it may be that you haven’t told Windows Live Mail the name of the IMAP folder for deleted items, so it doesn’t know where to put them. Complete the following steps, to set up the conventional way of mapping the special folders:-

A. Right-click on the account name in the folder pane, then select ‘Properties’. On the ‘IMAP’ tab:

1. Select “Check for new messages in all folders” and “Store special folders on IMAP server”.

2. Type the following path names (carefully – if they are not exactly as shown below, it
may not work):

Sent Items path : Sent
Drafts path : Drafts
Deleted Items path : Deleted
Junk path : Junk

3. Click on ‘Apply’, then on ‘OK’. If you’re invited to reset the folder list, decline.

4. Right-click on the account name in the folder pane, then select ‘Show or hide folders’.
The ‘Show/Hide IMAP folders’ dialogue opens:

a. Click the ‘Reset List’ button to refresh the folder list from the server.

b. On the ‘All’ tab, use the ‘Show’ and ‘Hide’ buttons to indicate which folders
you want to see in the folder pane.

c. There may be a number of contacts folders. Hide them, because they don’t contain
anything meaningful in the mail window. It’s also wise to Hide any other folders,
like Outbox, that weren’t there before. There should be only one folder for each
of sent items, junk email and deleted items.

5. Click on ‘OK’.

B. While viewing the message list, press Ctrl-Shift-O for Options. On the ‘Advanced’ tab,
select: “Use the ‘Deleted Items’ folder for IMAP accounts”.

C. You can right-click on an IMAP folder in the folder pane and select ‘Synchronization’
options. You may wish to experiment with these; for the time being, mine are all on
‘All messages’. If you select ‘Headers only’, the message body will be downloaded
for display each time you select the message in the message list to read it. It will
not be stored on your computer.

The names of the IMAP special folders in Outlook Mail were accurate on 1 January 2018. They may not be the same as the names at mail.live.com; the special folders there are the ones at the top of the folder list in the left-hand pane, above any user-created folders. These will often have localized names, i.e. in the display language selected in the webmail options.

The above steps are necessary because Windows Live Mail calls the folder ‘Deleted’, while in your Outlook Mail it’s probably called ‘Deleted Items’ – this varies with the language settings. The IMAP folder is always called just ‘Deleted’ on the server, regardless of the web interface language. IMAP demands precision in use of folder names.

These instructions are courtesy of user ¡Firedog on another thread.

Error initializing MAPI

In trying to export messages from the storage folders in Windows Live Mail (WLM), to be imported into the Outlook mail program, you receive the following error message:

“An error occurred while initializing MAPI”

Typically, if “Microsoft Exchange” format is selected, when you click “Next” an error message appears: “The export could not be performed. An error occurred while initializing MAPI”.

This problem can often be solved by repairing the Windows Live Mail installation.

Repairing the installation won’t harm anything. It can help if the problem is with one or more of the WLM program files. A repair will check that all the program files are present and correct, and (where necessary) are properly registered.

This type of repair will also put right any error in the file associations, by re-associating the .eml file type with the WLM program in the Windows registry.

To do this repair, close all running programs, then press the Windows key + R key simultaneously, then type WLARP in the box that opens, then press “Enter”. In the window that then opens, click on “Repair all Windows Essentials programs”.

When it finishes, restart the computer. Then launch Windows Live Mail, and test it to find whether the fault is fixed. It should be possible now to export the files from WLM Microsoft Exchange and then import them to Outlook, with no MAPI error.

Alternatively, this error can occur because the 64-bit version of Microsoft Outlook does not support the importing of files from Windows Live Mail, which is a 32-bit program. Windows Live Mail is only compatible with 32-bit programs.

If you are running a 32-bit version of Outlook, an incompatibility will not be present, so cannot be the cause of your problem. But if you have the 64-bit version, so that the incompatibility is present, Microsoft recommends the following solution:

A. Export your mail messages (or contacts) from Windows Live Mail on another computer, one that has a 32-bit version of Outlook installed. Then transfer the resulting .pst files to the computer on which the 64-bit version of Outlook is installed.

B. Alternatively, uninstall the 64-bit version of Outlook on the affected computer, and install a 32-bit version of Outlook instead. The 32-bit version should be able to read files transferred from Windows Live Mail.

For further information on this problem, refer to Microsoft KB 2796528:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2796528

The following articles may assist with this problem:

Introduction to Outlook files (.pst and .ost):
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/
introduction-to-outlook-data-files-pst-and-ost-HA102749465.aspx

Export Windows Live Mail email, contacts and calendar data to Outlook:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/980534

How to uninstall Office 2013 or Office 365:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2739501

Discontinued features and changes in Outlook 2013:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/
discontinued-features-and-modified-functionality-in-outlook-2013-HA102606403.aspx

Socket Error 10053

Error message:

“Your server has unexpectedly terminated the connection”

Socket error 10053 usually means TCP/IP on your computer closed the connection to the server because of a fault of some kind.

To check whether this fault was a problem with the message that Windows Live Mail was trying to download, access the e-mail account in webmail and remove that message from the inbox, e.g. by moving it to a user-created folder. Then try connecting again in Windows Live Mail.

Post any new error message here, in your reply.

This suggestion was originally made by user ¡Firedog in a separate post.

Socket Error 11001 (related to Error Code: 0x800CCC0D)

11001 means that the host is not found at all. The error means the host name specified couldn’t be resolved to an IP address.

Because this error is related to resolving a name to an IP address, one way to eliminate it is to enter an IP address as the SMTP server (in Windows Live Mail’s settings). That ip address would be found on the website of the e-mail service you use.

Alternatively, if port 25 or port 465 has been blocked in your network or by your ISP, you can set the SMTP port number to 587 instead. Worth trying. But if it doesn’t work, remember to change the port number back to the original value afterwards.

Alternatively, I came across a thread where it was suggested to remove the problem account (which in that case was a Yahoo account) from Windows Live Mail, and then add it back. And it worked after that! That procedure might have succeeded because the user, in that case, also did a repair of Windows Live Mail before removing and adding-back the problem account.

The repair procedure is as follows:

a. To do a repair, close all running programs including Windows Live Mail, then press the Windows key + the R key simultaneously, then type WLARP in the box that opens, then press ‘Enter’. In the window that then opens, click on “Repair all Windows Essentials programs”.

b. When it finishes, restart the computer. Then launch Windows Live Mail, and test it to find out whether the fault is fixed.

c. If it is not fixed, remove and add-back the problem account. Ask here first if you need help with doing that.

Alternatively, there are many other possible causes of this error. Various software programs can act as an ip-blocker: including anti-virus programs, anti-malware programs, a firewall (including Windows Defender), various browser plug-ins or add-ons, and your HOSTS file.

One practical approach is to temporarily disable each such candidate, to see if the error is thereby fixed. A long term fix will depend on tracking down the immediate cause of the error, then choosing the safest method — which will often depend on which of the possibile causes is the real culprit.

Error Code: 552

Error message:

“DATA size exceeds maximum permitted”

At first sight, this error indicates that a message you tried to send was too big to be transmitted by your ISP or your e-mail service provider.

The error might be a red herring in some circumstances. To have a chance of being able to diagnose the problem, I’d need to see the EXACT wording of the entire error message. Click on it to select it, then use right-click to copy it, and then use right-click to paste it into your reply here.

Otherwise, post a screenshot of it:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/feedback/forum/fdbk_commsite-fdbk_getstart/
how-to-include-a-screenshot-in-your-post/2594b08e-32a3-476a-85a6-b021181be7e4

Error Code 80004005

Error code 0x80004005 indicates that Windows Live Mail (WLM) can’t receive mail.

Whenever the user clicks the “Receive” button it asks you to login, even though you already are. If you bypass the log-on screen, via settings, it gives the error code 0x80004005 (“Windows Live Mail Error ID: 0x80004005”).

My experience on this issue is limited to cases where Windows Live Mail is using the POP3 protocol, on Port 110.

Error 0x80004005 translates as an unspecified error.

It can occur if there is a file permissions error. For example if a change is made, by the user, to the folder designated for Windows Live Mail to store e-mail messages in. If the newly chosen folder does not have the correct file access permissions, error 80004005 can occur.

Alternatively, it may be that Windows Live Mail can’t log-on to the e-mail server using authenticated POP (APOP). Contact the e-mail provider, and verify that its server supports authenticated POP.

Alternatively, change the log-on setting in Windows Live Mail:

1. In the WLM folder list, right-click on the account’s name.

2. Then click on the “Properties” option.

3. Then, in the Properties screen, click on the “Servers” tab.

4. Then, under “Incoming Mail Server”, select the logon option
“Log on using clear text authentication”.

5. Click on the “Apply” button.

6. Click on “OK”. Then restart Windows Live Mail.

If you change the log-on type to “clear text authentication”, but the change doesn’t stick, click on “Work offline” (on the Windows Live Mail ‘ribbon’), then remove any unsent messages from the Outbox (below the account folders in WLM’s folder pane). Then close WLM. Wait a few minutes for it to complete its ‘housekeeping’ tasks (say 5 minutes), before relaunching it. Then send a test message to yourself.

Error Code 80041161

Error code 80041161 most likely indicates that the “Windows Live ID Sign-in Assistant” service isn’t running (the name of this service was later changed to “Microsoft Account Sign-in Assistant”, so that might be its name on your computer).

On the keyboard, press the Windows key and the R key simultaneously, to open a Run box. In that box, type SERVICES.MSC then press Enter. This should (after a brief delay) open the Services window, displaying a list of all services installed on the computer.

Scroll down to “Windows Live ID Sign-in Assistant” (or “Microsoft Account Sign-in Assistant”), then double-click on it. The properties dialogue for that service will open.

Set the “Startup type” to “Automatic”, or to “Automatic (Delayed start)”, in the dropdown list (if set to “Automatic (Delayed start)” it waits until Windows has loaded before starting). Then click “Apply”.

If the “Service status” shows as “Stopped”, click the “Start” button.

Close the dialogue by clicking on “OK”, then try starting Windows Live Mail again.

Error Code 80048820

Windows Live Mail errors: 0x80048820 and 0x80048849

Typical cause: The e-mail (or VPN) supplier is blocking port 25 (commonly as a response to excessive spam).

The only solution is to set up Windows Live Mail to use the following ports instead –

For SMTP use port 587
For POP3 use port 995

In the previous instance the following settings were also needed (but these presumably vary according to the supplier you are using) –

For Incoming mail use: pop3.live.com
For Outgoing mail use: smtp.live.com OR smtp-mail.outlook.com

The issue was encountered previously whilst setting up a new account. The program did not copy over the e-mail folders to the new account. The ultimate solution to that aspect is to set the folders up manually, then copy-and-paste into them all the e-mails from the old folders.

Error Code 800C0006

The error 0x800c0006 (sometimes mistakenly termed 0x800c006), indicates that an install of Windows Essentials 2012 has failed. Download the full setup program and re-install it.

In my opinion, you can probably choose whether to install WLM 2011 or WLM 2012.

It would be best to first write down on paper the current e-mail settings used by the program, so that you can re-install easily.

Windows Live Mail 2011 (“WLM 2011”):

It originally gave the user a choice of 3 services: IMAP, POP3, or DeltaSync. In 2016, Microsoft switched off its DeltaSync service. Today you can only use either IMAP or POP3.

By using IMAP instead of DeltaSync, Windows Live Mail 2011 continues to work normally. It is NOT necessary to change to Windows Live Mail 2012.

Download the installation program “Windows Live Essentials 2011”:

https://archive.org/details/windowsliveessentials2011_201908

Windows Live Mail 2012:

Released on 7 August 2012, as part of “Windows Essentials 2012”. It requires Windows 7 or later.

It is identical in use to WLM 2011. The only difference is the discontinuance of support for Windows Vista and for DeltaSync. It gives the user a choice of IMAP, POP3, or Exchange ActiveSync.

There are no benefits in using WLM 2012, unless you wish to use Exchange ActiveSync.

Download the installation program “Windows Essentials 2012” (build 16.4.3528.0331):

https://web.archive.org/web/20170112124505/http://wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/C/1/B/C1BA42D6-6A50-4A4A-90E5-FA9347E9360C/en/wlsetup-all.exe

How to Install WLM –

Run the installation program, choose the option “Windows Live Mail”, and install only the mail program.

If you create a new account within Windows Live Mail using the IMAP or POP3 protocol, WLM will sync to your e-mail account on the online server (will download all the ‘live’ folders present on the server, including all mail for the last few years):

1. Click on the “Accounts” tab on the ribbon, then click on the “E-mail” button.

2. It’ll launch the “Add new email accounts” wizard. Now provide required information such as your e-mail account address, password, display name. Then select “Manually configure server settings”. Then click on “Next”.

3. On the next screen, select IMAP (or POP3) from the “Server type” drop-down list, then enter the following details (for accounts other than Hotmail, get the incoming and outgoing server addresses and port number off the website of your e-mail service provider, or off the piece of paper you wrote them down on):

IMAP Settings (for Hotmail):

Incoming Mail –
Server type: IMAP
Server address: imap-mail.outlook.com (Port: 993)
SSL required: Yes
Authenticate using: Clear text
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp-mail.outlook.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

IMAP Settings (for Hotmail) – Alternative:

Incoming Mail –
Server type: IMAP
Server address: outlook.office365.com (Port: 993)
SSL required: Yes
Authenticate using: Clear text
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp.office365.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

POP3 Settings (for Hotmail):

Incoming Mail –
Server type: POP3
Server address: pop-mail.outlook.com (Port: 995)
SSL required: Yes
Logon Username: YourName @hotmail.com { Your details

Outgoing Mail –
Server type: SMTP
Server address: smtp-mail.outlook.com (Port: 25 or 587)
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires Authentication: Yes

Authentication settings –

The authentication instructions for the outgoing mail server warn you to use the same username and password as on the incoming mail server.

Accordingly, be certain to correct those details if they are not the same, such that both sending and receiving do use the same username and password.

In addition, the username must be the FULL AND COMPLETE name of your e-mail account: i.e. it must include all the text before AND after the @ symbol.

If you FAIL to include the second half of the account name (e.g. @hotmail.com), then sending and receiving mail from that account will likewise FAIL.

Advantages of IMAP over POP3 –

IMAP and POP3 both still work. To change to IMAP (e.g. from POP3 or DeltaSync), you have to add a new account in WLM (using the option ‘Manually configure server settings’), and choose IMAP as the type.

IMAP works well with WLM, although you have to re-configure the Junk mail folder in the WLM settings to get it to the right place – see step 4 below.

POP3 only works in WLM if you enable it in the options on the e-mail service’s website first. Another drawback is that you will only get your Inbox mail (if mail goes to the Junk folder, for instance, you’ll never see it).

4. Fix the duplicate IMAP folders –

If you have selected IMAP as the account type (in step 3 above), the WLM program automatically creates the following folders in WLM’s folder list for that account:

Deleted Items
Sent Items
Junk E-mail

The folders with those names are useless duplicates (the real folders are those named “Deleted”, “Junk” and “Sent”). You must remove the useless folders, as follows:

1. Select WLM’s option to work OFFLINE (on the ribbon, go to: Home > Work Offline)

2. Right-click on the added e-mail account’s name (e.g. myname @emaildotcom), then click on “Properties”.

3. On the “IMAP” tab, under “Special Folders”, untick “Store special folders on IMAP server”.

4. Click “OK”.

5. When asked for confirmation to refresh the folders list, click “Yes”. It’ll take a few moments to download and refresh the folders list.

6. Manually delete the useless folders one by one: select a folder (“Deleted Items”, “Sent Items”, or “Junk E-mail”), then right-click on that folder, then select “Delete”.

7. Select WLM’s option to work ONLINE (on the ribbon, go to: Home > Work Online).

WLARP Repair error –

If you are getting the error 0x800c0006 when running the WLARP.EXE repair program (“Repair the Windows Essentials Mail Program”), and the repair fails, you may see the following error message on screen:

“Repair didn’t go as smoothly as we’d like.
Error: 0x800c0006; Source: Watson-x64”.

Don’t just ASSUME this means there is a problem: run the e-mail program and find out. I get a similar installation error message, but find the program has in fact been installed, and works fine.

“Watson-x64” refers to the 64 bit Windows diagnostic tool called ‘Dr Watson’, which is a system level process that handles error diagnosis and reporting. The process is run by the Windows file DWWIN.EXE (if you aren’t running Windows 7, the file may have a different name on your computer). A text file (usually named drwtsn32.log) is created whenever an error is detected, recording helpful details.

If there really is a fault, user Danilo35 reports on another thread that it seems to be because the INITPKI.DLL (64-bit) file is not sending the necessary data to the INITPKI.DLL (32-bit) file.

If there really is a fault, it can be fixed by reinstalling Windows Live Mail, because error “0x800c0006” arises due to incorrect installation (or uninstallation) of software.

The fault can be a result of registry damage, caused maliciously by a virus infection (so remove the virus, too, by running an anti-virus scan), or caused accidentally by injudicious use of a so-called “registry cleaner” (which you fix by not using one again), or caused accidentally by a power failure.

In effect, the malicious or accidental damage to the Windows registry has caused a partial uninstall of the e-mail program, i.e. some registry setting needed by the program has been corrupted.

If an ordinary re-install does not cure it, you must take the special steps needed to do a “clean” re-install of the program (i.e. you must do a manual delete of all the Registry keys that control the program, followed by a re-install).

Error Code 800CCC0B : TalkTalk or Hotmail

The error message typically specifies error number 0x800CCC0B

In this error, your e-mail account can’t log-on (or can’t send).

This is caused by your e-mail service provider, which has made changes to its server settings without your consent. As a result, users of older e-mail programs such as Windows Live Mail (WLM) can no longer log-on (or can no longer send messages).

To find out whether this is the error you are experiencing, open your e-mail account on the e-mail provider’s website, in a web browser. Look at the settings for POP and IMAP. There are two things you might need to deal with:

1. If the website’s POP/IMAP settings now specify a different server address to the one you use in WLM, change the server address in WLM to match the new address mentioned on the website.

To check or alter the settings used by WLM: in WLM’s left-hand folders pane, right-click on the E-mail Account’s name; then click on the ‘Properties’ option; then click on the ‘Advanced’ tab. Ask here if you need further help.

2. If the website’s POP/IMAP settings now specify TLS and/or STARTTLS as the encryption method, those protocols have been substituted for the original SSL protocol. Your account has changed from using SSL security to using the newer encryption method “TLS” or “STARTTLS”. The following fix involves editing the Windows Registry.

Windows 7 received an update in 2016 (known as KB3140245) which adds TLS 1.2 support, but it is not enabled by default, so it requires the user to make a small change in the Windows registry. WLM’s account settings only refer to SSL, but it will use TLS if it’s available, i.e. if that registry change is made.

Update number KB3140245 is almost certainly installed on your system already. It doesn’t by itself solve your problem: in Windows 7 you must also enable TLS 1.1 and 1.2 support by adding a registry key (that key is already present in later versions of Windows). How to do that I describe below.

If you don’t already have it, update KB3140245 (“Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems”) is available for download for Windows 7 systems from the Microsoft Update Catalog:

http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/search.aspx?q=kb3140245

To install this update, you must have the Windows 7 Service Pack 1 installed.

You must edit the Windows registry to add the “DefaultSecureProtocols” key.

To do this automatically, click here:

https://download.microsoft.com/download/0/6/5/0658B1A7-6D2E-474F-BC2C-D69E5B9E9A68/MicrosoftEasyFix51044.msi

In the “File Download” dialog box that opens, click “Run” or “Open”, then follow the steps shown in the “Easy Fix” wizard that opens.

That wizard creates a Restore Point, so that if you need to reverse the changes you can do a System Restore.

To do the Registry edit manually:

1. Create a restore point using System Restore.

2. Open the Registry editor:

Press the Windows key; type REGEDIT in the search box; then double-click on the term REGEDIT.EXE in the search results. If you are unsure about finding the correct area to edit, read this article –

https://www.lifewire.com/hkey-local-machine-2625902

3. In the Registry Editor, navigate to this location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols

4. If the TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2 subkeys are missing from that location (i.e. if the “Protocols” key only has a single subkey named “SSL 2.0”), you need to create them manually. Here’s how to do so:

a. Right-click on “Protocols”. Select “New”, then “Key”. Name the new key “TLS 1.1” (without the inverted commas).

b. Right-click on that new key, then create another key underneath it named “Client” (without the inverted commas).

c. Right-click on the new “Client” key. Select “New”, then “DWORD (32bit) Value”. Name the new item “DisabledByDefault” (without the inverted commas). By default, its value is zero (which is what you need, so leave it as that).

d. Right-click on “Protocols”. Select “New”, then “Key”. Name the new key “TLS 1.2” (without the inverted commas).

e. Right-click on that new key, then create another key underneath it named “Client” (without the inverted commas).

f. Right-click on the new “Client” key. Select “New”, then “DWORD (32bit) Value”. Name the new item “DisabledByDefault” (without the inverted commas). By default, its value is zero (which is what you need, so leave it as that).

Here is a link to an image which shows what the fixed registry should now look like:

https://filestore.community.support.microsoft.com/api/images/20b2fcb9-e29d-4e52-b9fb-1231c5f6968f?upload=true

Error Code 800CCC0D

Error number 0x800CCC0D (IXP_E_CANT_FIND_HOST) means the program cannot locate the server.

That does not suggest a problem in Windows Live Mail. It suggests the problem lies elsewhere.

The e-mail server might be unreachable (crashed). You can test for that by trying to use webmail (instead of Windows Live Mail) to send your messages, i.e. sign in to your e-mail account on the website of the e-mail provider, using your web browser, and send a test message from your account to the same account.

Alternatively, because this error is related to resolving a name to an IP address, one way to eliminate it is to enter an IP address as the SMTP server (in Windows Live Mail’s settings). That ip address would be found on the website of the e-mail service you use.

The repair procedure is as follows:

b. When it finishes, restart the computer. Then launch Windows Live Mail, and test it to find out whether the fault is fixed.

c. If it is not fixed, remove and add-back the problem account. Ask here first if you need help with doing that.

The reason why this type of fix works is typically that some other process on your computer has made a one-time change to the computer, which has interfered with the working of Windows Live Mail. By removing then adding-back the affected account, you are in effect taking the computer back to its state before the one-time change happened.

Alternatively, Something on your computer might be blocking the messages which the e-mail program tries to send to the e-mail server you specified. So you might want to undo any recent changes you made to the computer which may have caused that.

Things that can block such messages include: your anti-virus software; the computer’s hosts file; the Windows firewall; a virus infection; a malware infection; or an ip filter. To name but a few possible causes.

Error Code 800CCC0F

Error message:

Your server has unexpectedly terminated the connection

A possible cause of error 800CCC0F is if you have ‘Secure Password Authentication’ selected.

In Windows Live Mail, check your e-mail account’s settings (as follows):

1. Open Windows Live Mail (WLM).
2. In the left-hand pane (i.e. the folders pane), right-click on
the name of your e-mail account (e.g. yourname @hotmail.com).
3. Click on ‘Properties’.
4. Click on the ‘Servers’ tab.

If you have “Log on using secure password authentication” selected, that is the source of your troubles.

Few public mail servers support or require that. De-select it by clicking on “Log on using clear text authentication” instead. Your password is still safe, because it’s passed through a secure TLS tunnel, by virtue of you selecting “This server requires a secure connection (SSL)” on the ‘Advanced’ tab.

Save the new settings, then re-start Windows Live Mail.

Alternatively, error 800CCC0F can be caused by a DNS error.

To fix such an error, clear the DNS cache and then re-register the DNS –

To clear the DNS cache:
1. Open an elevated command prompt.
2. Type the following command at the prompt: ipconfig /flushdns
3. Press the ENTER key (on the keyboard).

To register the DNS:
4. Open an elevated command prompt.
5. Type the following command at the prompt: ipconfig /registerdns
6. Press the ENTER key (on the keyboard).

How to open an “elevated command prompt”:
1. Click on the START button on the Taskbar, then click on the RUN button.
2. In the ‘Open’ box, type: CMD
3. Click on ‘OK’
4. For further help, do a Google search on that phrase.

Alternatively, error 800CCC0F can occur if your e-mail service provider is now requiring that you connect to it using OAUTH (or XOAUTH2) authentication.

Windows Live Mail does NOT support the OAUTH or XOAUTH2 protocols.

To access a service that uses either of those protocols, open the e-mail service’s website in a browser, sign-in to your account, then enable the option “Allow less secure apps…”.

That is to say, when you change it (on their website), so that their service no longer uses the default setting (OAUTH or XOAUTH2), Windows Live Mail will begin working again.

Yahoo e-mail accounts: I’m seeing reports which suggest Yahoo now uses only OAUTH, nothing else. So OAUTH is now the only option, not the default option. Windows Live Mail can’t use OAUTH, so, if the reports are correct, the only way to continue using Windows Live Mail is to move to a service that’s not Yahoo (e.g. Hotmail/Outlook).

Gmail e-mail accounts: For Gmail accounts, Windows Live Mail will continue to work normally if you use an App password (or Two-factor authentication *and* an App password), instead of your original password, by following these instructions:

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833?hl=en

Alternatively, error 800CCC0F can be caused by:

1) Incorrect IMAP or POP3 settings (usually the SSL option for SMTP), or
2) A firewall blocking the port.

Firstly, open Windows Live Mail and see if there is an e-mail stuck in the Outbox (which, if present, will block ALL outgoing messages). If so, delete that e-mail. You need to go offline to do this: click on “Work Offline” in WLM: Home > Work Offline

Secondly, re-configure your e-mail account as follows –

A. If you have an IMAP account: replace the current (incorrect) settings with the correct IMAP settings, as shown on the website of your e-mail service provider.

B. If you have a POP3 account: replace the current (incorrect) settings with the correct POP3 settings, as shown on the website of your e-mail service provider; and see also paragraph D, below.

The IMAP and POP3 settings are found in WLM at the following location: right-click on the name of your e-mail account (e.g. yourname @hotmail.com). Then click on ‘Properties’. There are 5 tabs shown if your account is an IMAP account. There are 4 tabs shown if your account is a POP3 account.

Thirdly, disable your security software, your firewall, and your anti-virus program (for testing purposes).

Then open this link:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/livemail-email/how-can-i-resolve-machine-configuration-issues-in/7462aa67-6131-4504-a11b-7060a95c694b

Then scroll down the page that opens, to the section marked “Firewall or security software may be blocking Windows Live Mail or may be blocking a required port to send or receive mail”. Follow the instructions in that section (those instructions depend on which version of Windows you have), to fix the error whereby a firewall is blocking the port which WLM needs to use.

Alternatively, error 800CCC0F can occur because it’s impossible to connect to an IMAP server using the POP3 protocol, and it’s impossible to connect to a POP3 server using the IMAP protocol.

Your e-mail account is wrongly configured if the server you mentioned is an IMAP server but your WLM account uses POP3, or if the server you mentioned is a POP3 server but your WLM account uses IMAP.

First, find out whether your WLM account is IMAP or is POP3:

1. Open Windows Live Mail (WLM). In the left-hand pane (i.e. the folders list), right-click on the name of your e-mail account (e.g. yourname @hotmail.com). Then click on ‘Properties’.

2. If there are 5 tabs shown, and the 5th tab is labelled ‘IMAP’, your account is an IMAP account and therefore must use only IMAP settings. If there are only 4 tabs shown, and the ‘IMAP’ tab is missing, your account is a POP3 account and therefore must use only POP3 settings.

Second, find out whether your WLM account is correctly configured, i.e. that it is using *only* IMAP settings (if it’s an IMAP account), or *only* POP3 settings (if it’s a POP3 account). Those settings are shown on the website of your e-mail service provider.

If your WLM account is wrongly configured, you have these 4 options (choose one of them) –

A. If you have an IMAP account: replace the current (incorrect) settings with the proper IMAP settings shown on the website of your e-mail service provider.

B. If you have a POP3 account: replace the current (incorrect) settings with the proper POP3 settings shown on the website of your e-mail service provider. See also paragraph D, below.

C. Switch to using IMAP (if you have a POP3 account):

You can’t just change the account type to IMAP, you have to add an IMAP account in WLM, and then remove the unwanted POP3 account from WLM.

1. Right-click on the existing account name in the folder pane, then select “Properties”.
On the “General” tab, deselect “Include this account when receiving mail or synchronizing”,
then click “Apply”, then click “OK”. This ensures that the account folders will remain intact,
with their contents, during the transition.

2. When viewing your message list, press Ctrl+Shift+T to start the “Add your email account” wizard.

3. Enter your e-mail address, password, and a display name for outgoing messages.

4. Select “Manually configure server settings”, then click “Next”.

5. For the incoming server, select “IMAP” from the dropdown list.
For the incoming server address, type the IMAP server address
shown on the website of your e-mail service provider.
For the port number, type the IMAP port number shown on the
website of your e-mail service provider.
Select “Requires a secure connection (SSL)”.
For “Authenticate using”, select “Clear text” from the dropdown list.
For “Log-on username”, enter your full e-mail address.

6. For the outgoing mail server address, type the SMTP server address
shown on the website of your e-mail service provider.
For the port number, type the SMTP port number shown on the website
of your e-mail service provider.
Select “Requires a secure connection (SSL)”.
Select “Requires authentication”.

7. Click “Next”, then click “Finish”.

The WLM program will connect and begin to download the account folders and their contents. This may take some time if there are a lot of folders and/or messages, and it may stall. Be patient.

D. Continue to use POP3 (if you have a POP3 account):

1. In WLM, right-click on the e-mail account’s name in the left-hand pane
(i.e. the folder pane), then select “Properties”.

2. On the “Servers” tab –
# “My incoming mail server is a” must say: POP3
# Change “Incoming mail (POP3)” to the POP3 server address
shown on the website of your e-mail service provider.
# Change “Outgoing mail (SMTP)” to the SMTP server address
shown on the website of your e-mail service provider.
# Ensure that “Email username” is your full e-mail address.
# Select “Log on using clear text authentication”.
# Select “My server requires authentication”.

3. On the “Advanced” tab –
# Change the port number for Outgoing mail to the SMTP port number
shown on the website of your e-mail service provider.
# Change the port number for Incoming mail to the POP3 port number
shown on the website of your e-mail service provider.
# Select “This server requires a secure connection (SSL)”
for BOTH outgoing (SMTP) and incoming (POP3) mail.

4. Click “Apply”, then click “OK”.

After doing option A, B, C or D you should check whether the WLM account is working as you want it to:

1. Remove any unsent messages from the Outbox (below the account folders, in the left-hand folder pane).

2. Compose a new test message, with a unique subject, and send it to yourself (i.e. from the account in question to the same account).

3. Post on this forum any new error message: click on an error message to select it; then use right-click to copy it; and use right-click again to paste it into the text entry box in your reply here.

Error Code 800CCC13 (#1)

Error Code in Windows Live Mail:

0x800CCC13 IXP_E_SOCKET_WRITE_ERROR Unable to read Winsock reply

Repair the Windows Live Mail installation. This will do no harm, and will help if the problem is with one or more of the Windows Live Mail program files: a repair will check that all the program files are present and correct, and (where necessary) are properly registered.

Accordingly, this type of repair will put right any error in the file associations, by re-associating the .eml file type with the Windows Live Mail program in the Windows registry.

When it finishes, restart the computer. Then launch Windows Live Mail, and test it to find out whether the fault is fixed.

Error Code 800CCC13 (#2)

Sending e-mail, using an SMTP server, generates this error:

800CCC13 Unable to connect to server

Windows Live Mail (WLM) receives mail okay, but cannot send.

Sometimes the first message sent is successful: there is no error, and it is received. Subsequent messages sent result in the error message, and the sent mail is left stuck in the Outbox.

Where this happens, the first step – and VERY important – is to DELETE the message in the Outbox. (Even if the original fault is cured, mail will continue NOT to send if the original broken message is still in the Outbox, as the Outbox will thereby be blocked.)

I’ve seen reports that running the command SFC /SCANNOW from a command prompt window fixes corrupt files, and restores WLM to normal working again, on Windows 10. Try this first. There have been lots of reports of success with this fix:

1. Click the START button (bottom left corner of screen)
2. In the search box, type: “command prompt”
3. Press the ENTER key to start the search.
4. Right-click on the command prompt link in the search results,
then select “Run as administrator”.
5. Click on “Yes” in the pop-up box.
6. In the command prompt window, type: SFC /SCANNOW
7. Press the ENTER key to start the scan.
8. When the scan eventually finishes (might take over an hour),
restart the computer.

Dare-a-Day Davy — Frankenstein strip

Posted on 21 February 2022 by StephenPoppitt

Ken Reid‘s banned Dare-a-Day Davy Frankenstein strip, from Pow! (1967-68).

Ken Reid (1919–1987) was a British comic artist and writer, best known as the co-creator of Roger the Dodger and Jonah for The Beano and Faceache for Jet.

Posted in British Comic Books | Leave a comment

Metrication in England : An Analysis

Posted on 27 March 2021 by StephenPoppitt

Disadvantages of Metric –

Metrication is used by businesses, through sharp practice, as a means for cheating the consumer by providing goods at an under-weight, because the consumer does not understand the system of weights and measures used, which is inherently confusing and obscure, with its profusion of similarly-named units, and its division into parts per thousand.

Traditional units of weight are never present in greater divisions than sixteenths (not thousandths), and the traditional units do not possess confusingly similar names, easily mistaken for each other.

Metrication as a cloak for fraud is commonly encountered: there is widespread abuse of the regulations, which in practice are used (wherever there is no comparison with traditional units) to deceive the consumer about the quantities being sold, rather than to provide the supposed clarity.

This is also a fundamental breach of human rights: a deprivation of freedom of choice. Genuine freedom of choice must include freedom of contract: the freedom of the parties to the contract to choose for themselves the units of weights and measures used in buying and selling the goods or services involved. Then the parties would be free to choose units which they understand.

There is no justification for imposing a system of weights and measures that one party to the contract does not understand: the regulations never stipulate what language the contract must be in, so the French consumer is not hamstrung by being required to do business in English, he is free to choose to use the French language in the contract. Yet the English consumer is forced to do business in a foreign language, by being compelled to use a French system of weights and measures which he does not understand.

The principle of freedom of contract is already accepted by the European Commission: it agrees that the parties shall be free to choose for themselves the terms of the contract, on the question of whether to use English or some other language in writing the contract. Yet the parties are currently not free to choose the units of weights and measures to use in it. The logic of the Commission’s argument is that French must be banned, and all contracts must henceforth be made in English-only, because only one exclusive system can be permitted. If the units of trade must be exclusive, so must the language be: that is the logical conclusion to the metric-only argument, so far as it relates to trade.

Further, because British law wrongfully imposes criminal penalties for non-use of the metric system – wrongfully, in that the European Directive does not require this, which addresses only matters of contract law, not criminal law – it becomes of paramount importance that the consumer genuinely understands the units used.

A consumer, facing a normal criminal charge in a court of law, must, by European law, be charged in, and questioned in, a language which he understands. But an English court, applying English law, on a European charge of non-use of metric units, is apparantly under no such obligation: an English consumer can be prosecuted merely because he does not understand the metric language, and commits an offence merely by not understanding it. The offensive units are not translated into units which he can understand: which, by European law, is a fundamental breach of his right not to be charged or questioned except in a language which he in fact understands.

There is no justification for imposing a European system of weights and measures on the consumer, where there is no element of cross-border trade involved. All regulation of trade by the Commission must be ended, wherever it relates to a sale of goods or services, by a seller, to a purchaser in the same country. Such matters are exclusively for the individual countries to decide: the Commission has no role. No cross-border trade occurs, so no barrier to such trade is involved in the transaction. There is therefore no objective of trade policy to be met, if trade policy is genuinely about reducing barriers to cross-border trade.

In practice, the existence of a trade policy is commonly used as a pretext for banning any practice the Commission disapproves of, regardless of whether that practice has any bearing on cross-border trade. That, too, is sharp practice.

Posted in Weights and Measures | Leave a comment

Science – Time and Gravity

Posted on 27 February 2021 by StephenPoppitt

Time slows down as gravity increases (i.e. the rate at which time passes depends upon the local strength of the gravity field, with time passing more slowly at greater field strength).

Time slowing as one approaches the center of mass implies that motion is reduced, which in turn implies inertia has increased, ultimately becoming so strong that all motion is impossible.

This seems to contradict my existing theory that inertia is reduced in the direction of the mass. Hence it is necessary to consider whether the two theories can be reconciled.

Is the slowing of motion compatible with the greater compression of spacetime nearer to the mass? Can an effect other than inertia account for the deceased freedom of motion? Can the compression of the fields account for a reduction in radial motion, i.e. spin/rotation?

Velocity increases on approach to the mass, because inertial resistance to (linear) motion reduces. Yet the resistance to (rotational) motion increases. Is there any merit in the idea that the altered configuration/geometry of spacetime is obeying Newton’s law of conservation of momentum, by converting the particle’s rotational motion into linear motion? In other words, is rotational motion reducing because it is being bled off to fuel an increase in linear motion?

Is it possible that rotational motion is being hampered by the fact that inertia increases in the direction away from the mass? As the particle rotates, it spins toward the mass for half its spin, but spins away from the mass for the other half of its spin. Is its rotation being impeded in the 2nd half of its spin by the same forces which are easing that spin in the 1st half? Is it losing the ability to spin, because it has to fight the inertial gradient when spinning? That would account logically for the different responses of its linear and rotational motion to identical structural conditions.

Indeed, the slowing suggests that time is a product of the particle’s rotational motion (more simply, that time is a consequence of motion). The implication is that spin causes time, if we view time as simply the existence of cause-and-effect. If a particle has no motion, it has no capacity to interact with other particles, i.e. in chemical or atomic reactions, without which capacity it cannot change its state, hence events cannot occur.

On Earth, time runs (slightly) faster as altitude (i.e. distance from the Earth’s centre of mass) increases. In a house, time runs (slightly) slower on the ground floor than on the upper floors.

As you approach a Black Hole, time runs slower. This is because gravitational strength increases as you approach. At the event horizon, time stands still.

Your point-of-view may literally depend upon whether you are observing the event from the event horizon, or from a discrete distance. In the former case you will not observe the effect, because you will be participating in it.

This implies that no physics is occurring within a Black Hole, because within the Event Horizon time has ceased to be: cause-and-effect has been suspended by the strength of the local gravity, which prevents the normal sub-atomic processes (that govern cause-and-effect) from running.

An analogy is a deep-freeze: time has been frozen, because all motion has been frozen. Motion on a sub-atomic level ceases entirely: presumably being impossible due to the immense strength of the gravitational attraction, which has the effect of binding the particles present to one another.

Alternatively, it may be that the sub-atomic spaces in which the processes of cause-and-effect normally occur are filled with the collapsed debris of the super-compressed particles, making it impossible for those processes to happen.

In other words, the impossibility of any motion is a simple consequence of the density of matter/energy within the event horizon: the space required for normal interactions, which cause-and-effect involves, is occupied by particle debris.

In theory, mathematics implies that density reaches infinity within the event horizon: this may simply mean that all the spaces (those tiny cells of which spacetime is composed at the Planck-length) are occupied by the particle debris: such that all space is completely filled — that it is literally impossible to compress matter/energy further.

Time may have ceased to exist only in the sense that the particles which give rise to cause-and-effect have ceased to exist.

Motion, in a sea of undifferentiated energy, might still exist: with energy continuing to propagate at the speed of light, but trapped within the event horizon by the fact that space has been curved to so great an extent that it has folded back upon itself, forming a complete circle.

Gravity at this strength overwhelms all other fundamental forces. Because the density of matter present at the sub-atomic level has exceeded a critical value, the fundamental forces which normally operate to maintain a minimum separation between particles (e.g. Pauli’s exclusion principle) are overwhelmed: their ‘push’ force pushing outwards is less strong than the ‘pull’ attraction of gravity pushing inwards.

This implies that final collapse into a Black Hole will be swift, perhaps instantaneous, once the effect of Pauli’s exclusion principle is negated (at a critical mass density): there is then nothing to prevent a complete collapse to what we term a ‘singularity’ (possibly a misnomer, since it is well established that the radius of a Black Hole is rarely so small, but a singularity may be simply the initial state from which Black Holes grow).

But for Pauli’s principle, millions of times the normal number of particles could be fitted into the space which one atom ordinarily occupies. Where gravitational collapse occurs, and Pauli’s exclusion principle is overwhelmed, the particles most likely cease to be particles in any real sense, but are reduced to the energy out of which the former particles were built.

At the immensely tiny scale of the Planck length, the resulting sea of energy (now undifferentiated energy) still exists: it does not all disappear into “a mathematical point, with no dimensions”, not really, although to our limited senses this might appear to be what’s happening.

In actuality, all of spacetime normally comprises vast empty spaces: the individual atoms in a seemingly solid object are actually separated by greater distances than separate the stars in our galaxy (relative to their size), such that if you took away the electromagnetic and nuclear forces which normally keep the atoms apart, there would be room for billions of nucleons to be packed in where only one can exist under normal conditions.

The gravitational forces within the Black Hole in effect do exactly that: the gravity negates all the ordinary forces, and permits billions of nucleons to be stacked up (just as there is room between one star and the next to pack in billions of stars, if the normal laws of physics were to be suspended).

As additional mass is attracted by gravity and falls into the Black Hole, the amount of mass present increases, the strength of local gravity increases, the radius of the event horizon increases, and the radius of the “singularity” also increases.

Logic dictates that the singularity must grow in size, albeit slowly, as additional mass is added to it. Matter is in effect being compressed until it occupies only a tiny fraction of its normal volume of space, but it must still go somewhere. It cannot cease to exist: it must add to the volume of the singularity.

In a normal atom, the gravitational force is approximately one million times weaker than the electromagnetic force. One implication of this is that in order for gravity to overcome the electromagnetic force, the density of atoms present must be increased a millionfold.

The fact that gravitational field strength varies with mass (i.e. with the number of particles present) implies that gravity is a force whose properties are additive: that is, the amount of gravitational attraction per cubic inch of space depends upon the number of particles (i.e. quarks) within that volume.

This implies that gravity is a property of quarks: that the strength of gravity is derived by multiplying a fundamental gravitational constant by the number of quarks present.

Electromagnetism, on the other hand, is a force which is NOT additive: its strength is not affected by the number of quarks present. This implies that electromagnetism is not a property of quarks.

Accordingly, logic implies that it is a property of the electron, not the quark (that being the only other particle present): and the further implication (of its not being additive) is that it is generated by the _motion_ of the electron (not by the number of electrons present).

We understand why the electron may be moving at a fixed speed, i.e. the speed of light, being in theory an electromagnetic wave (rather than a particle). And we would not expect a wave to have an additive effect, after the manner of a particle, given that a wave and a particle are quite different phenomena.

The two matters, taken together, imply that gravity is capable of overwhelming electromagnetism, if a sufficient density of quarks can be brought together.

Time

“Oh to ride on a beam of light, so that time would stand still forever.” (James Follett)

Einstein’s theory says that if you could travel at the speed of light time would cease to exist for you. You would be ageless, while the rest of the universe would grow old around you.

This implies that, for a photon, time does not exist. As a photon travels at the speed of light, time must be standing still on it. So if Einstein is correct, logic implies that the photon can experience no change, no evolution, no cause-and-effect, since for it time has stopped.

If Einstein is wrong, one possibility is that time might slow to a degree, but not entirely.

But Einstein could be correct, as it is possible that time dilation might have no meaning in relation to a mere packet of energy, since it cannot undergo cause-and-effect in any meaningful sense under any conditions, because its entire existence is as a mere vibration in the cosmic structure termed “spacetime”: a particle experiences cause and effect, in many ways (these are exhibited as its temperature, its electrons orbiting, its spin, its field of quarks combining and recombining: an endless series of events occuring); but a mere vibration involves none of this activity.

An electromagnetic wave has properties: it has a frequency, and thus a wave-length, and an amplitude. But these are all static properties, which are unchanging as the wave propagates; they are fixed properties that *define* the wave; they do not interact with each other, nor with external forces. A wave might be absorbed, by a particle, at least in part, but it is thereby destroyed: this type of interaction – seemingly the only type possible – does not amount to the wave experiencing cause-and-effect: that would require the wave to change its state. Instead it merely ceases to exist, converted into (heat) energy, modifying the temperature of the particle by adding a tiny amount of additional energy to it.

Time and Motion

Time comes to a stop at the event horizon, because the passing of time is merely a way of describing the rate at which cause-and-effect occurs. There can be no cause-and-effect where the motion (i.e. the spin) of particles ceases, because cause-and-effect is only a description of that motion: the happening of event B depends on the prior occurance of event A.

The effect of gravity, a property of mass, is to slow down the motion (i.e. spin) of particles. This slowing causes time to pass more slowly, simply because events happen more slowly where the particles which cause them spin more slowly (i.e. interact more slowly with other particles).

A distant observer, not being caught in the same gravity field, is unaffected by it: therefore he can see that, at the event horizon, time is passing more slowly, relative to the rate at which it passes for him.

An observer at the event horizon, for whom time is being slowed by the strong gravity, does not notice that slowing, because he is caught in the effect. But because his own time is slowing, he notices instead that the rate at which time is passing for the distant observer appears to be speeding up.

Properties of a Black Hole

If the spacetime field lines curve, one consequence must be to create a hole at the precise center of the effect/field.

(Perhaps the apparent curvature is an illusion: what is actually happening is that the strength of the field is describing a curve, due to the spherical nature of the field, which has a center and propagates outwards from that point equally in all directions.

Because the field strength is curving, an unpowered object caught in the field will – because it is not accelerating, but maintains a constant velocity – follow a path between points of equal strength: since that path follows a curve, the object does too.)

A black hole must represent a zone in which the strength of inertia is zero at all points within the event horizon, implying that there is no resistance to movement in any direction.

However, no events can occur, as all motion (i.e. spin) is gravity-locked. Cause-and-effect is frozen, so time is not passing in any meaningful sense. At least, events are not occurring, so if there is movement there can be no outcome, because particles (if they still exist) cannot interact.

It is possible that within the zone, the energy which was trapped within the particles by their spin (perhaps, indeed, all the energy within the vacuum field) is released by the cessation of that spin (similar to the release of energy in an annihilation reaction), and so exists as an energy plasma, not as individual particles.

The fact that the black hole emits no light implies that nuclear processes are not occuring within the hole. This accords with the theory that cause-and-effect has ceased.

Rapid rotation of the hole might induce a rotating current in the plasma, which might manifest an effect outside the event horizon as a magnetic field, in rapid rotation.

Nothing can emerge from the black hole because the particles falling into it have reached a lowest-energy state: in all directions, energy needs to be injected/supplied to an object to cause it to move outward again, because it faces increased inertia if it seeks to move in any direction (there is no longer a direction which requires less energy than all others); but there is no available energy to inject into it (all energy has been used-up).

Theoretically, the particles have zero energy: even Pauli’s exclusion field has failed for want of the necessary energy.

How is Time related to Gravity

As you approach a Black Hole, time runs slower. This is because gravitational strength increases as you approach. At the event horizon, time stands still.

An analogy is a deep-freeze: time has been frozen, because all motion has been frozen. Motion on a sub-atomic level ceases entirely, being impossible due to the immense strength of the gravitational attraction, which has the effect of binding the particles to one another.

On Earth, time runs (slightly) faster as altitude (i.e. distance from the Earth’s center of mass) increases. In a house, time runs (slightly) slower on the ground floor than on the upper floors.

Rotational motion of a particle near the event horizon – quark, electron, neutron – is being hampered by the fact that inertia increases in the direction away from the mass. As the particle rotates, it spins toward the mass for half its spin, but spins away from the mass for the other half of its spin. Its rotation is being impeded in the 2nd half of its spin, by the same forces which are easing that spin in the 1st half. Eventually, at the event horizon, spin becomes impossible. Atomic processes therefore slow, and finally stop.

Nothing has really happened to time; but cause-and-effect, on which mechanical and biological processes depend, has been halted, suspended: thus “time” has been suspended.

This effect, interestingly, only occurs where the compression of spacetime is so great that a significant difference in inertia exists across the tiny distance which is the diameter of the nucleus of an atom.

The quarks which comprise the nucleus are spinning: theoretically their spin occurs in-place, i.e. like spinning on a dime. But they must be larger than the fundamental planck-spaces, else any type of rotation would be impossible.

Logically, they can only cease to spin when the inertial gradient across the diameter of the quark – a tiny distance – exceeds the critical value. This implies the presence of a tremendously great gravitational gradient. Accordingly, this effect must logically occur at the event horizon, the point at which cause-and-effect ceases.

This type of analysis of the effects of gravity helps us to understand that “time” is just an artificial concept invented by us, a purely man-made concept, rather than a genuine physical state. Cause-and-effect is real enough, but we measure the passage of time by counting the cycles of a radioactive atom; so if radioactive decay is suspended, we lose our ability to count the decay cycles.

Our measuring device has broken; but cause-and-effect is continuing to obey the laws of nature, notwithstanding that those laws are now suspending it. If the particles can’t rotate, they can’t interact: so nuclear and chemical processes can’t occur. We normally measure time by the occurrence of those processes, so we perceive time to have halted, when really it is only those processes which have halted.

We tend to imagine that time is a dimension of its own, separate from the 3 dimensions of height, width and length. But time is an illusion: a convenient way of recording the movement of a group of particles (known as “the universe”) from one state to the next. We typically call that movement cause-and-effect. Usually, the quarks involved will spin, maybe a billion times a second in free space. But if they can’t spin, at the event horizon, that doesn’t mean that “time” is being modified. What is being altered is our ability, as an observer, to measure time — and only because we use atomic clocks to measure time.

If we had a clockwork clock, and we forgot to wind it, its mainspring would gradually run down until it stopped; but we would not then declaim that something had gone wrong with time. Well, the event horizon is just another means of making a slightly more complicated clock – an atomic clock – run down and stop. As with a clockwork clock, we can’t say that time has stopped, merely because our clock has stopped.

This tends to show that “time” is only a convenient construct, invented by us as a convenience for us, not something which has an objective reality. The 4th dimension is an illusion, albeit a convenient illusion. Physical processes can only move as fast as gravity permits them to move: processes can only occur as fast as gravity permits them to occur. The strength of gravity fluctuates across the universe, from almost nil in free space (i.e. inter-galactic space) to its maximum at an event horizon, and the rate at which nuclear and chemical processes can happen is governed by the local strength of the gravity, hence varies slightly (because gravity does) from one point in space to the next.

This doesn’t mean that time is varying from point to point. “Time” is only an illusion. What we mean by the term “time” is certainly varying from one point to the next, but time is not real in any objective sense, because we can’t point to some field (such as a magnetic field) and say “that’s the field which governs time”.

This is not quite true. We might point to the gravitational field and say “that’s the field which governs time”. If there actually is such a thing as a field that governs time, that’s the logical choice. But there is no separate ‘time-field’.

Time is just a means of recording the number of times a radioactive caesium atom pulsates (i.e. oscillates). We can understand the physical processes as to why it pulsates. But if the conditions it pulsates in are modified, i.e. by a change in gravitational field-strength, the only field present (objectively speaking) is the gravitational field. The atom’s behaviour is clearly NOT being modified by some change in a hypothetical time-field: that field is only an illusion.

We actually define a second (i.e. we define time) as being that period in which a caesium atom pulsates a certain number of times. If its rate of pulsation changes, the duration of a second accordingly also changes.

If conditions are modified such that the rate of those pulsations is modified, compared with a similar atom at a separate location where the conditions have not been modified, then we are observing time running at two different rates. Thus time seems to be relative, not absolute.

If pulsation becomes impossible, at the event horizon, such that the next pulsation never occurs, then in a real sense time has become infinite, in that the period in which any chosen number of pulsations will occur has become infinity (because the period of a single pulsation has lengthened to infinity).

If the observer is stationed too close to the event horizon (albeit, we will assume, not close enough for its tidal forces to disrupt him!), his own time will be slowed down, and he will experience the relative nature of time: in that time at any point more distant from the event horizon will appear to him to be running faster than his personal time.

If his distance from the event horizon is reducing, his personal time will run ever more slowly, so events in the distance will appear to run ever more rapidly. Such an observed effect would prove that the observer was in fact falling into the Black Hole.

Questions with no Answers?

Q: Is the effect of gravity on observed “time” a different phenomena from the effect of high relative speed; or is the “time effect” due to the high relative speed achieved as strong gravity pulls the object ever faster?

A: “Time” is a term which we use in recording the rate at which events occur (such as the rate at which quarks spin, which is one measure of the rate at which they move), and “gravity” is a measurement of the resistance to motion (i.e. inertia) that space imposes on particle spin.

So “time” is thus a measurement of the spin-rate of a particle, such as a quark, a rate which is imposed by the structure of space, that “structure” being space as modified by “gravity”.

In theory, since gravity varies with distance from the nearest massive object (such as a star), what inertia is really measuring is the time taken by a particle to move from one point in space to the next. Gravity reduces the distance between adjacent points, by compression, thus reducing the time required to move between them. This we perceive as a reduction in inertia, in the direction toward the mass.

This is not related to Einsteinian time “dilation” — the apparent slowing of time, as perceived by a distant observer, in the vicinity of an object moving at near the speed of light. High gravity has a real physical effect: it slows down particle spin rate. High speed, according to Einstein, has no real effect: the relativity effect is an illusion, caused by the fact that the light which carries the images cannot travel to the observer instantaneously, but has a speed limit. So if the object which is emitting the light is travelling close to that speed limit, whilst also moving away from the observer, the light being emitted is being delayed.

It’s like watching a movie where the images, instead of reaching the eye of the beholder at the emitted 24 frames a second, is only arriving at (say) 4 frames a second: the movement, as perceived by the observer, appears to be greatly slowed down.

In actuality, the images are still being emitted at 24 frames a second, but the emitter is moving away by a significant distance in the period between frames. The faster the emission source is moving, the greater is the distance it moves between each adjacent pair of frames. As it approaches the speed of light, it begins to move ever closer to a state in which the distance it is moving away between frames is the same as the distance covered by light in a complete second, such that only one frame per second is being emitted (from the point of view of the distant observer).

If it was possible to travel faster than light, the light emitted by the rapidly moving object would never reach the distant observer, because the object would be moving away from him faster than the light emitted by it could travel towards him. [In effect, only part of a frame would reach the observer each second.]

In theory, the image might appear to freeze, as the final frame arrived, and then fade to black since images would thereafter no longer be received.

If the rapidly moving object gradually slows down, to eventually match the (slow) speed of the observer, the images gradually return to normal: they gradually speed up – in their arrival – from 4 frames a second back to the normal 24 frames a second. Of course, they were always being emitted at 24 frames a second: it was only the physical limitation on the speed of transmission which made it appear otherwise.

Thus the entire effect was an illusion, caused by the limited physical properties of light waves, which cannot travel infinitely fast (which is perhaps better expressed as the limited physical properties of the structure of space). Whereas the effects of high gravity are actual and real.

Q: If time moves slower in places where gravity is stronger, why does it not go faster in low or zero G?

A: The question tries to imply a falsehood, by suggesting that time is identical with the devices we employ to measure it.

The truth is that the devices we call ‘clocks’ do not measure time. Not in a real sense. We design a clock to tick 60 times a minute, hence a clock is a sort of ‘recorder’: it is, by design, recording the elapsing of a period which we have arbitrarily defined as 1 minute; it is not in any sense measuring anything.

We have merely programmed it to perform a simple mechanical function every second: the clock itself does not probe spacetime in order to measure any property of the time field. Therefore, the clock is not truly a measuring device, of any sort, merely a metronome, marking out an arbitrary duration pre-programmed into it.

This is certainly true of any mechanical clock in your home. Physicists try to overcome the limitations of simple mechanical devices by using atomic clocks, which rely upon the radioactive decay of caesium atoms, for instance, but the basic objection remains: the clock is performing a programmed sequence in which it ‘ticks’ 60 times a minute, rather than actually probing or measuring the properties of space or time. It is doing a sophisticated job of counting the number of oscillations per second of the caesium atom, but it is still only a more sophisticated type of counter.

The idea is that in different environments the number of natural oscillations will be greater or fewer. It is still only a measurement of an effect, rather than of time itself; but it implies that we expect mechanical – even quantum mechanical – processes to slow down if the environment’s gravity (i.e. its inertial resistance to motion) is greater. And that is what we in fact observe.

When we move that atomic clock further from the center of the Earth, into high altitude or into space, the mechanical – or quantum mechanical – processes of the clock encounter less resistance from gravity, so operate more quickly. Time is thus not an absolute: it must vary with every variation in gravity; but gravity varies continuously, in proportion to the distance of the observer from the local center of mass. This implies that time, too, varies continuously, in proportion to every variation in gravity.

All physical processes accordingly occur at a speed which is relative to the local gravitational field strength. Whether this means that time is really continuously variable, or whether it means time is simply an illusion, is unclear. If time can have no absolute value, only a rate that varies everywhere, does it really have an objective existence?

The rate at which events occur is what we are actually measuring (or at least recording), but only relative to some other clock for which we have arbitrarily chosen other values (such as the rate of passage of events at sea level). However, variations in the rate are notoriously difficult to detect or record on a small planet such as Earth, which has such a weak gravitational field that variations in the rate are very slight.

Posted in Science | Leave a comment

Science — Some notes on Gravity phenomena

Posted on 20 December 2020 by StephenPoppitt

Newton’s law of gravity

Not only does Newton give us the earliest and most readily understandable theory of gravitation, he also discovered the inverse square law —

Every particle attracts every other particle in the universe, with a force proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers.

Einstein’s theory of Relativity

Einstein’s theory of general relativity can be summarised in two statements:

Matter tells space and time how to curve. And (curved) space and time tells matter (and energy) how to move.

This implies that space and time are properties of matter. And that gravity is too.

The Mass of the Universe

Astronomers have re-counted the total number of galaxies in the universe.

The University of Nottingham, in the UK, now estimates that 2 million million (2,000,000,000,000) exist, based on a re-examination in 2016 of deep exposure images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

This might equally be expressed as two thousand billion.

The total mass of ordinary matter (i.e. baryons) represents only about 15% of the total mass and energy in the universe. Galaxies were once thought to be solely composed of baryons (protons, neutrons), until it became evident that their visible mass does not account for the strength of their gravity.

What is a gravity field?

As the amount of mass increases, the resistance to the movement of particles in its vicinity declines.

The proportionate decline suggests that what we term “gravity” is actually merely a measurement of the spacetime field’s resistance to particle motion (a measurement of the change in that resistance).

The notion of a “gravity field” may be an illusion: gravity may be just one property of the quantum field, i.e. of the spacetime field.

As the field’s resistance declines, particles move in that direction (i.e. the direction in which it declines). But they are not really being attracted to one another, nor even attracted to the local mass causing the effect. Their (inherent) energy is unmodified; but they are acquiring momentum, gained from an increase in their velocity due to the declining resistance of the field. They are merely “clumping together”, a very loose form of association, due to the absence of that resistance, or, initially, due to the effect of the presence of a resistance gradient; not because of the presence (or formation) of a bond between the particles.

On the assumption that the presence of mass causes the spacetime interval (the gap between the field lines) to decrease as the distance from the centre of that mass decreases, hence resulting in a decreasing value for inertia (which is really only the time taken to cross that distance), it thereby causes the linear motion of the particle to increase (without any injection or addition of energy into the particle: the existing — invariant — energy comprising the particle is simply encountering less linear resistance).

The time taken (to move between adjacent field lines) is less, so the particle’s motion (i.e. its velocity) has increased, since it is now crossing that distance in less time.

Newton theorised that an object in motion (e.g. a particle) will continue that motion unless acted upon by an outside force: known as “conservation of momentum”. That theory nevertheless conflicts with his theory of gravitation, in which a particle accelerates in a gravitational field without any application of force (if by force we understand him to mean an injection of energy). Nevertheless, conservation of momentum is a valid expression of what is occuring, since the particle’s inherent energy (its mass) is unchanged (albeit that its momentum, which is its mass multiplied by its velocity, is not).

The velocity is varying in exact agreement with the variation in the resistance of the medium through which the particle is moving. It therefore seems that only mass is genuinely invariant, as velocity (and thus momentum) is not. The velocity of the object is increasing (as it falls): so its momentum is increasing too. But its mass (which is thought to be simply energy in a bound state) remains invariant. It is the medium’s response which changes.

Newton’s theory of the conservation of momentum seems too simplistic, as it fails to take his theory of gravity into account. Momentum is varying as the particle’s position within the gravitational field varies, even though no application of force is occurring, which Newton’s theory claims is impossible.

Einstein rejected Newton’s theory as too simplistic, and we should be wary of rejecting Einstein’s deeper insight into the principles of gravitation.

Momentum ceases to be conserved, because in a gravitational field velocity is a variable, dependent upon the particle’s location within the field. It is only mass which is invariant. The field’s response varies with the distance from the centre of the mass generating it, and with the angular motion of the particle. Momentum is thus variable, varying with the velocity, which in turn is varying with the condition (the “response”) of the field.

If you merely drop a rock (off a 100ft high cliff), so that it falls, can such an action subsequently become a “downward force”? If the rock is hurled downwards, one can speak of an application of force; but not if it is merely dropped. The rock, logically, merely follows the path of least resistance (when released). Gravity might superficially resemble a force, but no force in the usual sense is being applied, only a reduction (at the quantum level) in the resistance of the medium in a specific direction, caused by the presence of (planetary) mass.

Gravity (Speculation)

At what point is the value of inertia zero?

Einstein postulates that gravity is a structural effect: a consequence of a reduction in inertia (the resistance of the spacetime field to particle movement), in the presence of mass.

That is not how Einstein expressed it, but it is a logical consequence of his theory (i.e. the theory that the cause of gravity is structural), since that implies a gradual reduction in resistance to motion (which is only a way of describing inertia).

If the value of inertia decreases because of the presence of mass, reducing in the direction of the local center of mass, then there must logically come a point at which the value of inertia declines to zero.

Logic implies that this must occur only at (or within) the event horizon, as that is the point where we observe the attraction terminating. If attraction terminated prior to that, the mass would not fall onto the event horizon.

Inertia (resistance to motion) varies according to how much mass is present; and a decline in resistance to movement gives an illusion of that mass “attracting” the particle towards it, thereby causing what we traditionally think of as the gravity field strengthening.

This illusion of a pull-force tends to blind us to the more simple truth, that an object in motion will tend to follow the path of least resistance: that, therefore, gravity is no more than a structural effect, by which resistance to motion is reduced in a specific direction, thereby giving rise to a path having lesser resistance, which a particle in motion must inevitably follow.

Inertia

Every particle has inertia, because inertia is a property of the particle’s mass. Inertia is that field which holds the particle in place (binding it to the fabric of spacetime). A particle will not respond to gravitational attraction (it might feel it, but will not move in response to it), unless the strength of the gravitational field exceeds the strength of the inertial field which is holding it in place. At the macro level, an object’s inertia is proportional to its mass (i.e. to the number of particles it contains).

Theoretically, it is at least possible that both gravitational attraction and inertia are two aspects of a single effect (or property). Gravitation seeks to cause a movement, which inertia seeks to resist. At a fundamental level, it is logical to suppose that motion is purely a result of an imbalance between the two effects.

But it is equally possible that gravitational attraction is merely an absence of inertia — that a simple reduction in inertia, in one specific direction (the direction of the greatest concentration of mass present), permits a particle to move in that direction (a particle in motion is governed as to its direction-of-motion by whatever direction offers the least resistance at the quantum level).

The beauty of this argument, from the perspective of logic, is its simplicity. A reduction — or (in the opposite direction) an increase — in inertia (the delay in moving the particle a specific distance) creates the effect we think of as gravity. Applying Occam’s Razor (a principle of logic), the simplest explanation is the one most likely to be true.

At the quantum level, energy is required for tunnelling through the vacuum field. If so, a particle must tend to move in the direction of least resistance, which must equate to the direction in which least energy is required: the path of least resistance.

The structural effect which allows a particle’s motion to be influenced by gravity may also be the effect which causes the particle to possess inertia (as both fields, taken together, govern motion). Structurally, in one direction the quantity of energy required falls (the effect we term “gravitation”), and in the opposite direction the quantity of energy required rises (the effect we term “inertia”).

Logic implies that if these are both structural effects, the most likely cause is that in one direction the distance involved is reducing, and in the other is lengthening: this would account for the energy needed for each “jump” (i.e. involved in the quantum tunnelling), and the time taken by the jump, to vary with direction.

The two effects are two sides of the same coin.

This is based on the logic which requires the presence of a granular structure within spacetime, in which the granules are bound together by tensors into a structure capable of vibrating: one in which the tensors are capable of varying in length (in order to permit the structure to vibrate).

Such variation in length might account for more than the transitory variations which allow electromagnetic energy to be transfered (by the vibrations we perceive as, for instance, light): the variation might be semi-permanent in nature, shortening in the presence of mass for so long as the mass is present. Thus in a single concept we combine an explanation for both electromagnetism and gravity: the presence of tensors, linking adjacent quantum fields together, which are capable of varying in length (to permit both vibration of the structure and reduction in the field separation).

Gravity

Gravity is an effect (a consequence) of mass.

It is a property of mass, and its strength depends upon the distance from the mass, reducing as the distance increases. The degree of reduction is in accordance with Newton’s inverse square law.

It is a natural (or inherent) property, one which is always present; it does not depend upon the motion of or energy-state of the mass, nor does it require the presence of any stimulus.

It is a field effect, in that it propogates equally in all directions, three dimensionally, forming a sphere — or shell — entirely surrounding the mass (a shell in the sense that it comprises a series of layers, like an onion, each layer being of uniform strength, the layers decreasing in strength with increasing distance from the centre of the mass).

It is generated by all mass; but its strength depends on (i.e. is proportional to) the quantity of mass present. For example, a single electron has a tiny mass, whereas a black hole has a vast mass.

Even though both are small objects, the greater quantity of mass in a black hole, compared to that of an electron, gives rise to a greater field strength.

A given quantity of mass has different effects, in relation to local objects, depending on its local density.

The local field strength, i.e. the effect of the gravitational field on an object nearby, depends on the density of the mass. If concentrated into a black hole, at such a density it will have much greater local effects than if dispersed across, say, half a cubic light year as a gas cloud or nebula.

Yet at non-local distances (i.e. intersteller distances), the effects of a mass of a given quantity will be identical, whether that mass is concentrated into a black hole or dispersed as a nebula.

In local space, a free floating object will be pulled in different directions
by the mass if that mass is dispersed (e.g. dispersed as a gas cloud): hence the different effects will tend to cancel each other out; but the object will be pulled all in a single direction if the mass is concentrated at a single point (e.g. as a black hole) whereby the effects all reinforce each other.

Local effects always predominate, since if the distance from the mass is doubled (i.e. multiplied by 2) the field’s strength falls to 1/4. And because each time the distance is doubled the strength falls to 1/4 (25%), if the distance is multiplied by 8 (three doublings: to 2, 4, 8) the field strength falls to only a fraction more than 1% (a reduction, to 25% of the previous value, being applied at each stage) —

100% > 25% > 6.25% > 1.5625%

This is also seen by applying the inverse square law (one over the square of the distance), applied in the following simplified form (i.e. its application to the change in the distance):

(a) Where the distance is multiplied by 2, the effect on the field strength is to reduce it to 1 over 2² –

1/2² = 1/4 = 25%

(b) Where the distance is multiplied by 8, the effect on the field strength is to reduce it to 1 over 8² –

1/8² = 1/64 = 1.5625%

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Science — The Structure of Spacetime

Posted on 20 October 2020 by StephenPoppitt

We start from an assumption that space/time has a structure, which is solid in the sense that it is composed of a 3-dimensional grid (or lattice) of forces, that simulate a solid, but flexible, 3-dimensional honeycomb; and that these forces mimick the solid bonds which exist in (say) a sprung mattress: namely a bond which joins two defined locations but which has the flexibility of a coiled spring. These forces, joining one location to the next, represent the field lines of the grid (or lattice).

Einstein based his General Theory of Relativity on such an assumption: namely that space/time is an underlying structure, which the 4 fundamental forces (such as gravity) can modify.

We can create a theory of mass, in which the elements of the theory are self-consistent, if we assume that the presence of mass (e.g. a particle such as a proton) causes the distance between the field lines to reduce (we can think of the lattice as having a flexibility, that permits adjacent field lines to behave as though they were joined by tiny steel springs, whereby the presence of mass puts pressure on these springs, which pressure draws the field lines closer together); and we will assume also that the degree of the reduction (i.e. compression) is proportional to the amount of mass present.

It may well be that the degree of the compression-effect is determined by multiplying a standard single value (a constant) by the number of nucleons (i.e. protons and neutrons) that are present in the aggregation of mass.

A related assumption is that the reason why mass has inertia is that there is a resistance to the movement of a particle from one location to another within the space/time structure. If we further assume that a particle can move only by moving along the individual field lines, we might reasonably conclude that any reduction in the distance between the field lines (due to the presence of mass) reduces that resistance: we can then envisage an individual particle, when moving past an aggregation of mass, as following a curved path (a path curving toward the mass) due to the lessening of resistance in the direction of the mass, such that lower resistance in that direction causes it to move toward the mass (since, by definition, that direction offers less resistance to the particle’s passage and a particle always follows the line of least resistance).

At the quantum level, in travelling between two adjacent field lines a particle is probably tunnelling through the intervening space. Thus the resistance to its passage is less if the distance it has to tunnel through is less.

The standard approach of physicists is to take the view that space/time is curved. That is only an analogy, but it is in one respect an unhelpful analogy: there being no obvious way for space — which by definition already fills all three possible directions (i.e. dimensions) — to curve. The idea of curvature is thus a useful analogy, but a misleading one.

At best, it might be said that whilst space itself is not curved, it can be made to seem so by adding in a time element: a curvature can, after all, only be observed by following the path of a particle over some period of time — some duration.

It is less misleading to think of spacetime in terms of a map of varying resistance. In this concept, open space represents the greatest resistance to a particle’s motion: an area where the spacetime structure’s natural resistance to motion has no ameliorating factors. Any aggregation of mass will reduce that resistance, in the direction of the mass, proportionately to the amount of mass present: the degree of the reduction, and the distance from the mass over which the effect has an influence, being proportional to the density of the mass (not merely the total amount present): a mass of 1 billion tons will presumably exhibit differing properties if (a) distributed over a volume of one cubic light year, or (b) compressed into a volume of one cubic inch.

We must recognise that any theory owes much to analogy. The actual mechanics taking place at the Planck level are not important in developing the initial theory. In the absence of direct observation of that level, many possibilities must exist; and it does not make any difference to the theory which of the many possible explanations of the mechanics is the correct one.

The function of an analogy is to simplify the underlying detail. It is helpful to comprehension of the theory to avoid loading it down with technical terminology (or multiple alternative mechanisms), as that may have the effect of concealing, rather than clarifying, its meaning. The liklihood is that, at the Planck length, the fabric of spacetime is a complex balance between matter and antimatter, whereby the two generally cancel out, and only the occasional area of imbalance between the two is perceptible to us: we term it a “particle” (or, more accurately, a quark).

It is not of fundamental significance to our theory how a particle disturbs the spacing between the field lines, nor what those field lines are composed of. The theory seeks to reconcile all the known effects caused by the existence of the field, and perhaps to deduce the structure of the field; it cannot assist with probing the nature of the field, since that exists at the Planck level, which cannot be directly observed.

We can deduce that the field must exist; that it must be fine-grained (possibly akin to a foam); that it must be rigid, yet slightly elastic, allowing the structure to vibrate (for the propogation of energy), and to compress (in the presence of mass); that it must cause the existence of particles; that its resistance to movement by particles must cause their inertia; that variations in that resistance must cause the effect we perceive as gravity; that it must govern the strong force and the electro-weak force.

Logic tells us that it is impossible for an event at Point A to cause an effect to occur at Point B, unless there is some contact occuring between the two points.

One possibility is that a particle (or perhaps a quantum of energy) travels from Point A to Point B, and causes the effect to occur at Point B.

Another possibility is that Point A and Point B are permanently connected in some manner, such that an event occuring at A is transmitted to B by a movement in the structure connecting them.

The first of these possibilities seems unlikely: electromagnetic events at Point A, for example, seem to radiate in a spherical pattern in 3-Dimensions, implying that an almost infinite number of particles would have to be emitted, in order to cause the radiation to be detectable from all directions simultaneously.

Also, the strength of the detected effect falls with increased distance, and it is difficult to construct even a theoretical model of how, realistically, this reduction might be caused, if the vector is some (irriducibly tiny) carrier. How do you infinitely subdivide an irreducibly small object?

The second of these possibilities seems much more plausible. If we imagine spacetime to be like a mattress, with each focal point connected to the next by a spring under tension (i.e. a tensor), then it is fairly easy to visualise how a disturbance at Point A could cause multiple effects simultaneously in every direction.

The fact that we cannot see nor perceive the tensor web is not a negating factor. It is so small that we cannot logically expect to be able to see it. We cannot see the oxygen and nitrogen atoms of the air we breathe, because they are so small; but we do not therefore conclude they do not exist.

Open space (interplanetary space) is apparantly empty. Yet the air around us is also apparantly empty: but we know that the air is comprised of transparent gasses. The presence of wind tells us that, logically, this gas is present. Thus the presence of sunlight tells us, logically, that the tensor web is present — carrying (i.e. transmitting) electromagnetic waves from point A to B.

The wind represents a disturbance in the gas which comprises the air. And light (and other electromagnetic frequencies) represent a disturbance in the field which comprises spacetime.

Logically, there must be some possibility that the tensor web is itself an electromagnetic structure, given that what it is carrying is a wave which has electromagnetic properties, and thus there must be some possibility that such a wave is simply a disturbance in an electromagnetic field.

Once we begin to think of spacetime as an electromagnetic field, or as any kind of field, we inevitably require the presence of a web of tensors: for a field to exist, each point in spacetime must be linked to at least one other point; but, more likely, each is linked to several other points. In a field with a 3-dimensional structure, each point must be linked to at least 6 other points (2 for each dimension) — possibly more.

The logic of a disturbance at Point A (a star) being visible at Point B (the Earth) is that a set of links must exist which are being disturbed all along the path between those two points. If this intermediate chain was incomplete, the disturbance would be interrupted in its passage, so would not be visible from Point B.

Wave Theory – Electromagnetic Vibration

Theory suggests that all transmission of electromagnetic energy occurs as a vibration in the fabric of spacetime.

This vibration, because it is a 4th dimensional effect (i.e. because it can only be perceived as a cycle, requiring some duration of time), is perceived as a wave — more accurately, as a series of waves.

Each vibration represents the wave’s peak, and is followed by a trough which is merely an absence of such vibration; then a further vibration arrives – at the observer – representing the next peak.

We measure this vibration by either the distance or the time between adjacent peaks. We employ an analogy with the movement of water in an ocean, by describing this type of motion as waves, because the energy passing the observer appears to rise and fall in amount, in a cyclical manner, like in appearance to a wave in an ocean.

There is a true connection with ocean waves: the vibration is passed on by one element in the medium (i.e. water or spacetime) knocking against the next, but the medium itself is not in motion. The only motion is the disturbance in the medium: this gives the appearance (from a distance) that the medium is moving, but when the process is examined in close-up that is found to be an illusion.

A snapshot of one instant in time will tend to disguise the effect, because it can not include the motion involved. However rapid the vibration, it inevitably requires time in which to occur, however brief that period of time is.

This is the reason why Einstein describes reality by the term spacetime, which is a recognition that you cannot describe real events without considering their effect (which requires an examination of the next following instant of time): this is the basis of the (crucial) concept that cause and effect is the key to understanding reality.

In that sense, the expression ‘clockwork universe’ has some meaning: the concept that each event causes the next following event.

Time is a concept that if molecule A is to collide with molecule B, and thereby transfer its energy to B, molecule A must be in motion: motion is incompatible with the ‘frozen’ state implied by taking a snapshot of the collision event. For the two to collide, we must provide for motion, i.e. a sequence of such snapshots.

We might, quite validly, define ‘time’ as being the motion of the molecule, in moving the shortest distance which exists in nature. ‘Time’ is thus actually a measurement of distance: hence there is a blurring of the concepts of ‘distance’ and ‘time’, because we are defining time in terms of movement — really in terms of the distance moved. We use an arbitrary period termed a second, but we actually ought to think in terms of how many movements through that shortest distance will occur in that arbitrary period.

One implication is that time is divided into a sequence of instants, or moments: the notion that there is a fundamental unit of time, just as there is for distance. However small (brief) this unit is, it is genuinely fundamental in that it cannot be subdivided.

It is presumably the period in which a quark or electron or gluon (or one of their constituent parts) — the components which make up a molecule — transitions from one state to another.

If we are defining the fundamental unit of time by reference to the fundamental unit of distance, such that the two are related, this is a further proof that time must have a fundamental unit, because distance does. Spacetime is formed, in mathematical terms at least, by combining these two fundamental units.

If motion is assumed to be continuous, the energy confined within the quark or electron or gluon is presumably never in a ‘frozen’ (stationary) state, but, rather, is in a state of continuous flow.

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Alias Smith and Jones : Episode log

Posted on 4 October 2020 by StephenPoppitt

Season 1
1. Alias Smith and Jones [Pilot, TVM, 90 mins]
2. The McCreedy Bust
3. Exit from Wickenburg
4. Wrong Train to Brimstone
5. The Girl in the Boxcar 3
6. The Great Shell Game
7. Return to Devil’s Hole
8. A Fistful of Diamonds
9. Stagecoach Seven
10. The Man Who Murdered Himself
11. The Root of It All
12. The Fifth Victim
13. Journey from San Juan
14. Never Trust an Honest Man
15. The Legacy of Charlie O’Rourke

http://digiguide.tv/programme/Drama/Alias-Smith-and-Jones/81042/season-1/

Season 2
1. The Day They Hanged Kid Curry
2. How to Rob a Bank in One Hard Lesson
3. Jailbreak at Junction City
4. Smiler with a Gun
5. The Posse That Wouldn’t Quit
6. Something to Get Hung About
7. Six Strangers at Apache Springs
8. Night of the Red Dog
9. The Reformation of Harry Briscoe
10. Dreadful Sorry, Clementine
11. Shootout at Diablo Station
12. The Bounty Hunter
13. Everything Else You Can Steal
14. Miracle at Santa Marta
15. 21 Days to Tenstrike
16. The McCreedy Bust: Going, Going, Gone!
17. The Man Who Broke the Bank at Red Gap
18. The Men That Corrupted Hadleyburg
19. The Biggest Game in the West
20. Which Way to the OK Corral?
21. Don’t Get Mad, Get Even
22. What’s in It for Mia?
23. Bad Night in Big Butte

NB: Roger Davis from Episode 19

http://digiguide.tv/programme/Drama/Alias-Smith-and-Jones/81042/season-2/

Season 3
1. The Long Chase
2. High Lonesome Country
3. The McCreedy Feud
4. The Clementine Ingredient
5. Bushwack!
6. What Happened at the XST?
7. The Ten Days That Shook Kid Curry
8. The Day the Amnesty Came Through
9. The Strange Fate of Conrad Meyer Zulick
10. McGuffin
11. Witness to a Lynching
12. Only Three to a Bed

http://digiguide.tv/programme/Drama/Alias-Smith-and-Jones/81042/season-3/

Alias Smith and Jones

US drama series

Alias Smith and Jones (TV Movie)
Series 1 Episode 1
A feature-length episode of the Western drama series about two likeable outlaws trying to make good in 1880s America.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel … Hannibal Heyes (alias Joshua Smith)
Ben Murphy … Jed ‘Kid’ Curry (alias Thaddeus Jones)
James Drury … Sheriff Lom Trevors
Earl Holliman … Wheat
Dennis Fimple … Kyle

The McCreedy Bust
Series 1 Episode 2
When a rich rancher (Burl Ives) hires Heyes and Curry to retrieve a bust of Caesar, they are convinced the job will be a simple one – until they discover just who the statue really belongs to.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Burl Ives … McCreedy
Cesar Romero … Armendariz

Exit from Wickenburg
Series 1 Episode 3
Heyes and Curry come to the aid of a lovely widow who asks them to manage her saloon. After all, it is decent, honest work that should keep them out of trouble. So why is someone trying to run them out of town?

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Susan Strasberg
Pernell Roberts

Wrong Train to Brimstone
Series 1 Episode 4
Heyes and Curry (alias Smith and Jones) pose as special agents hired to foil a train robbery plotted by the Devil’s Hole gang

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
William Windom
J.D. Cannon
William Mims
J. Pat O’Malley

The Girl in Boxcar 3
Series 1 Episode 5
Smith and Jones agree to take on a job to earn some money and, at the same time, please a friend of the Governor. All they have to do is transport $50,000 some 400 miles. But they hadn’t anticipated meeting a girl called Annabelle and the money mysteriously disappearing.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Heather Menzies
Alan Hale Jr.
John Larch

The Great Shell Game
Series 1 Episode 6
Hayes thinks he has discovered a foolproof way of backing the winning horse at the races. But is it just a confidence trick?

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Diana Muldaur

Return to Devil’s Hole
Series 1 Episode 7
A beautiful woman cons Heyes into revealing his old gang’s hideaway.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Diana Hyland
Fernando Lamas

A Fistful of Diamonds
Series 1 Episode 8
Heyes and Curry are framed for a bank robbery in Kingsburg which went wrong. Could this be the end of their bid for amnesty?

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
John McGiver
Michele Carey
Sam Jaffe

Stagecoach Seven
Series 1 Episode 9
Heyes and Curry, roped and helpless, watch while two groups have a shootout over the reward offered for turning them in.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Keenan Wynn

The Man Who Murdered Himself
Series 1 Episode 10
While Curry drives a wagonload of dynamite across rugged country, Heyes volunteers as a guide for two Englishmen.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Patrick Macnee
Juliet Mills

The Root of It All
Series 1 Episode 11
Heyes and Curry come to the aid of a fellow traveller when their stagecoach is robbed and a letter, revealing the burial place of $100,000, is stolen.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Judy Carne
Tom Ewell

The Fifth Victim
Series 1 Episode 12
When the participants in a poker game are killed one by one, Kid Curry decides it is time to act before his partner becomes the next victim.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Joseph Campanella

Journey from San Juan
Series 1 Episode 13
Heyes and Curry are used as bait to bring husband murderer Blanche Graham to justice.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Claudine Longet
Susan Oliver
Nico Minardos

Never Trust an Honest Man
Series 1 Episode 14
Smith and Jones mistakenly take a bag containing ten million dollars-worth of diamonds and return it to the railroad magnate Oscar Harlingen. When he examines them and finds they are fakes, he sends his personal posse after the outlaws.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Robert Donner
Marj Dusay
Severn Darden

The Legacy of Charlie O’Rourke
Series 1 Episode 15
When an old friend of Heyes and Curry is hanged, he takes the secret of where he hid $100,000 in gold to his grave. Or does he?

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Joan Hackett
J.D. Cannon

The Day They Hanged Kid Curry
Series 2 Episode 1
A feature-length episode of the adventure series about two outlaws trying to make good. Fred Philpotts is sick of being a nobody, until he hits on the idea of impersonating Kid Curry to get himself noticed.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Robert Morse
Belinda Montgomery
Sam Jaffe

How to Rob a Bank in One Hard Lesson
Series 2 Episode 2
Heyes is forced to engineer a bank robbery to save Curry, who is being held captive by two women.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Jack Cassidy
Joanna Barnes
Karen Machon

Jailbreak at Junction City
Series 2 Episode 3
Heyes and Curry are deputised to bring in two hold-up men.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Jack Albertson
George Montgomery
James Wainright

Smiler with a Gun
Series 2 Episode 4
Heyes and Curry vow to get even with a swindler, but will they blow their cover in the process?

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Roger Davis
Will Geer

The Posse That Wouldn’t Quit
Series 2 Episode 5
Is it the end for Heyes and Curry when a posse tracking them refuses to give up?

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy

Something to Get Hung About
Series 2 Episode 6
Smith and Jones are hired by a rich rancher to bring back his runaway wife.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Monte Markham
Meredith MacRae
Paul Carr

Six Strangers at Apache Springs
Series 2 Episode 7
Smith and Jones are hired by the tough-talking widow of a prospector to go into the hills occupied by unfriendly Indians.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy

Night of the Red Dog
Series 2 Episode 8
Cooped up in a cabin with the thief who took their stash, Heyes and Curry devise a cunning plan to claw back some of their stolen riches.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Jack Kelly
Rory Calhoun
Joe Flynn
Robert Pratt

The Reformation of Harry Briscoe
Series 2 Episode 9
When Smith and Jones help two nuns whose wagon has broken down, little do they realise that their simple act of kindness will lead to trouble.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Jane Wyatt
Jane Merrow
J.D. Cannon

Dreadful Sorry, Clementine (a.k.a. Dreadfully Sorry, Clementine)
Series 2 Episode 10
Smith and Jones are adamant they are not going to help their old friend Clementine steal $50,000 – until she shows them she has a photograph of Hannibal Hayes and Kid Curry.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Sally Field … Clementine Hale
Don Ameche
Rudy Vallee

Shootout at Diablo Station
Series 2 Episode 11
Smith and Jones are ambushed and learn that their old friend, Sheriff Lom Trevors, is to be murdered.

Heyes and Curry are on their way by stagecoach to see Sheriff Lom Trevors about the state of their amnesty. The stagecoach pulls into Diablo Station so that the horses can be rested, and the passengers can get cups of coffee.
Into this scenario walk four gunmen. They tie up all the passengers, including Heyes and Curry, and then settle down to wait. Curry asks them what they’re waiting for, and the leader of the outlaws tells them that they are waiting for Sheriff Lom Trevors to come. According to Chuck, the head of the outlaws, his brother had been killed by Trevors some time earlier, and he is burning with revenge and wishes to kill Trevors.
Heyes and Curry are extremely worried. Not only is Sheriff Lom Trevors a good friend, but the success of their amnesty depends on him. They must find a way of letting him know that he will be walking into an ambush. But how?
Then Heyes has one of his ideas.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Howard Duff
Anne Archer
Neville Brand
Pat O’Brien
Elizabeth Lane
Mike Road … Lom Trevors

The Bounty Hunter
Series 2 Episode 12
Smith and Jones are captured by a determined bounty hunter.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Louis Gossett Jr.
Robert Donner
R.G. Armstrong
Robert Middleton

Everything Else You Can Steal
Series 2 Episode 13
Hayes and Curry are falsely accused of bank robbery and, unless they can find the real culprit, their chances of an amnesty look bleak.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Ann Sothern
Patrick O’Neal
Jessica Walter
Kermit Murdock

Miracle at Santa Marta
Series 2 Episode 14
When his wealthy employer is murdered, the Kid finds that he is the number one suspect. Can Heyes come to his rescue?

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Craig Stevens … Rolf Handley
Nico Minardos … Alcalde
Joanna Barnes … Meg Parker
Ina Balin … Margaret Carruthers

21 Days to Tenstrike
Series 2 Episode 15
Hayes and Curry find themselves embroiled in murder when they join a cattle drive. Has their identity been blown at last?

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Dick Cavett
Walter Brennan
Steve Forrest
Pernell Roberts

The McCreedy Bust: Going, Going, Gone!
Series 2 Episode 16
Pat ‘Big Mac’ McCreedy wants to sell the bust of Caesar – but he must first recover it from wealthy mexican rancher Senor Armendariz.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Burl Ives
Cesar Romero

The Man Who Broke the Bank at Red Gap
Series 2 Episode 17
Saved from the grasp of a bounty hunter, Hayes and Curry find themselves in even deeper trouble. Could this be the beginning of the end for the outlaws?

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy
Broderick Crawford
Rudy Vallee
Dennis Fimple
Bill Toomey

The Men That Corrupted Hadleyburg
Series 2 Episode 18
Captured by a prospecting family, Heyes and Curry face prison – unless they can come up with a plan.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Pete Duel
Ben Murphy

The Biggest Game in the West
Series 2 Episode 19
Jim Backus in a story about counterfeit bills and high-stakes poker. Roger Davis takes over the role of Hannibal Heyes in this episode. Ben Murphy. Sheriff: Rod Cameron. Bixby: Chill Wills. Halberstam: Donald Woods. Kyle: Dennis Fimple.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Ben Murphy
Roger Davis

Which Way to the OK Corral?
Series 2 Episode 20
Smith and Jones find that their latest assignment leads them back into the arms of Georgette Sinclair.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Ben Murphy
Roger Davis
Michele Lee
Cameron Mitchell

Don’t Get Mad, Get Even
Series 2 Episode 21
Heyes and Curry are cheated out of a small fortune at the poker table.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Ben Murphy
Roger Davis
Walter Brennan

What’s in It for Mia?
Series 2 Episode 22
Thrown out of King City after tangling with a crooked local saloon owner, Mia Bronson, Hayes and Curry end up bruised and penniless. Can Hayes come up with a cunning plan to retrieve their dignity and their money?

Cast (unconfirmed)
Roger Davis
Ben Murphy
Ida Lupino
Buddy Ebsen
Sallie Shockley
George Robotham

Bad Night in Big Butte
Series 2 Episode 23
Convinced that a bounty hunter is on their tail, Heyes and Curry accompany their old friend Georgette to Big Butte. But that is when their problems really begin.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Ben Murphy
Roger Davis

The Long Chase
Series 3 Episode 1
The duo cover a lot of ground while trying to escape from a relentless sheriff.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Ben Murphy
Roger Davis

High Lonesome Country
Series 3 Episode 2
An elderly couple send a bounty hunter after the duo.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Ben Murphy
Roger Davis

The McCreedy Feud
Series 3 Episode 3
Smith and Jones try to end the feud between Pat ‘Big Mac’ McCreedy and a Mexican land baron.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Ben Murphy
Burl Ives
Cesar Romero
Roger Davis

The Clementine Ingredient
Series 3 Episode 4
Smith and Jones’s plans to retire peacefully in Mexico are interrupted by Clementine, who blackmails them into helping her in one of her schemes.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Ben Murphy
Sally Field
Roger Davis

Bushwack!
Series 3 Episode 5
Hayes and Curry are set up as witnesses for a man who kills two bushwackers.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Ben Murphy
Roger Davis

What Happened at the XST?
Series 3 Episode 6
The duo meet up with an old friend who asks for their help in digging up money from an old robbery.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Ben Murphy
Roger Davis

The Ten Days That Shook Kid Curry
Series 3 Episode 7
Kid Curry falls on hard times and has to be bailed out by a pretty schoolteacher, who has an ulterior motive for freeing him.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Ben Murphy
Roger Davis

The Day the Amnesty Came Through
Series 3 Episode 8
Smith and Jones try to rescue a woman from her outlaw lover.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Ben Murphy
Roger Davis

The Strange Fate of Conrad Meyer Zulick
Series 3 Episode 9
Smith and Jones risk their freedom in a foray into Mexico.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Ben Murphy
Roger Davis

McGuffin
Series 3 Episode 10
Smith and Jones help a man lying injured by the roadside, who then asks them to deliver a package containing counterfeit $20 plates for him.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Ben Murphy
Roger Davis

Witness to a Lynching
Series 3 Episode 11
Smith and Jones are persuaded to protect a key witness who is to give evidence against a threatening murderer.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Ben Murphy
Roger Davis

Only Three to a Bed
Series 3 Episode 12
Smith and Jones help to round up wild horses.

Cast (unconfirmed)
Ben Murphy
Roger Davis

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Science – Quantum Uncertainty

Posted on 6 September 2020 by StephenPoppitt

All of quantum mechanics theory suffers from being entirely devoid of real facts, being just a bunch of theories: the so-called interpretations.

Schroedinger developed a perfectly valid and hugely successful equation, which accurately handles all the practical aspects of quantum mechanics. Then a whole lot of other people tried to theorise about why the equation was so successful.

All the theories violently disagree with each other.

Einstein never agreed with any of these theories, and was particularly scathing about the so-called Copenhagen interpretation, which he viewed as a load of rubbish. And he was a lot smarter than everyone else working in this field – then and now.

So good luck with trying to second-guess Einstein.

Schroedinger realised that at the heart of quantum mechanics there is a random factor, which can’t be precisely quantified, but which must be handled statistically: that is, it can be assigned a probability. The implication of this is that what is being measured is not a single event, but many events: so many, that even given a certain amount of freedom (i.e. randomness) within the system being measured, when viewing a sufficiently large sample – presumably millions of events – it is possible to measure the average response of the system with an impressive degree of certainty.

At the heart of statistics lies a grain of truth: that what to us, here at the macroscopic level, appears to be a single event (we call it, out of ignorance, a particle), is really many events. Statistics give us a picture of a quark, or an electron, or a neutrino: we assume, on no evidence, that it is a single spacetime event; but Schroedinger assures us that it is not, and that what we are seeing is merely the tip of the iceberg: an iceberg built out of the statistics of thousands, perhaps millions, of underlying events.

Schroedinger’s work is the only solid piece in the quagmire termed quantum mechanics. What one ought to do in this field is pay more attention to him, because the rest is all theory, largely based purely on speculation.

If a particle is not a statistical illusion, why does its behaviour conform so closely with Schroedinger’s equation, an equation which requires one to accept – in its math – that the behaviour it is modelling is based on a series of statistical probabilities?

Certainly one can understand why a particle might not be capable of being assigned a precise spacetime location, if what one is “observing” is not a single spacetime event but is, rather, the statistical outcome of a million underlying events.

Even if (which seems unlikely) there are only a dozen underlying events, it is still a case of the “particle” having a “position” which is derived from averaging the positions of those 12 actual events. How much less precise does its position become if the “position” is averaged from the locations of a million actual events? Which of those million is its “real” location? Are they not all equally valid?

When we measure a property, we are measuring the average of a large number of events, not, as we have previously supposed, a single event. Classical physics believed that a particle is a single spacetime event, whereas quantum mechanics is trying to tell us that a particle is the average value of many separate events.

Quantum interpretations tell us nothing: we simply do not have the technology capable of magnifying events at the sub-atomic level to see what is really occurring there. But Schroedinger has already given us the clearest road-map: we must expect to see a large number of individual events, which are to some degree chaotic, but which are predictable when treated in groups, using statistics, and which when so treated will obey the probabilities he sets down.

His math gives the clearest possible explanation of what is occurring, and all the theorists do is ignore him. They persist in treating a particle as a single event, and thereby they mislead themselves into ignoring the statistical nature of Schroedinger’s work.

Accordingly, the answer is that none of the so-called interpretations are valid. A true understanding of quantum events must wait on the development of techniques for magnifying the quantum level, such that we can study what is actually occurring there (instead of theorising about what might be).

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Science – Wave Theory: The Inverse Square Law

Posted on 22 August 2020 by StephenPoppitt

The propagation of all forms of electromagnetic waves (including visible light) is governed by the inverse square law. As is the propagation of gravitation (including gravity waves).

To understand the universe, it’s necessary to understand how these fundamental forces propagate: as an expanding spherical shell, radiating outwards from a star or (in the case of gravity) any other massive body.

In relation to electromagnetic radiation, there are a limited number of governing principles:

1. The inverse square law only applies to point sources. For extended sources, it only applies at distances that are large compared to the diameter of the source: i.e. at distances from the source which are so great that the source looks like a point.

2. The inverse square law is only valid on scales where light can be modeled purely as a wave, i.e. macroscopic scales. At the microscopic scale, the assumptions break down; you instead have to think about the statistical expectation of photons, which follows a statistical analogue of the inverse square law. Even smaller, and you enter the world of quantum mechanics, where you have to account for the actual waveform of the object under study.

3. The energy radiates outward in a spherical pattern, as though the energy is being emitted as a series of shells or spheres (or at least some portion of a sphere, typically measured in steradians).

Assuming the source is constantly emitting the same amount of energy (a key assumption), the amount of energy at any given distance from the source – totalled across the entire surface area of a hypothetical sphere having that radius – is always the same (assuming – another key assumption – that no energy has been absorbed, i.e. that the energy has travelled through a perfect vacuum).

The inverse square law merely expresses a simple relationship, long known to mathematics: that the surface area of a sphere is proportional to the square of its radius. In accordance with that principle, the surface area of a sphere always quadruples if the sphere’s radius is doubled.

Thus, because the total energy at any distance from the source (a star) is constant, but the surface area of our hypothetical sphere varies in proportion to the distance from the source, what we observe is a spreading out of the emitted energy over an ever-increasing surface area.

At distance 1, and at distance 2 (double the distance), the same amount of energy is present in our imaginary sphere; but at distance 2 it is spread over an area 4 times greater than at distance 1 (say, an area of 4 million square feet at 2, compared to only 1 million square feet at 1): hence, per square foot, the energy at 2 is only one-quarter of the value at 1.

Radio transmission

A radio transmission is an electromagnetic wave, so it obeys the inverse square law. The power (strength) of the signal falls to one-quarter when the distance from the source doubles.

Thus, if we arbitrarily assign the reception strength at a distance (from the source) of 1 mile as being 100%, its strength at a distance of 2 miles will be 25%.

At a distance of 4 miles the strength will be one-quarter of the strength at 2 miles:

0.25 x 25% = 6.25% (i.e. 6.25% of its strength at 1 mile)

In terms of light years, a radio frequency signal, or a light source, will have a strength of (say) 100% at a distance from the source of 1 light year, so will have a strength of 6.25% at 4 light years.

At 8 light years, the strength will be 6.25% x 0.25, namely 1.5625%.

At 8 light years, 1 over the square of the distance means 1 over 8 x 8, or 1 over 64. 1/64 = 0.015625 (or 1.5625%). Thus at 8 times the distance, the signal strength has fallen to only a fraction over 1%.

Classical Geometry

The inverse square law (which governs the propogation of light and other forms of electro-magnetic energy) is related to the principles of classical geometry.

The inverse square law holds that the energy received from a star falls to one-quarter if the distance from the star is doubled, in accordance with the formula:

One over the square of the distance

Thus, if the energy per square foot at a distance of 1 light hour from the star is measured as having a value of y, at a distance of 2 light hours the value will be y multiplied by one-quarter :

1 / 2² = 1 / 4

a. A Circle

If we consider the classical geometry of a Circle, the ancient Greek mathematicians proved that the circumference of a circle is related to its radius, expressed in the formula:-

The circumference of a circle = 2 x pi x r

i.e. the circumference is equal to twice the radius, multiplied by a constant, Pi, which is 22 over 7 (approximately 3.142).

In terms of electromagnetic radiation, the source star represents the centre of the circle, and the energy wave-front represents its circumference, as measured at two distances from the star, which represent two different radius lengths, one double the other.

The area of a circle is equal to pi r² (pi times r squared). Simple algebra demonstrates that where the radius is 1, this formula gives a result of 3.142 multiplied by 1; and when the radius doubles to 2, the formula yields 3.142 multiplied by 4 (i.e. by 2 squared).

Thus we see that the area increases by a factor of 4 when the radius (the distance from the centre of the circle to its circumference) is doubled. The fact that this exactly matches the inverse square law implies there is a real connection with the decrease in electromagnetic energy to one-quarter when the area is quadrupeled.

There is a further implication, one which supports the notion that electromagnetic energy is a vibration or waveform: the reduction in the energy level is related to the area of the circle, rather than to its circumference. This implies that the vibration is being absorbed (“damped down”) by the spacetime field, as it propogates through it, rather than simply thinning-out in proportion to the expanding circumference.

b. A Sphere

If we take our circle (a 2-dimensional figure) and expand it into a sphere (a 3-dimensional figure), classical geometry shows the surface area of the sphere is:

4pi r² (4 multiplied by Pi, multiplied by the radius squared)

The volume of the sphere is:

4/3 x pi x r³

With a 2-dimensional circle, the area is determined by the square of the radius (a circle having only 2 dimensions, height and width); and with a 3-dimensional sphere the area is determined by the cube of the radius (a sphere having 3 dimensions: height and width, but also depth).

Observational Evidence and Gravity

The inverse-square law is simply a statement of an observed fact: the strength of a gravity field falls with distance. Having made a series of detailed measurements, Newton realised that if you take any mass, when you measure the gravitational strength of it at a distance, x, if you double the distance and then measure the field’s strength, at the new distance, 2x, the field strength is only one-quarter of its strength at distance x.

Newton then formulated his theory, that the field strength is inversely proportional to the distance. Specifically, that it is always one over the square of the distance. Thus at a distance of 1 million miles it is 1/1² (i.e. 1), and at 2 million miles it is 1/2² (i.e. 1/4). Thus, by doubling the distance the field’s strength falls to a quarter of its former value.

Einstein’s math makes clear that he understood the relationship: it is the relationship which arises from the circumference of a circle, when projected into 3-dimensions, as a sphere: in other words, what Newton was measuring, Einstein says, is a relationship based upon the surface area of a sphere.

With a sphere, if you take a central point, such as a planet or a star, and measure its gravitational strength at a distance of 1 million miles, then double the distance and measure again, the strength falls to a quarter; but that is not the only thing that falls to a quarter: if you measure the surface area of a sphere of radius 1 million miles (in other words, the surface area of a sphere of which the planet or star is the centre), you obtain a value of x for the surface area (in, say, square miles); but when you repeat that measurement, at double the distance, the surface area is exactly 4 times greater.

What Einstein had realised (perhaps even Newton, too) is that a beam of sunlight emitted by the star, which illuminates an area of 1 square mile on the surface of our hypothetical sphere of radius 1 million miles, will, when it has travelled double the distance, be illuminating an area of 4 square miles.

This simple geometric fact tells us quite a lot: the strength of gravity falls to 1/4 if the distance is doubled, but so does the strength of sunlight. The same amount of light now illuminates 4 times the area, so each square mile is receiving only a quarter of the total. This rather striking co-incidence is not really a co-incidence at all. If we think of gravity as a wave, and light as an electro-magnetic wave, we can begin to see that they might have some common properties.

We can see, for one thing, that they are both obeying the inverse-square law. What does this imply? Well, one implication is that both gravity and electromagnetic radiation are propogating in a spherical pattern, radiating out 3-dimensionally from a central point, as a sphere (or shell) of energy.

This mechanism causes the inverse-square effect, since a given quantity of energy, q, emitted from a central point, a star, will diminish in strength with distance as predicted by Newton: if we project a set of imaginary spheres around the star, set at intervals of 1 million miles, the strength of the gravitation and of the emitted light (measured at any two of our imaginary spheres) falls in proportion to how much the surface area of the sphere has increased. As the distance from the star (the radius) exactly doubles, the surface area of the imaginary sphere exactly quadruples, and the strength of the gravity wave and of the electromagnetic wave fall to exactly a quarter.

Newton’s math thus gives us the striking fact that, for both types of wave, doubling the radius of the sphere, thus quadrupelling the surface area with which the wave must interact, causes the measured strength of the wave to fall to a quarter. The logic of the math is that the spacetime medium which is transmitting the wave is spreading it out over four times the surface area, and it is thereby having only one-fourth of the effect per unit of area.

The same mechanism which allows spacetime to transmit energy, as a wave, also causes spacetime to curve. Logic demands that spacetime must be flexible: it cannot vibrate if it is not, and this vibration is what is permitting the energy transmission.

Newton tells us that action and reaction are equal and opposite. What this implies is that which we would logically expect: as in an ocean, where the water molecules bump one against the next to pass on the motion which we perceive as a wave, the granules of spacetime are in collision with one another, but they do not go anywhere: they pass on the motion, but then return to their starting point. The re-action (to the action of passing on the motion) is equal, and is opposite, putting them back where they started.

Elastic deformation is a result of the tensor force, which separates the individual granules of spacetime, being compressed: as one granule is impacted from the direction of the centre of the sphere, i.e. the star, the tensor pushes against the next adjacent granule, forcing it in the opposite direction; but, like a tiny spring, it also recoils after doing so, returning to a stationary state. Hence the deformation is temporary, i.e. elastic (rather than plastic, i.e. permanent).

Note: Theory implies that the tensor force might be the so-called gluon “flux tube”, a string-like object created from a quark’s colour field. It is this string’s tension which is of significance.

This flexibility allows a gravity wave to be passed on, or an electromagnetic wave. The strength of the wave is one-quarter at distance 2x, compared to distance x, simply because at distance 2x the expanding nature of the wave (i.e. its spherical expansion pattern) means that each unit of energy must displace four times as many of the granular units of spacetime (put another way, there are only one-fourth the number of energy units/quanta arriving per square mile of surface area).

It suggests that ordinary gravity is imposed by a more permanent deformation of the tensor. Logic suggests that gravity is most likely simply a reduction in the resistance to inertia (the force holding a particle in one place), possessed by the granular structure of spacetime. If the granules offer less resistance in one direction, a particle in motion, which follows the path of least resistance, will inevitably tend to move in that direction.

If the tensor (by reason of the presence of a central mass) is shorter in the direction toward the star or planet, and so the distance between the granules is less in that direction, this offers a logical basis (a mathematical reason) for a particle in motion to move in that direction: where the energy requirements are lower for moving toward the central mass, as contrasted with every other direction, the particle will tend to move toward that mass.

Note: The tensor might be shorter because of an exchange of messenger particles with the adjoining granule. If so, it might be shorter because there are *more* messenger particles arriving, being closer to the mass: an inevitable consequence of the inverse square law (the field strength falls with increasing distance, because the arriving energy has to affect a greater surface area).

What I’m tentatively suggesting Einstein means is that where the distance is less, the energy required to cross that distance is also less, on the basis that the quantum tunneling effect thereby requires less energy.

Perhaps the granules represent the stepping stones in a swamp, and one must leap from stone to stone in order to move, and a leap across a greater distance requires greater energy.

However, a logical case could be made out for arguing that the tensor may be elongated (rather than shortened) in the direction of the central mass. Inertia must be lessening in that direction, but the mechanism is uncertain.

I tend toward supporting compression, i.e. shortening, as otherwise the tensor has to become infinitely long at the event horizon.

If we think of a particle in terms of quantum mechanics, if the granules of spacetime are closer together in one direction the particle necessarily requires less energy to “tunnel” in that direction. Again, the math implies this effect.

Note: An analogy can only take you so far. If the energy required to move toward the mass obeys the laws Einstein predicts, the logic of his math says the energy requirement must eventually fall so much that it becomes *negative*: that is to say, it no longer requires energy to move in that direction; rather, the object *gains* energy with each further step (observed to be an increase in velocity and momentum).

At a threshold distance, the inertia holding it in place will exactly match the gravitational attraction: at closer distances the inertia is insufficient, the “energy cost” has become negative.

Ordinarily, for a particle to move requires energy, e.g. momentum. The particle must, in order to move, overcome the inertia which binds it to its current location in spacetime. Where there is a direction (i.e. toward the mass) in which inertia is less, the particle will, firstly, tend to move in that direction; but will, secondly, tend to accelerate, since the restraining force acting on its (unchanged) momentum is reducing.

Note: This implies that the particle must do more jumps to cover the same distance, as the jumps are shorter. That would seem to lead to the energy cost for moving any given distance being unchanged overall. But this is not so if the field strength is not constant.

It appears as if doing more jumps to cover a given distance, since the jumps are shorter, would have no overall benefit. However, this is only so if the field strength is constant at all points. Newton’s inverse square law tells us that in fact the gravitational field strength is varying continuously.

Note: Gravity is a consequence of a semi-permanent deformation of the tensor, persisting so long as the mass is present. Hence gravity is a genuinely structural effect, caused by the shortening of the tensor in the direction of the mass.

One implication is that gravity is caused by one granule on its immediate neighbour (by the alteration in the length of the tensor), not by a long-range force.

Note: Quantum tunneling – As the universe is composed of only 5 percent ordinary matter, but contains 5 times as much “dark” matter (matter which does not react to electromagnetism), it is feasible to take the view that the distance between granules in spacetime might be variable, since the normal granules may be separated by the “dark” ones: a normal granule might have no “dark” ones between it and the next normal one; or it might have 1,2,3,4 or 5 “dark” ones to “tunnel” through, before it reaches a normal one.

Where the space surrounding the star (or planet) is composed of a multitude of such granules, each having its tiny tensor(s) compressed more greatly in the direction of that mass, then to our perception, at the macro-level, it might appear as though (i.e. there could be an illusion that) space is curving, since an object of low mass injected into such a system (but with some motion/momentum of its own, and given a suitable angular momentum) might behave like it was being exposed to a curved surface. The math seems to be similar.

Note: The “illusion of curvature” – Logic implies that if the wave is expanding in a spherical pattern, then the wave-front must inevitably take a curved form. If we equate each point on the surface of our imaginary sphere, of radius 1 million miles, with a particular field-strength (an equal value, for inertia or perhaps for resistance), and view the field from that perspective, the pattern of the field strength must inevitably appear curved, as it must be uniform in strength at every point that is equidistant from the star.

The fact that Einstein says that space must curve in the presence of mass is completely understandable if gravity propogates in a spherical pattern, just like an electromagnetic wave, since a wave-front (which represents points of equal field strength, equal because all points on a spherical surface are equidistant from the star) is a *curved* surface.

The overall implication of the math, both Newtonian and Einsteinian, is that waves of gravitation and electromagnetism obey the same physical laws, and for the same reasons: that both are a wave motion in a granular medium; a medium which responds to the ordinary, well-understood geometric principles associated with a spherical type of wave propogation based on vibration; that the tensors which bind spacetime into a cohesive whole allow the transmission of this type of energy; and that ordinary principles of motion and inertia, and of quantum tunneling, explain gravity.

There are many implications in the foregoing for the likely composition of the granular structure of spacetime, but as they don’t follow from the actual math involved in the foregoing I won’t complicate this discussion any further here.

To clarify one point, this is a scenario in which electromagnetic radiation (including light) is behaving in the same manner as gravity: both effects are propagating as a spherical field, reducing in strength in proportion to the increase in the surface area of the sphere as distance from the source increases. Both effects are 3-dimensional, being spherical; but they are also 4-dimensional, since the sphere (the wave-front) expands from moment to moment at the speed of light. Ordinary gravity behaves in this way, my remarks are not directed solely to so-called “gravity waves”.

Note: It is possible that although normal gravity apparantly propagates in the manner of a wave, what might actually be occuring is merely an effect that mimics a wave. If the tensors are contracting in the direction of the centre of mass, and the effect is (as would be expected) propogating as a sphere, i.e. in 3-dimensions, and any changes propogate at the speed of light, the effect will behave in exactly the same way as the propagation of an electromagnetic wave, but is a structural effect, not a genuine wave.

It is possible, therefore, that the only true wave-effect which gravity displays is the phenomenon termed “gravity waves”, predicted by Einstein, which were detected by LIGO in 2016.

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Humour – An Analysis

Posted on 22 August 2020 by StephenPoppitt

Humour: some reflections on the technique of role-reversal in English situation comedy, on television and radio.

Radio : Advantages over TV & Cinema

Radio comedy – and radio drama – involves a degree of participation by the audience. The events which are presented occur partly in the mind of the listener, who, because he can’t see what is happening, has to imagine it.

Television does not do this. Because it provides both sound and pictures, it leaves nothing to the imagination.

Listening to the radio is more akin to reading a book than to watching television; because, as with a book, the audience is asked to imagine the scenery and the settings, and even the appearance of the characters.

For this reason, audiobooks (the reading of a book onto tape) come across well on radio.

The medium involves the audience in the creative process, in a way that television does not.

Comedy Characters

Ineffectual:

Perhaps the best description of a certain type of comedy character is “ineffectual”. This describes characters as diverse as Captain Mainwaring, Basil Fawlty, Manuel, Frank Spencer, Gordon Brittas, and Arthur Dent.

Not all comedy characters are ineffectual. Some are overbearing instead, e.g. Margo Leadbetter in The Good Life, Mrs Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances, and Sybil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers. These can also be termed ‘battleaxe’ roles.

Notice that it is only male characters who are ineffectual, and only female ones who are domineering: this is comedic role-reversal (since all comedy is reversal), because in reality it is typically men who are dominant and women who are ineffectual.

Naive:

Some comedy characters (traditionally the principal male character in a series) can best be described as ‘naive’. An alternate description is “an innocent abroad”.

This includes Frank Spencer, in Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, who is the most obvious example of the type; but also Manuel in Fawlty Towers; possibly even Basil Fawlty himself; and Bertie Wooster.

It also describes most characters played by Richard Briers, such as Roger Thursby (the trainee barrister on radio in Brothers in Law); Roger Sparrow (the trainee doctor on radio in Doctor in the House); the newly married young husband (in Marriage Lines on tv, with Prunella Scales); the character he played on tv in Ever Decreasing Circles; Tom Good (in The Good Life on tv); and (on the radio) Bertie Wooster in Jeeves.

Amateur versus Professional

The basis of humour is often the amateur versus the professional. For instance in the political comedy Yes Minister. The amateur, in this case the Minister, is inevitably at the mercy of the professional, embodied in the shape of the Permanent Secretary.

In the field of government the professionals are the Civil Servants, who make a career out of it, and who have all the benefits – i.e. experience – which flow from being employed full-time in the business of government.

Politicians, in contrast, are the amateurs, for they are only involved in government part-time: when they lose their parliamentary majority, and are forced into Opposition, they can spend many years gaining no experience of governing; and individual MPs can lose their Seats and thus be forced out of the field altogether.

The amateur versus the professional is also at the heart of the comedy in the wartime comedy Dad’s Army, where Captain Mainwaring’s Home Guard platoon are amateur soldiers, pitted against the professional soldiers of the German Wermacht and Luftwaffe.

This is another way of looking at that form of comedy which the BBC categorises as ‘innocence versus experience’.

The concept of humour arising from the incompetence of an amateur goes back all the way to the films of Will Hay in the 1930s. However, Yes Minister and Dad’s Army employ the idea in a more sophisticated manner, in that the amateur is up against a professional opponent.

The humour might arise out of the amateur’s mistake being revealled by the professional. Or the professional might trip the amateur up.

In the case of Will Hay, the character he portrays in his films is rarely up against a more competent opponent. He stumbles frequently, but normally this is his own doing (simple incompetence). Occasionally he falls foul of the malice of Charles Hawtree, or of his two stooges: the fat boy (played by Graham Moffat), and the old man (played by Moore Mariott); but he has no equivalent of Sir Humphrey – there is no Moriarty to his Sherlock Holmes.

In Yes Minister this type of humour is based upon reversal, in that the Minister is supposedly in charge of his Department; but his subordinate, Sir Humphrey, the senior Civil Servant (a man who’s very job description explicitly embodies the notion that he’s the Minister’s servant), is in reality the one in charge.

This is the inevitable consequence of Humphrey being the professional and Jim Hacker being the amateur, and hence at Humphrey’s mercy.

Role reversal humour is also present in Dad’s Army, where the roles of Officer and Sergeant are switched about-face. The upper class Wilson, a public school man, is the Sergeant; while the firmly middle class Mainwaring is made the Officer. Thus their social standing is reversed in the Platoon.

Their social standing is also reversed in private life (i.e. in their business relationship), where Mainwaring is Manager of the Bank in which Wilson is merely the Chief Clerk.

This reversal is particularly to the fore in the episode The Honourable Man, in which a death in the family results in Wilson’s side moving up one rung in the pecking order of the aristocracy, so that he acquires a title, becoming ‘The Honourable Arthur Wilson’.

Hence, despite being Wilson’s social inferior, Mainwaring is in authority over him both in the Home Guard and in civilian life. Mainwaring’s obvious discomfiture at this situation gives rise to a lot of humour, as he frequently riles at supposed slights cast on his authority by Wilson. The audience can see that Wilson is not at fault; Mainwaring is overly sensitive, due to his inferiority complex: he realises he is socially inferior to Wilson, but can never bring himself to admit it.

It is the comedy of frustration: Mainwaring’s frustration and discomfiture, beautifully acted by Arthur Lowe, is what gives rise to the laughter. Usually, it is expressed through Mainwaring’s pomposity, which Wilson gently pricks, thereby bursting Mainwaring’s “bubble” (the illusion – also his self delusion? – that Mainwaring is in charge). The laughter comes from the bursting of the bubble: the shattering of the illusion.

Both Sir Humphrey and Sgt Wilson generate humour by subtlely undermining the authority of their notional superiors, i.e. Jim Hacker and Captain Mainwaring. In Wilson’s case this is often unintentional: frequently, it’s merely the result of his making a sensible suggestion to balance the lunatic schemes of Corporal Jones. Thereupon Mainwaring gets a laugh, by immedately claiming he was just about to make the very same suggestion, even though it’s evident to the audience that he was really all-at-sea.

The reality is that it’s Humphrey and Wilson who exercise the real authority. By contrast, Hacker and Mainwaring are well intentioned, but muddle-headed; and if they win out it is only by muddling through.

In essence, Yes Minister is about innocence versus experience. Jim Hacker is an innocent abroad, and Sir Humphrey is like a hungry pirannah, waiting to gobble him up; and this is a direct consequence of one being an amateur and the other a professional.

Most comedies can be viewed on this basis. In Jeeves and Wooster, for example, Jeeves is the voice of experience and Bertie is the innocent at large.

In Dad’s Army, Mainwaring is an innocent, by reason of being an amateur soldier. The experienced soldier is, depending upon the needs of each episode, either Hitler (memorably represented on one occasion by Philip Madoc as a German submarine captain), or Captain Square of the Eastgate Platoon, who was formerly a regular soldier. On other occasions, regular soldiers have guest roles, in order to contrast their level-headed efficiency with Mainwaring’s bungling; for example, Fulton MacKay in the episode We Know Our Onions.

An interesting illustration of how to ring-the-changes on this theme is Corporal Jones, who, like Mainwaring, is a muddler. But Jones is not an innocent abroad; the innocent is young Private Pike. Neither is Jones an amateur: of all the platoon, Jones has the greatest military experience.

However, Jones is demonstrably muddled by old age, as in his tendency to panic whenever a cool head is needed (i.e. is muddle headed due to age, rather than due to being an amateur). Jones approximates the woolly thinking of Will Hay, and of Captain Mainwaring, without having their excuse of a lack of professional training. But Jones’s excuse is his age.

Comedy arising out of the contrast between innocence and experience is also at the root of Tristran’s character in All Creatures Great and Small, where, as a trainee Vet, he’s allowed to make mistakes that would be unacceptable if coming from the experienced, fully trained, James Herriot or Siegfried Farnon.

So a character needs a legitimate reason for being muddle headed: the inexperience of an amateur; the inexperience of a trainee; or the effects of old age. This gives the necessary element of reality; there is nothing funny about a professional making mistakes, because that is just not credible. In situation comedy, that need for credibility is usually expressed as being a need for reality in the situation.

So Dad’s Army would not have been funny if Mainwaring had been a professional soldier.

On the other hand, Captain Square of the Eastgate platoon had once been a professional soldier, but in his case he gets away with being muddle-headed by reason of being cast in the role of Colonel Blimp, with all the old-fashioned attitudes which that (i.e. being out-of-date) implies. Blimp is invariably behind-the-times: in fact, he’s in effect turned back into an amateur, because his knowledge is so badly out-of-date.

Similar pretexts which have been used successfully in tv comedies include psychiatric derangement, in the case of Frank Spencer, in Some Mothers Do Ave Em. In One Foot in the Grave, it is again old age that afflicts Victor Meldrew, as with Corporal Jones.

Thus a “comedy of errors” needs a basis in reality: a credible reason for the character to get it wrong.

In The Good Life, where Tom and Barbara drop-out of ordinary life to become self-sufficient, the Goods are amateurs at farming, trying to overcome their amateurism. They are as amateur in their chosen roles as Will Hay is in his role as a Schoolmaster.

In Porridge, a comedy set in a prison, the Prisoners are nominally the amateurs, and the Warders the professionals (since, also, amongst criminals the true professionals are the ones who don’t get caught!)

But Porridge is more subtle than it at first appears. It subtly makes the point that, within the prison, the prisoners are the true professionals, and thus are the ones really in charge, while the warders, in a classic case of reversal, are (like Jim Hacker) notionally in charge, but really at the mercy of the Cons. In an early episode, Fletcher remarks that “this resort is notionally run by a Governor, Mr Venables, who is appointed by the Home Office. But we know that, really, ‘Genial’ Harry Grout could bring this place to a standstill if he so wished.”

This point is subtly reinforced frequently, such as in the Christmas episode: when Harry Grout drops in on Fletcher and Godber unexpectedly, he explains that he had to get out of his cell for a few minutes to allow a couple of warders to put up his christmas decorations!

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The Noble Years : Radio Documentary

Posted on 9 August 2020 by StephenPoppitt

The Noble Years is a radio documentary:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08y6wtz

“You can’t have suspense without information” – Alfred Hitchcock on making films.

“At first I thought they’re going to need subtitles in the picture” – Shelley Winters on Michael Caine’s cockney accent in ‘Alfie’.

“Milligan and I are both manic depressives” – Peter Sellers.

Alfred Hitchcock, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers, Sammy Davis Jr, Richard Burton, David Niven, Vincent Price, Sean Connery, Shirley Maclaine, Joan Greenwood, Paul McCartney and John Lennon. These are just some of the big name interviewees featuring in this hugely entertaining review of the work of interviewer Peter Noble.

Long before BBC 1’s Film review show, film fans’ main port of call was Movie-Go-Round which ran on the BBC Light Programme / Radio 2 on Sunday afternoons from 1956 to 1969.

Travelling around the globe, the programme’s film location reporter Peter Noble chatted to the superstars and directors of the day. Tragically none of the original programmes were saved in the BBC archive, but luckily Peter held onto all his irreplaceable taped interviews.

Not heard since 1995, this look back with Movie-Go-Round‘s original host Peter Haigh showcases film-fan Peter Noble’s love of cinema with the best of his vast personal collection of tapes.

Producer: Barry Littlechild

First broadcast on BBC Radio 2 in 1995, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Light Programme.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08y6wtz]

Barry Norman does not appear.

This programme still exists in the BBC archives (repeated 15th July ’17, on Radio 4 Extra).

“Movie-Go-Round” is the series which was frequently spoofed by Kenneth Horne on the 1960s BBC radio comedy “Round the Horne“, in a regular feature entitled “Movie-Go-Wrong“. (“Round the Horne” was usually broadcast on Sunday lunchtime, on the Light, which was just prior to “Movie-Go-Round“‘s Sunday teatime slot on the same station.)

Unlike the impression given in ‘The Noble Years‘, Peter Noble was not the sole reporter on “Movie-Go-Round” (Donovan Pedelty and Bernard Mayes, for example, reported from Hollywood), nor was Peter ever-present for the 13 years that the series aired.

I should like to hear in full some of the interviews from which clips were used in ‘The Noble Years’: perhaps these could be broadcast on Radio 4 Extra? There could be a lot of mileage in using other surviving interviews (not included in the 1995 programme), either as fillers or as a complete series, on 4 Extra.

That station regularly airs short, 15 minute features: the large collection of interviews in Peter’s surviving recordings could be broadcast in 15 minute segments across a series of 6 or so programmes.

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Science – Towards a Theory of Gravity

Posted on 20 April 2020 by StephenPoppitt

A Default State

Gravity is a default state: mass causes gravity, so in the presence of mass gravity is the default state. Where mass is entirely absent, the absence of gravity is the default state.

Gravity, on the face of it, appears to be an attraction, because it causes two particles to move towards each other. Probably, however, it is not a force generated by one particle which pulls on the other: more reasonably, logic suggests that the particle is having some effect on the structure of spacetime, and that it is this which is, in turn, having an effect on the other particle.

At what point is the value of inertia zero?

Einstein postulates that gravity is a structural effect: a consequence of a reduction in inertia (i.e. a reduction in the resistance of the spacetime field to particle movement), in the presence of mass.

If the value of inertia decreases because of the presence of mass, reducing in the direction of that mass, then there must logically come a point at which the value of inertia declines to zero.

Logic implies that this must occur only at (or within) the event horizon (of a black hole), as that is the point where we observe the attraction terminating. If attraction terminated prior to that, the mass would not fall onto the event horizon.

If inertia falls to zero, momentum might cause the object to continue moving in the same direction. This point might occur at the event horizon, or above it; but logic implies that the event horizon itself is the most likely point (because we must bear in mind that inertia begins, not ends, at this point: we are looking for a point at which resistance to motion starts).

The more difficult question is why this resistance occurs?

Gravity binds particles together, but not in those extremely strong bonds formed by electromagnetic attraction or by the strong nuclear force: it is a million times weaker. This weakness may arise from the supposed “attraction” of gravity not being an attraction at all: perhaps it is simply an absence, i.e. the lack of that resistance which ordinarily prevents particles moving freely.

The quantum field (i.e. “spacetime”), in a low-mass hence low-gravity environment, has a resistance to motion which we term ‘inertia’. This inertia, or rather the lack of it (in a high gravity environment), causes gravity by allowing a particle in motion to move toward the local centre of mass. Inertia, or resistance to motion, varies according to how much mass is present; and a decline in resistance to movement gives an illusion of that mass “attracting” the particle towards it, thereby causing what we traditionally think of as the gravity field strengthening.

What is a gravity field?

As the amount of mass increases, the resistance of quantum spacetime to the movement of the individual particles in that mass declines.

This proportionate decline suggests that what we term “gravity” is actually merely a measurement of the field’s resistance to particle motion (a measurement of the change in that resistance).

The notion of a “gravity field” may be an illusion: gravity may be just one property of the quantum field, i.e. of the spacetime field.

As the field’s resistance declines, particles move in that direction (i.e. the direction in which it declines); but they are not really being attracted to one another, nor even attracted to the local mass causing the effect. Their (inherent) energy is unmodified; but they are acquiring momentum, gained from an increase in their velocity caused by the declining resistance of the field. They are merely “clumping together”, a very loose form of association, due to the absence of that resistance, or, initially, due to the effects of the presence of a resistance gradient, not because of the presence (or formation) of a bond between the particles.

The illusion that gravity is a constant

We live our lives in the unrealistic assumption that gravity is a constant, because the Earth is spherical. That’s to say, we exist exclusively and perpetually in a state of constant gravity, because we spend our entire existence on a spherical surface, hence at a constant distance from the planetary centre of mass.

This experience colours (and prejudices) our entire outlook toward gravity. We instinctively treat gravity as a constant, because our environment conditions us to expect that its strength never changes – something which is, in reality, an illusion.

In fact, if we thought about it, we would realise that it’s an invalid assumption, hence only an illusion: if we observe someone falling off a cliff, what we are actually observing is that gravity has a different value at the top of the cliff from its value at the foot of the cliff.

The fall demonstrates the existence of a gravitational gradient: of a difference in the value of something (some physical state, which we term ‘gravity’) between the top and the base of the cliff.

The resistance to movement lessens in the direction of the centre of mass, hence it increases in all other directions. Without an injection of additional energy, a particle or other object can only move in a single direction: the direction in which resistance
to movement is least, i.e. directly toward the centre of mass.

But, in practice, we are standing on the surface of a planetary mass, hence that direction is straight down. Accordingly, we are impeded from moving in that direction by the surface upon which we are standing. Thus, to us, our experience is that gravity is always constant, because we can never approach its source more closely.

Gravity as a Mutual Force

Much erroneous thinking may result, if one begins from an incorrect assumption which implies that gravity is a one-way process.

Objects within the gravitational field of the Earth, for example, do NOT fall toward the Earth: in principle, the object and the Earth fall toward each other.

Unless the object has a substantial fraction of the Earth’s mass, the movement of the Earth will in practice be non-existant or too small to be measureable.

Nevertheless, it would be wrong in principle to treat gravitational attraction between two bodies as acting in a single direction only: it is (in principle) a mutual attraction.

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Comic Art – Harry Mendryk

Posted on 20 April 2020 by StephenPoppitt

Harry Mendryk was moderator of the Yahoo Group ‘Digitizing Comics‘. The Group no longer exists, as Yahoo closed all their Groups in 2019.

Group Description

This was a group for discussions about using scanners and computers to save and restore comic book art. With the continuing deterioration of Gold and Silver Age comics, and the high cost of those comics, some are turning them into digital format. This list allowed amateurs to discuss what they were doing, exchange scanning and restoration techniques, request and receive advice, and develop a community of like minded individuals.

This deals with the following scanning topics:

Golden Age printing methods
Scanning Resolution (400 dpi vs 600 dpi)
Digital Bleaching to extract line art
(a) Harry Mendryk’s method
(b) Kris Brownlow’s method
(c) David’s method
Digital Colour Correction
(a) Harry Mendryk’s method
(b) Rand’s method
Colour Correction : Conversion to CMYK alters colour
Colour Correction : Yellow & Magenta – Edit as CMYK
Colour Correction : Avoid the Red halo
Colour Correction : Greys
Colour Correction : Colour Noise
Colour Correction : Limit Colour to 8 bit
Resizing : Moire Patterns
High Resolution scanning : Advantages
LAB Color Mode
Modern Reprints : Colour Techniques
Note on other Methods : Destructive & Non-destructive

Background : Golden Age Printing
Darci (2007/09/04) [#147]:

Bob Rozakis said (reported from a magazine interview) (discussing professional comics printing at DC Comics) –

“Once all the art and colouring was done, the pages were sent to Chemical Color Plate in Bridgeport, CT, where the colour separations were done by painting acetates for each of the 25%, 50% and 100% screens of red, yellow, and blue. This changed with the advent of computerised colouring and separations.”

Q: You’ve doubtless seen the piecemeal auctioning of the fabled “Jack Adler Collection”. I have an approval cover (“Adventure Comics” #374) I received as a gift. How did he get hold of those?

A: From what I know, Jack Adler took the proofs home with his original colour guides, and now they’re being sold off. The proof was created at Chemical, using the separations they’d generated. If it was okayed, the film negatives were shipped out to Spartan Printing in Sparta, Illinois, for printing.”

Background : Chemical Bleaching

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/18) [#2]:

When I decided to try restoring line art, I was already comfortable working in Photoshop. I bought a HP scanner, and came up with a technique to “digitally bleach” colour scans.

But there are problems, due to the poor Golden Age printing techniques, yellowing of the comic paper with age, the limitations of the scanner, and the limitations of the technique itself.

Over the years I have become adept at squeezing the most out of this method. But there will always be problems, due to things like the inability to distinguish a black pixel made from the overlapping of CMY inks from a black pixel on the K plate.

Or the use of C ink under black in the old printing to improve its look. When you remove the C, the black channel suddenly has lots of little holes in it.

After many years of experimentation, research and thought, I have come to believe that it simply is not possible to digitally bleach a comic as well as can be done chemically.

Although digitially bleaching saves a lot of time compared to using Photoshop tools on a unbleached scan, it still requires a lot of effort to make a really nice line art restoration.

I spent years digitally bleaching the line arts for all the Simon and Kirby covers (something like 386 covers). I was quite pleased with the results. During that project, I showed what I was doing to Joe Simon. This led to frequent visits to Joe’s place. I learned a lot of the techniques Joe has used over the years, and still uses.

He showed me how to chemically bleach a comic. From what I understand,
he had also shown this to Greg Theakson. Greg apparently added his own processes to improve the results. Bleaching by Joe’s method pretty much removes the magenta (red) and yellow inks, but only partially affects the cyan (blue). When I tried it, I did not do as well with the blue.

But one time Greg showed me bleached pages he made for DC’s “Spirit” archives. I can attest that he does something different: his process truly left only the black ink.

Of course, with the poor techniques of the original comic book printing, even the bleached pages still needed touching up.

When I finished the S&K cover project, I wanted to do something with the actual S&K stories. But knowing how many S&K pages that was, and how much time was required to fix up digitially bleached pages, I knew that there was no way I was going to do that.

But affordable photo printers were now available, so I decided to work on colour restoration. To that end I have developed Photoshop methods to remove yellowing that the pages have undergone and to improve the often poor inking quality of the original printing.

Harry Mendryk (2006/02/01) [#89]:

There is no perfect bleaching process. Chemical Bleaching, when not faced with the horrible clay paper, produces the best results. But as an amateur it is not affordable for me, even with low grade comics.

I am not one of those who criticise chemical bleaching because of the loss of the comic. One comic is destroyed, but when the restoration is published more copies are created.

And how long will the original comics last? The paper is low grade and very acidic. I am amazed they have lasted as long as they have. I am sure in 100 years time all the Golden Age comics will be dust. Do libraries still keep original old newspapers anymore? Most have switched to microfilm.

There are chemical processes to remove the acid from newsprint. But the cheaper ones do more harm than good. The only process that libraries are willing to do is place the material in a sealed chamber with gas. But that is probably too expensive a process for comics?

Scanning Resolution (300 dpi vs 600 dpi)

Tom Kraft (2006/01/23) [#15]:

These settings were specified on the Kirby list for scanning original art (scanner settings):

– 100%
– 300 dpi
– RBG colour
– Scan front and back.
– No unsharp masking or auto adjust settings.
– Include space in between edges of paper and scanned image (don’t crop the scan to the edge of the paper, let us see the actual paper edge and some non-paper space).
– Save as JPG at 99% or “maximum”.

Does this group feel these specs are best for archiving a record of the original art? At 300 dpi you should be able to print the file and get very close to the same quality as the original.

Should it be 600 dpi (although the file size would be too large to e-mail)?

Randolph Hoppe (2006/01/23) [#16]:

600dpi would be better in the long term.

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/23) [#17]:

There is no completely correct answer to this question. It boils down to finding the best compromise for the intended use.

Let’s consider 300 vs 600 dpi based on e-mail capability. When Jack started penciling, the industry standard was to work twice-up [double the size of the printed page]. However sometime later (after Silver Age?) the industry switched to 1.5 times up.

Obviously, the paper size would affect the image size. Twice-up scanned images would be about 81 MB at 300 dpi, and 325 MB at 600 dpi. 1.5-up scanned images would be about 48 MB for 300 and 192 MB for 600. However, these are not the actual JPEG file sizes. With JPEG set to Maximum, there is still data compression, only it is a lossless type of compression (that is, when the file is de-compressed you get an image identical to the original). The amount of actual compression depends on the image. It is not unusual to see JPEG files compressed to 1/4 of the original size: with twice-up, files are 20 MB at 300 dpi; and 80 MB at 600 dpi. With 1.5-up, files will be 12 MB at 300 dpi and 48 MB at 600 dpi. Better results would frequently occur, but even 300 dpi images are too large to e-mail, so e-mail capacity cannot be used to decide scanning resolution.

So now let’s turn to printing the image. Here, much depends on how the image is to be printed. Let’s assume the image will be printed life size, but with the quality found in the better magazines. Those types of magazine use 150 lines/inch printing. LPI is not the same thing as DPI. When I started in computer graphics, I was told the rule is that DPI should be twice the LPI. Nowadays I hear that the rule should be 1.5. Using the x2 rule, magazine quality printing would require 300 dpi image resolution. If you use the x1.5 rule you need even less resolution. This suggests that 600 dpi would be overkill. Personally I really do not see the need to print original art better then a magazine’s quality.

One other possibility comes to mind. What if you wanted to print the original art in bitmap format. That is, convert the image to just black and white; no grey tones. This is effectively what was done originally, in making a stat from the original art, to be used to make the actual comic book. The experience I found when making the Simon & Kirby covers, is that with bitmap at 300 dpi I could barely see the little digital steps, at 600 dpi I could not. But keep in mind that my book was of covers at comic book size. But original art is larger than the comic book, and would be viewed from further away. I suspect then the small steps at 300 dpi would be unnoticeable.

So my suggestion is to remain with 300 dpi. The benefits for 600 dpi do not seem to be worth the larger file size.

Randolph Hoppe (2006/01/23) [#29]:

After a little web research that took me to some Museum/Archive websites, I’m as keen on 600 dpi as I was in my last post.

But I was wrong with my 99% jpg recommendation. Any lossy compression is to avoided when building a Museum-quality digital archive. For web-posting and e-mailing, a jpg would be preferable; but the non-lossy compression available in a TIFF file is preferable for a digital archive.

So I’d like to see:

– 100%
– 600 dpi
– RGB colour (24 bit)
– Scan front and back.
– No unsharp masking or auto adjust settings.
– Include space in between edges of paper and scanned image (don’t crop the scan to the edge of the paper, let us see the actual paper edge and some non-paper space).
– Save as TIFF with LZW compression.
– If you want to stitch the pieces together, go ahead, but send the pieces, as well as the result of your stitching, for safety’s sake.

Greg T [Greg Theakston] (2006/01/24) [#35]:

400 dpi is the industry standard. I used 600 dpi at Pure Imagination for a long time, but I found that 400 dpi works just fine, with fewer MBs eaten-up.

Nobody has mentioned the Median filter (Filter > Noise > Median), in greyscale, for use with line art. I find it indispensable. A fast cure for poorly printed lettering, and large areas of black which are breaking up.

Used with the marquee tool in Photoshop, the Median filter cuts my work time by at least 25%.

Consequently, I retouch most of my pages in greyscale, so that I can use the Median filter.

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/24) [#36]:

It’s true that whenever I supply Marvel with a file they request 400 dpi. And I do not believe there are many people, if any, that can actually see a pixel at that size.

For my restoration work, however, I do not find that 400 dpi cuts it. The lowest resolution that works for me is 600 dpi. Here it is not the case of the eye seeing, but of the ability of Photoshop tools to distinguish the comic book screen dots from the paper background. Having done my work at 600 dpi, and with CD disk writers available, I find no need to re-size it. Besides, re-sizing can create Moiré. My printer handles 600 dpi nicely.

When doing colour restorations, I do not use the Median filter. But when doing line art restoration I frequently do. A lot depends on the quality of the image. If it has a lot of noise (small black or white dots) I will use the Median filter with a setting that is a compromise between cleaning up the noise and the loss of details in the real line art. I then use the Pencil and Eraser tools to fix those dots that were too large for the Median filter to remove, and for re-sharpening those areas of the Line Art that were lost.

Marquee tools are useful to restrict my adjustments to a particular area. I also use the Magic Wand tool for the same purpose.

Matthew Moring [m.moring@comcast.net] (2006/01/24) [#38]:

400 dpi is what Marvel wants. However it certainly is not the industry standard. Every other company doing Golden Age reprints which I’ve done work for has been using 600 dpi for some time.

In this age of huge hard drives, the difference in file sizes is of minimal significance.

Harry Mendryk (2006/02/02) [#95]:

Low resolution not only makes digital bleaching more difficult, but makes the manual editing a problem. I prefer to work at 600 dpi.

Darci [darci386] (2007/03/08) [#143]:

Golden Age comics were probably printed at between 65 to 85 LPI (lines per inch). The general formula for dpi is 1.5 x to 2.0 x the LPI. As such, 150 dpi should be plenty for reproduction, unless you are going to scale up.

Someone mentioned that modern comics use higher LPI settings. However, I thought you might be more interested in Golden Age comics.

Harry Mendryk (2007/03/08) [#144]:

There are two problems with scanning Silver and Golden Age comics at 150 dpi. The first is, it is easy to encounter Moire problems. The second is the line art of comics. At 150 dpi the line art will develop easily seen pixel steps. The formula the fellow gives is an old one, developed when disk space was expensive. I would advise you to continue scanning at 300 or 600 dpi.

The eye begins to detect image deterioration below 300 dpi. High quality images require 400 dpi. 600 dpi is used for convenience, simply because most scanners can do that.

Further, the restoration techniques I’ve described work best when the scan resolution is much higher than the screening resolution used in the original printing process.

Harry Mendryk (2007/03/08) [#145]:

No sooner had I sent my last response, I remembered what the quoted formula was originally used for. It was meant only to calculate the scanning resolution required when scanning an unscreened image, such as a photograph, that will be screened for printing.

It does not apply when scanning printed images that are already screened.

NB: Screening is the technique used in printing to simulate tints or continuous-tone images (such as photographs) using dots. Almost all printing technologies – such as offset, gravure or inkjet printing – simulate shades of colours using dots. See the technical note, next.

AM Screening [Half Tone]

AM screening (Amplitude Modulation) uses a fixed linear dot pattern, of various sized dots, to emulate the tonal range in photographic images.

Standard AM line screens vary in resolution depending on the reproduction process and equipment quality. In commercial offset printing, these line screens are typically 100, 133, 150, 175 and 200 dots per linear inch.

The larger the dot, the darker the image area; and the smaller the dot, the lighter the image area.

Colour images use a separate AM screen for each of the primary printing colours: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK). These screens are printed on top of one another, which gives the range of colour we see on paper. The colour we see in a printed image is an illusion, caused because our eyes can only discern so much detail at a given distance. If we use high magnification to enlarge an area of a printed photo, the image becomes unrecognisable.

Problems With AM Screening –

a. Limited Minimum Dot Size: In printing, we are limited to a minimum dot size for ink to adhere and transfer back to the sheet of paper printed on. We’re also limited at the other end of the tonal spectrum, because we can only go so large with the dot before the printed area becomes a solid. This results in an inherent flaw in the process called posterisation, and we have to adjust the photographic image before printing to reduce the problems it creates on the press. When we make these adjustments, we are actually degrading the quality of the original image slightly; so we lose detail, colour, and contrast.

b. Size of the Dots: AM screening uses a fixed dot pattern, and the tonal range is achieved by varying the size of the dot within that fixed pattern. Printing presses can only print so small a dot, so are limited to a printing range between the smallest dot possible and the largest dot possible in achieving a tonal range. Thus the peak resolution in an AM Screen is set by the largest (coarsest) dot, not by the smallest one. For a 175 line screen, the smallest possible dot is approximately 10 microns, and the largest dot is approximately 200 microns.

c. Visible Patterns in the Image: Sometimes such patterns conflict with the actual subject matter of the photograph, so amplify the negative visual effects of the printing process. The human mind recognizes patterns easily, so anytime we incorporate a fixed pattern into the process we naturally detect that pattern. Colour images are built on a series of screens, printed over the top of one another, and these screens are turned at specific angles to reduce the inherent negative effects. The flaws are still present, such as moire patterns and rosette patterns, but it is possible to reduce their more obvious effects.

For all these reasons, customers demand FM screening instead, especially in the clothing industry, where subject matter is all about patterns, as there can be a plethora of adverse pattern conflicts from using AM screening.
NB: A detailed note then follows, regarding the benefits of FM screening (omitted, because comics printed in the period 1940-1980 didn’t use FM screening, as it has the drawback of being very expensive).
[Source: http://thedivision.co.uk/everything-need-know-print-screening/]

Digital Bleaching (Generate Line Art)

Bleaching is a chemical process applied to printed comics pages to remove the cyan (i.e. blue), magenta (i.e. red), and yellow inks, to leave only the black line art. Digital bleaching is a computer process which simulates chemical bleaching for digital images.

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/19) [#8]:

When I correct a Simon & Kirby cover, to colour-correct the cover I first go through a digital bleaching process, so that I have line art which exactly matches the colour plates used.

I work in Photoshop 5 and (for some features) Photoshop 7.

Step 1 (CMYK colour setup) –

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/31) [#65]:

Digital Bleaching is not as effective as a Chemical Bleach. After you Digitally Bleach an image you will have to spend a lot of time editing the image to get it correct.

But if you are willing to spend that time, you can get really nice results without destroying the original comic.

There are even cases where Chemical Bleaching will not work. This is so with the Joe Simon cover for “Silver Streak Comic” #2. That cover was not printed with a Black plate: instead, the fourth plate was for a special silver ink used in the title.

The black on the cover is actually caused by overlapping Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. If you were to Chemically Bleach this cover all the line art would disappear.

Like my colour restoration technique, my Digital Bleaching technique requires the correct CMYK colour setup. In Photoshop 7, go to menu item: Edit > Color Settings. In ‘Working Spaces’ click on ‘CMYK’, then select (from the list of options): “Custom CMYK”.

When the CMYK dialog appears, in “Separation Options” select ‘GCR’, in “Black Generation” select ‘Maximum’, then click “OK” twice.

Step 2 (Level Adjustment) –

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/31) [#66]:

Digital Bleaching begins in the same way as Colour Correction, using the Level tool (Image > Adjustments > Levels). The purpose of this is to adjust for strong Black, and for the paper to become near White.

The dialog box settings I used for each colour channel are:

Adjustment Channel Input Levels Output Levels

Scan levels RGB 0 1.00 255 0 255

R Adjust Red 60 1.00 239 0 255
G Adjust Green 76 1.00 206 0 255
B Adjust Blue 52 1.00 152 0 255

C Adjust Cyan 31 0.64 209 0 255
M Adjust Magenta 32 0.84 235 0 255
Y Adjust Yellow 2 0.53 185 0 255
K Adjust blacK 7 0.77 217 0 255

Step 3 (Level Adjustment, per channel) –

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/31) [#67]:

Firstly, convert the image to CMYK mode: Image > Mode > CMYK color

NB: An essential step for an image printed originally using CMYK (such as American 4-colour comics), this conversion should be omitted for ordinary photographs or other images which were created using RGB.

Secondly, open the Level tool (Image > Adjustments > Levels). The adjustments for Digital Bleaching are somewhat different to those for Colour Correction: I’m not concerned with making the image look correct, colour-wise. I adjust each channel so that the left input level is at the point where the histogram starts to climb, this provides a deep colour to that channel. I then adjust the right input level to past the right peak, this converts light tones to white. Some of these light tones may be under the black line art, and if so need to be removed.

Thirdly, examine each of the image’s colour channels separately (Cyan, Magenta and Yellow), by selecting them one at a time in the Channel Window. I have set up Photoshop to display single colour channels as greys, not as colours. Notice that over most of the image there does not appear to be any Cyan (blue) where there would be line art. An exception is in the steering wheel. If my ‘A’ channel looked like it had colour in the line art area, I could go back to the Level tool and push the right input level more towards the left to remove it. But sometimes getting ride of colour in the line art degrades the colour outside of the line art too much. In the Cyan of my example, that is the case: to get rid of the Cyan from the steering wheel line art, I pretty much loose Cyan everywhere. So I decided not to adjust the Cyan channel any further In fact I did no further level adjustments to Magenta or Yellow either. And Black is exempt from these secondary adjustments, all of the time.

Step 3(a) (Color Dodge) –

Harry Mendryk (2006/02/01) [#84]:

I found a use for the Color Dodge “Apply”: a new step, between my original steps 3 and 4. Selecting the Black channel, I run: Image > Apply Image. Instead of choosing a colour channel (as in Step 4), I choose the Black channel and Color Dodge, but do not tick ‘Invert’.

Doing this seems to have some bleaching effect. I tried my usual practical and theoretical tests. This time the theoretical tests indicate similar, but not identical, results compared to my original Digital Bleaching sequence. But the practical do show some positive results: some line art disappeared using my original steps, but did not when the new step was added.

From this, I can’t say definitively that this new step should be added to my Digital Bleaching. But I do plan to try it when I generate line art from a scan.

Step 4 (Apply Image) –

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/31) [#68]:

Having adjusted the levels for the channels, I now select the Black channel by clicking it in the Channel window. Viewing should also be for Black only.

Now I use the menu item Image > Apply Image on the Black Channel (it was selected above), using each of the colour channels (Cyan, Magenta and Yellow) in turn. I am going to use the Screen with invert.

Attached is an example of the settings I used for Cyan. Before I accept them with “Apply”, I click the preview on and off to see the effect on the Black channel. If the preview is visibly better than the non-preview I will accept that particular “Apply”. By “better”, I mean that some of the tones outside of the line art disappear or diminish. I also do not want to see the line art deteriorate much. In this particular example, the “Apply” of Cyan to Screen the Black clearly helps, so I accepted it.

I repeat the “Apply” operation for Magenta, and after that for Yellow. In each case I use the preview to ensure the change gives a benefit. In my example, the Black channel improved with the change to Magenta and to Yellow.

After all the “Applies”, bleaching progress has been made.

David [betroot] (2006/01/31) [#79]:

At the “Apply Image” stage, I accidentally chose “Color Dodge Mode” and it seemed to have a stronger bleaching effect.

Harry Mendryk (2006/02/01) [#84] (see also Step 3a):

NB: In summary, Harry will not modify his step 4, but will add a new step (named by me as Step 3a), between his original steps 3 and 4.

There does seem to be a stronger bleaching effect using Color Dodge instead of Screen in the Apply step (step 4). However I also observe that the “bleaching effect” was stronger in light tones of the Black channel than in the darker tones. Remember that the Apply step is followed by a Threshold adjustment (step 5). What is important is the combined effect of the two steps.

Frankly, I do not understand Photoshop’s description of what Color Dodge does, although I do understand what the Screen is doing.

So I decided to investigate further, using practical and theoretical examples. For the practical test I used the “Journey Into Mystery” cover David posted and also my “Young Romance” high-resolution panel.

For theoretical testing, I created new grayscale images in Photoshop with two channels. I used the Gradient Tool horizontally in one channel, and vertically in the other. I could then use this image file to run the Apply and Threshold, selecting one channel and applying the other.

In the end I did not see much difference in my practical examples between using Color Dodge and using Screen. However, I used only two samples. Perhaps other comic scans would show a difference.

But the theoretical examples showed very different results. Here the use of Screen did exactly what I wanted, but results from the use of Color Dodge were not satisfactory. My conclusions from these tests is that personally I will continue using “Apply Screen”, as outlined in my Step 4.

However, I did find another use for the Color Dodge “Apply”. This would be a new step between my original steps 3 and 4. Selecting the Black channel, I ran the Image > Apply Image. But instead of choosing a colour channel, like I did in Step 4, I chose the Black channel and Color Dodge, but did not tick ‘Invert’. Doing this seemed to provide some “bleaching effect”. I tried the same practical and theoretical tests as before. This time the theoretical tests seemed to indicate similar, but not identical, results between using my original Digital Bleaching sequence compared with adding the new Color Dodge step. But the practical did show some positive results. Some line art disappeared using my original step sequence, but did not when the new step was added. From this, I can’t say definitively that this new step should be added to my Digital Bleaching. But I do plan to try it next time I generate line art from a scan.

Step 5 (Median filter in Greyscale) –

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/31) [#69]:

At this point I no longer need the colour channels. There are lots of ways to get rid of them. What I usually do is use menu item Select > All. Then, in the Channels window, I select each colour channel (Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow) and press the delete key. With all the colours gone, and only Black remaining, I use Image > Mode > Grayscale to convert the image from CMYK.

Next, click the little triangle in the Channels window and select the “Duplicate Channel” option. I do this because I am going to perform some operations that may cause the line art to loose details. I will not perform these operations on the duplicate copy, so it will be a reference when I manually edit. I select the Black channel in the Channels window.

Next I use the Median filter (menu item: Filter > Noise > Median). I usually set this to the lowest Radius, that is 1. The Median will help reduce the noise that can occur in the image. Unfortunately it also affects the line art itself. The larger the Radius used the less noise but the more detail of the line art is lost. But I know I am going to have to manually edit some of the noise out, as well as manually restore some of the line art detail. Like I said, I generally use a Radius of 1; others might choose a higher value.

After the Median filter, more bleaching progress has been made.

Step 6 (Threshold adjustment) –

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/31) [#70]:

Before proceeding, I usually pick some appropriate section and magnify it to 100% or 200%. Still leaving the Black channel selected in the Channel window, I click the view for the duplicate copy.

This sets me up for the next step, which is the use of the Image > Adjust > Threshold tool. The Threshold tool turns the image to just pure Black and White. I can select where the Threshold point should be. Anything below the Threshold level will turn Black, everything above will be White.

By setting things as I did above, I can judge what might be a good Threshold setting. Moving the setting to the left will remove some of the unwanted non-line art. But it will also remove some of the wanted line art. Moving the adjustment to the right will have the opposite effect.

In the magnified view, areas with white are areas that will be pure white in the image. Areas of light red are those removed from the image: often we don’t want them, but there might be line art that we would like to have. Areas that show up as dark red are those that are not removed from the image but we wish they were. Areas with a mid-red tone are the line art that will be included as desired in the image. I can tell you right now, you are not likely to be able to find a perfect point. You will always lose some line art and get some non-line art. You have to pick a good compromise point.

Attached is a copy of what the magnified image looks like while I am making
the Threshold adjustment. Once I achieve an acceptable adjustment, I click
the “OK” button. Also attached is what the image looks like at this point.

Step 7 (second Median filtering) –

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/31) [#71]:

This step is optional. I look at a magnified view (200%) of the Black channel. If it is noisy, I apply the Median filter again. It is the same sort of compromise as before. The higher the radius the less noise, but the less detail in the line art. In this particular case I decided to use the Median filter again, with Radius of 1.

NB: For the Median filter (Filter > Noise > Median), applied in Greyscale, see messages #35 and #69 (above).

Now I have finished the easy part. From now on, I have to manually edit the black Line Art image, using the Pencil and Eraser tools. I also have a Black Copy channel, that hasn’t been filtered or threshold adjusted, to use as a reference to aid my editing. To completely clean up the image takes some further effort.

Matt Moring [m.moring@comcast.net] (2006/02/01) [#91]:

Right now I’m trying to finish off a story for an upcoming DC Archive book.

To do this right, you need to be an artist yourself. There’s no copy machine that will take a colour page and spit out a finished page of black & white line art. There’s a lot of effort that goes into doing a page right.

Conclusions

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/31) [#74]:

I use Digital Bleaching to restore the line art from scans of Simon & Kirby covers. Ideally it would remove all colours and leave just the line art. But it is not 100% effective.

Depending on a particular scanner, and the settings used in RGB Level Tool adjustment, it may not remove Purples (Cyan + Magenta) very well. But even under the best of circumstances it cannot remove grey tones, such as found in colours such as Brown.

But it doesn’t destroy the original comic, which for an amateur restorer like me is a paramount concern.

Chemical Bleaching is destructive, but you get very clean line art. The only retouching that would be required would to fix up creases and original printing errors.

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/31) [#83]:

A cover will be a problem if it contains a lot of purple and brown.

Harry Mendryk (2006/02/01) [#85]:

Some observations on using Digital Bleaching on the low resolution “Journey Into Mystery” cover David provided.

Because of the low resolution of that scan, the line art is often just one pixel wide. Using the Median filter, as I describe in Steps 5 and 7, has the effect of wiping out a lot of line art: so I suggest you skip using the Median filter when Digitally Bleaching low resolution images.

You will end up with a lot of noise to clean up. But that will be better than all the line art that would need to be edited back in.

The other observation concerns Apply Screen (step 4). Certainly Apply Screen should be used as I described using the Cyan channel. But when I did the same thing using Magenta or Yellow, the effect was to drop some of the line art without any other benefits. So for the “Journey Into Mystery” cover, I would suggest to do Apply Screen using only the Cyan.

This has nothing to do with the low resolution of the scan. Actually the “Journey Into Mystery” cover is more typical with respect to step 4 than my high resolution example.

My attempt on this cover did a nice job cleaning up the background “grey”, but, as I expected, there has to be a lot of manual editing of those areas which were originally purple or brown.

Little Bumps in CMYK histograms

NB: These notes relate to Step 3 in Harry’s above procedure for Digital Bleaching of the image.

Dario [vulcaniano99] (2006/03/22) [#118]:

I see some “little bumps” in the histograms, in CMYK colour mode, in scans of my old comics. I was wondering what are they. Is it an artifact of the ageing of the inks on paper, or are they a feature of the colour printing, even for new comics?

Harry Mendryk (2006/03/22) [#119]:

For the most part it is due to the aging process. Aging adds black to areas where there is no black ink. This is due to dirt and grime on the page, changing of ink with age, and the yellowing of the paper. With the increase in the K channel, the level for the other channels typically decreases. But the effect is not uniform. Areas with ink from one channel will change the least, areas with colour overlaying one another will change more. Hence the extra bumps.

I would like to think that this effect would not happen as much with recent comics. But I have done little work with the more recent stuff. One problem though is recent comics have a screen density much higher than that in the Golden or Silver Age. Scanning at 300 to 600 dpi works very well with those comics. But for modern comics it is nowhere near enough. I am not saying you couldn’t do it, just that I suspect the extra bumps will be there.

Mix Channels : Apply Image

NB: These notes relate to Step 4 in Harry’s above procedure for Digital Bleaching of the image.

David [betroot] (2006/01/24) [#42]:

Apply Image: In the past I would’ve put the Cyan channel in a new document, and used the Black channel set to Screen mode as the Layer mode. Apply Image saves the bother of creating a new document.

You can mix channels with any layer Mode, using Apply Image.

“Calculations” allows you to generate a new channel by “mixing any 2 channels” – useful for extracting masks for photo retouching (like say a model’s hair in a blue sky and you want to composite against a different background – calculations would help in creating a silhouette mask).

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/31) [#60]:

The purpose of the Apply step is to remove some Black from areas of Cyan. I’ve attached an image of the Apply dialog to make the settings I used clear.

This apply is done on the Black channel only. But when I worked I clicked the CMYK view. I also attach an image of the Channel Window to show this. I select the CMYK view because I want to see the effect of the Apply in order to adjust its strength (opacity).

If you try this Apply you can tick and untick ‘Preview’, to see the effect of this operation.

Although the effect of the Apply step is not dramatic for this particular image, it is an operation I use in the Digital Bleaching process.

David [betroot] (2006/01/31) [#72]:

I hadn’t used Apply Image before. It puzzled me, then I realized it was similar to what I’ve done in the past: copy the K channel and paste (so it’s a Layer), and set the Mode to ‘Screen’.

The Apply Image step does it for me. I don’t have to make the Layer, etc.

Then I realized it’s like Calculations – where you can do a similar change to 2 separate channels (screen, Multiply, etc) to generate a new channel – this is useful for extracting masks in photography.

Example: A girl with windblown hair, and you want to make a silhouette mask including the hair strands.

Digital Bleaching (Kris Brownlow’s method)

Kris Brownlow (2006/02/01) [#92]:

I tried to “bleach” a colour scan on my Epson HP scanner, to see if it could be done. The scanner software does not have a traditional “black and white” function, so I used the “old photo” function.

The process:

1. Once an image is scanned, go to EFFECTS and select “Old Photo”.
2. Go to ENHANCE and move “Highlight” and “Midtone” to 89.

Harry Mendryk (2006/02/02) [#94]:

I am impressed with the results you got using just the Epson scanner adjustment. It was hard to judge from your image, because of how faint it was, so in Photoshop I converted it from RGB to greyscale, and then used the Level tool to adjust the lower end.

Most of the colour has indeed been bleached.

I then opened the original scan file, created a new channel, and copied my adjusted version of your file into it. This allows me to better compare the two by either switching views or viewing both at the same time (the bleached image channel acts as a red mask).

Initially I observed that the blacks in the Epson bleached image are pretty noisy. But when I examined the combined file, I found that the noise was in the original comic printing. This is not surprising, as the comics were printed with a rather crude printing method on rather poor paper. No matter what bleaching technique is used, retouching of some kind is required to correct for this.

I then magnified the face of the foreground woman. I found the Epson bleached line art a little narrower than the original line art. I also found some of the finer line art had disappeared in the Epson version.

So the Epson bleaching is not perfect, but none of the digital bleaching processes are. Perhaps with a little tweaking of the settings in the Epson bleaching, you could achieve better results.

But using Gaussian Blur and Threshold in Photoshop would easily get the line width back to what it should be. And following that, one could manually edit back in any details that had been lost.

All that matters to me is that the results are accurate. I may not understand exactly what your Epson software is doing, but it seems to me it could be a viable tool.

Digital Bleaching (David’s method)

David [betroot] (2006/02/01) [#87] (use “Color Dodge” to make Line Art):

“Color dodge” is a technique to do with obtaining Line Art (better than the “Find Edges” filter), a method to turn a scan into Line Art –

1. Duplicate the background layer and Invert it (making a second layer).
2. Invert (negative) the duplicated layer (looks like a negative photo).
3. Set mode of the layer to ‘Color Dodge’ (the image will appear to disappear!)
4. Gaussian Blur the duplicated layer (the one which has been inverted, and set to Color Dodge) with a very small setting, like 0.8 (you will see in the preview the effect and can adjust it).
5. Flatten the Layers.
6. If the line work is light, you can duplicate and set the new layer to ‘Multiply’ (and you can duplicate the Multiply layer more times as required).

Optionally, you can use Threshold if you want black-and-white Lines.

You can save the steps as an Action in Photoshop.

Colour Correction : Harry Mendryk’s method

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/24) [#32] (CMYK Settings):

NB: This was originally posted as part of Harry’s discussion about High Resolution scanning (see also #33 and #34). But it’s of general applicability, so needs to be here.

Before doing the actual colour correction, make sure that CMYK conversion is set properly. In Photoshop 5 the setting dialog can be found using: File > Colour Settings > CMYK Setup

In Photoshop 7 getting the dialog is a little more involved. First bring up menu item Edit/Colour Settings. At the end of the CMYK field is a checkmark, hitting it causes a list of options to be displayed. Choose “Custom CMYK”.

Once you get the CMYK Setup dialog in the Seperation Options, select GCR and in the Black Generation select Maximum. Hit OK (twice in Photoshop 7).

1. Level Tool –

Red Input Levels : 32, 1.00, 255
Green Input Levels: 32, 1.00, 222
Blue Input Levels : 0, 1.00, 182

Note that I am actually moving the left and right triangles to where the particular histogram curves up. The left side makes Black, the right side makes the White. The exact point of a setting is based on the histogram, not the image.

2. Select from menu Image/Mode/CMYK colours

3. Level Tool –

Cyan Input Levels : 19, 0.88, 233
Magenta Input Levels: 14, 0.66, 204
Yellow Input Levels : 21, 0.65, 205
Black Input Levels : 5, 0.54, 185

Note that here I adjust using the left triangle first, remember the position of the center triangle, adjust the right triangle, and finally reposition the middle triangle back to where I remembered it. Although the histogram gives clues to what might be good settings, ultimately it is the preview of the image itself that is most important. And there may not be a perfect setting. With this example the Cyan adjustments are a compromise of getting the Cyan out of the whites and not loosing the light green background. I suspect this adjustment might have been easier at 600 dpi.

4. Select Black channel but click CMYK for viewing, I am going to remove some of the black undertones to the Cyan. The actual change must only be done to the Black Channel, but I want to view what is happening to the colour version of the image.

5. Image/Apply Image; Channel: Cyan; check Invert;
Blending: Screen; Opacity: 50%.

The 50% is my personal judgement. I like to leave some undertone Black in the Cyan.

6. Colour conversion completed. I would then switch to manual editing. In particular I would want to use the Eraser tool, selecting just the Cyan channel. Selecting just the Cyan makes Erasing the Cyan out of the word balloon area easy, because Black is not affected.

I might further want to fix up the Green sidewalk in the background, remove a little more of the Black from it, and boost the Yellow a bit. I did not do that here, because one respect my example panel is no better than David’s eBay examples. In order to make the file smaller for email purposes, I set JPEG compression to 3. This leaves rather severe patterns in the colour channels. Normally I use JPEG compression of 7. That level avoids that sort of pattern.

7. Select from Image > Mode > RGB colours. Put the image back to RGB. Although JPEG is happy with CMYK, most browsers and many printers are not.

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/19) [#7]:

This is my method for colour correcting comics scans. I work in Photoshop 5 and (for some features) Photoshop 7.

I have added photos of some of the steps and tool dialogs used in a folder, “HM’s color adj”, in the Photos section. If you do not find what I’m saying clear, check them out:

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/digitizing_comics/photos/albums

Step 1: Scan –

I scan at 600 dpi with auto colour correction or auto levels features turned off. My last scanner had really poor gain, so I had to set the manual level adjusments to get more out of it. But I was careful not to push the levels too far up. Once the gain is too high you loose data that I need for my process. If the gain is low, my method will fix that up with no apparent loss in quality of the final result. You have to use really low gain to harm the corrected scan. My present scanner does a nice job without any manual adjustments.

You can use either the Level tool or the Histogram tool to judge if the scan has all the data needed. The histogram I want to see in a scan is the one for the combined RGB. Going from right to left (dark to light) the curve I want to see is flat at the start, starts to turn up, can go through any number of peaks, but eventually turns back down, and is flat by the time it gets to the right side (255). I do not care about the actual values. What I care about is the flat start and end to the curve. If that is missing and either 0 or 255 has a curve off the bottom axis, then data has been lost. In the photo section I have a photo of an original scan, and the RGB histogram (using the Level tool) for that scan, before I have done any adjustments.

Step 2: Level tool –

I do my colour correction in two steps. Scanners use RGB sensors. So I do my initial rough adjustment in RGB. I do not touch the combined RGB level, all adjustment is done on the individual Red, Green and Blue channels. I adjust each Red, Green and Blue channel separately. But how I adjust them is the same. In each case I adjust the low input level by dragging the little black triangle from 0 up to the point in the curve where that channel starts to ascend. I also adjust the high level, by dragging the little white triangle from 255 to the point on the curve where again it goes up. With my previous scanner I would also have to set the middle input value. I had figured what seemed to be a good setting for it and would effectively just load that number into the box. My present scanner does not need that sort of fix, so the middle box always remains 1.00. The photo sections have the settings for each of the channels that I used on the scan. After the Red, Green and Blue channels have been set, and the OK button clicked, the image should have richer blacks and the paper should be closer to white. The photos section has an image of what the page looks like after the adjustment. In this particular case, the original scan was very yellow, but the yellow was pretty even across the page. After the adjustment, the white in the word balloons looks pretty good, but the paper edges are rather splotchy. Other pages may have browning toward the edges and the end result may be a pretty good white on the interior, but bands of yellow or brown along some edges. This adjustment increases the contrast of the original scan, so these effects can look worse than on the original. I can’t afford pedigree comics with pure white pages, so this is something I just live with. Although I have seen better, I am please with the results so far for this particular scan.

Step 3: Convert to CMYK –

Comics are printed using CMYK inks, so it makes sense to me to do the final colour adjustments in CMYK mode. The only important thing is that the Photo CMYK setup be set to GCR Seperation Type, with Maximum Black Generation. I leave it that way all the time.

Step 4: Level tool –

I now return to the Level, but now the image is in CMYK mode. Here I adjust using not just the histogram, but also watching the image, and using the Info tool window. I do not touch the combined CMYK channel, but work on the individual Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black channels. For any channel I generally start with the Low Input Level, dragging the black triangle from its right corner. I do not try to push the C, M or Y channels to achieve the strongest possible colour. Rather I prefer to leave it somewhere where near where the actual data starts. Precisely where is a judgement call based on the preview of the image. If you want to push a channel to the max the histogram will sometimes show where that is as the first small peak going from right to left. Unfortunately, depending on the image, that peak may not show up. In my example I can see the peak for the Cyan and Yellow channels, but I can’t make it out for the Magenta. In any case my advice is to move the cursor over an image area that appears to have a solid example of the colour of the channel of interest and look at the Info window. If the Info window shows that particular channel has reached 100%, you have reach or exceeded the peak. Go past the peak, and final results are bound to be pretty bad. In fact when I adjust the magenta that way to find the peak, the girl’s dress has a nice red, but the flesh tones are terrible. My tastes are to find some good point near where the data starts. Then I note the position of the Middle Input Level triangle. I use landmarks on the curve to judge that position. If the curve fails to provide a good landmark, I fall back to landmarks in the dialog box itself. I do not more the middle triangle yet, just remember its location. I then move the High Level Input (white triangle) from right corner to the left. Now I am trying to remove those tones that make the paper off white. Some cases the tones maybe under some other colour. The histogram will invariably show some peaking on the the right side. The peaking may have an abrupt beginning. That often is the a clue to how far I have to push the white triangle to remove unwanted tone. But even if there is an abrupt edge, and especially if there is none, I keep and eye on what is going on in the image. And I stop periodically to use the Cursor and Info window to judge the effect of the area having the unwanted tone (usually the white). But like I said I watch the image. It’s no good to remove a coloured edge due to paper browning if you remove all the yellow inks also. I use my judgement on how far to push the High Levels before it damages the final results. In this example in the Cyan I moved it past the abrupt edge. The Magenta had a secondary peak right on the edge; I moved the white triangle past the abrupt edge but not into the secondary peak. The yellow channel had a gradual climb as it approached the right. For yellow I moved the adjustment to about where this curve starts. This was a pretty extreme adjustment and in the end did not get rid of all the yellow, but judging from theimage it was as far as I was confortable with. Up to now I have not mentioned the Black channel. Actually it is adjusted pretty much like the others. However it almost always shows a peak on the left. I prefer to push the black further then I do the other colours. I usually put the Low setting at the where the left peak starts. After setting both the Low and High Level adjustments I then move the Middle adjustment to the landmark I remembered from before. Moving the other adjustments moves the Middle one automatically. But I want it back to the location I remembered from before (based where it is when set to 1.00, and the Low setting where I want, but the High Level still at 255). The final adjustment is not as cut and dry as my initial RGB adjustment: once I get the channels where I think they should be, I do not hit the OK button right away, but look at the image and decide if I might want to try other adjustments. But any channel I do adjust I redetermine where the Middle level triangle should be. Once again the photo section has pictures of the settings I used for each of the channels as well as a copy of the image the adjustment was actually made.

The final results of colour correction in this case are somewhat mixed. One problem is this was obviously originally a poorly printed page. With my minimally adjusted Magenta channel the dress is not a great red, and yet the flesh tones are a bit strong. When restoring interior pages, I personally do not try to make them perfect. And if you keep the imperfections, you are going to make some compromises. What those compromises are will vary based on personal tastes. Another problem with this particular final correction is there still is a bit of yellow in the white above the printed image. From experience I know that yellow will be even more noticable when printed on white paper. In this case I will do some editing with the Eraser tool on the Yellow channel before I switch the mode from CMYK back to RGB. I find it easier to edit the image in CMYK.

When I do interior restorations, I typically scan all the pages I want at one time. I then use the Automation feature to do all the file opens, RGB to CMYK conversions, and final CMYK to RGB conversions, leaving me to do the individual Level adjustments manually.
Harry Mendryk (2006/01/22) [#14]:

I mentioned in an earlier post that when I do colour correction I make use of Line Art that I had made previously. The Line Art is generated using digital bleaching of the same scan files, and therefore match them perfectly.

I just finished restoring the Young Romance #7 cover. I decided to use de-screening on it. Rand’s “bulletin board” procedure indicates resizing in the middle of the de-screening steps. I can offer no firm reason that this sequence should be followed. But I can say that resizing should never preceed the blurring step. And in general it is best to do filtering at the final resolution. On that basis, the bulletin board makes sense.

But I decided against following that sequence. The reason is that although I know the resize that will need to be done for my book, I may have other uses for the cover and I do not know what resize they will require. If the image is properly de-screened at the original scan resolution, it can then be reduced to any size without the fear of Moire occuring.

I also did not follow Rand’s bulletin board in respect to blurring the channels individually. Here my reason is different. I have only recently started experimenting with de-screening. I would first like to get more experience with my present technique. That way when I do try individual channel de-screening, I will be better able to evaluate the results.

I have added to the photo sections, the original scan, the original line art, the cover after colour correction and touch-up, and the cover after de-screening and touch-up. Below I outline the steps I take.
Step 1: Colour correction

Perform colour correction as described in a previous post. I leave the cover in CMYK mode.

Step 2: Add Line Art Layer

I create a new channel and paste into it the Line Art that I created when working on the Simon & Kirby covers. This Line Art was made using this particular colour scan, so it perfectly lines up. I will always keep this as the top layer. And none of the editing, colour correction, or descreening steps defined below are done on the Line Art layer.

Step 3: Create special selection channels from Line Art

The Line Art from the book includes black letters which on the colour cover are Yellow (upper right) and White (in box on the right side). I use Duplicate Channel on the Line Art to make three copies. I edit these copies so one is just the Yellow letters, another channel is just the White letters, and the third copy is that part of the Line Art that truly will be Black. I do this so when I am editing I can switch from one selection to another quickly, as needed.

Step 4: Create Line Art Layer

I create a new empty layer. I use Load Selection to load the invertion of the Black part of Line Art. I fill the selection with 100% Black. This layer remains the top layer so that when I am done, the Line Art is fully Black, which is how I like it.

Step 5: Use Erase tool to remove unwanted undertones

Now I use the eraser tool on each channel to remove colour undertones. These undertones are artifacts left over from the scanning and colour correction processes They will have a tendancy to give the correct colours a muddy look. I do not remove the black undertones from under the cyan areas. They will be handled later in a separate step. Each channel has its own screen angle. I use this to help recognize the undertones that I want to remove. Using the previously made selections help me to do things like remove the Cyan undertone to the Yellow Letters without affected the Green background. During this editing step I also remove registration problems, ink smudges, and uncorrected paper browning.

Step 6: Use Screen in Apply Tool to reduce Cyan’s Black undertone

Now for the black undertone to cyan. My experience is that Cyan seems to have stronger black undertones then Yellow or Magenta. I have several explanations for why that is. But the important thing is that I personally do not like these comics restored with all of the Cyan’s Black undertone removed. So I handle them differently. I start by making a duplicate of the Cyan channel. I use the Level Tool and bring the left triangle to the start of Cyan’s left peak and hit the OK button. I then select the Black channel but display all the CMYK channels. I then open the Apply Tool from the Image Menu. I set the layer to Background, the channel to Cyan, turn on Invert, and set blending to Screen. Doing this allows me to selectively mask out only the Black under the Cyan. I try various values of Opacity for a value that looks correct to me judging by the preview. In this case I accepted 50% and hit the OK.

Step 7: Use Curve Tool to adjust hair and hat colours

I was pretty happy with the cover’s coluor at this point except for the woman’s hair and the man’s hat. I am always a little uncertain about my CRT’s calibration so I print just those sections.

The printout looks better, but on the print the hair and hat are more grey compared to the comic’s dark brown. So I duplicate the Line Art channel twice and edit to make one a selection of the hair and the other a selection of the hat. I then adjust with the Curves tool on each section to get the brown I want, and I save a copy of the curve before I accept the changes. I proof my changes, and if still not happy I go back in the history pallet to try again. But I still have my selection channels and stored curves from which I can tweak. After a few iterations I am finally happy.

Step 8: Create De-Screen and Trap Layers

I duplicate the Background Level (the one I’ve been working on) to make a De-Screen Layer. (I do not want to de-screen the Background Level directly in case I want to go back and change it some day). I then duplicate the Image because I am going to perform an operation that can only be done on a flattened image, I call this copy the Trap Image.

I flatten the Trap Image (remember the Black Line Art is the topmost layer). I use the Trap tool set to maximum (10). I copy the Trap Image and paste it back on the original image and name it the Trap Layer (I discard the Trap Image). I make sure that the Trap Layer is below the Line Art Layer and above the De-Screen Layer.

Step 9: Limit Trap Layer to colours that were trapped under Line Art

I clear the entire contents of the Black channel for the Trap Layer. I use Load Selection with the Black Line Art channel. With delete, all that remains is the trapping under the Line Art. This will help to reduce the halo affect from the de-screening procedure later.

Step 10: Merge the Trap Layer into the De-Screen Layer

I then select the De-Screen Layer. I duplicate the Line Art channel to make a De-Screen channel. The De-Screen channel already has the Line art for the Yellow and White lettering, but I also edit it to include the whites inside the title characters. On the CMYK of the De-Screen layer I select Load the De-Screen channel with invert set on and then Fill with 100% white. The Trap Layer is merged down into the De-Screen Layer. The De-Screen Layer now has the CMY colours trapped under the Line Art, but the Line Art itself removed.

Step 11: Use Gaussian Blur on the De-Screen Layer

On the De-Screen layer I use the Gaussian Blur tool with the Radius set to 4.0 pixels.

Step 12: Use Unsharp Mask tool on the De-Screen Layer

On the De-Screen Layer I used the Unsharp Mask tool. I set the Radius to 4.0 pixels (to match what I used during the Gaussian Blur) and initially set the Threshold to 0. I then adjusted the amount until I thought it was sharped enough (my case was 130%). I scrolled the image to a part of the image that had flesh tones, then adjusted the Threshold up to where the tones looked good (15).

Step 13: Delete from De-Screen Layer those parts not to be de-screened

I Select Load the De-Screen channel with invert and then delete the parts from the De-Screen layer that do not require de-screening.

Step 14: Correct remaining defects with Paintbrush

Using the Paintbrush tool, I then corrected the defects caused by de-screen as well as those on the original comic.

Harry Mendryk (2006/08/07) [#121]:

I have posted my technique for colour correction. I still use my method. You can see some of my results on my Simon and Kirby blog:

http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/simonandkirby/

Colour Correction : Rand’s method

Randolph Hoppe (2006/01/18) [#3]:

Rand’s “bulletin board” method (so-called because Rand pinned a note of these steps to the bulletin board behind his monitor):

1. Rotate
2. Crop
3. Convert to CMYK
4. Auto Levels
5. Curves to Blacken
6. Gaussian Blur each channel separately
7. Re-size
8. Curves on K channel only
9. Sharpen all

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/19) [#4]:

> 1. Rotate
> 2. Crop

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/19) [#4]:
Partly self explanatory. But lately I have been using the crop tool to rotate also. I used to try to be very precise and get one edge of the comic perfectly vertical. But, frankly, I have found that when they inked the original panel layout they were pretty sloppy. When you get one edge perfect the others might look pretty bad. Rotating using the crop tool allows me to better visualize, and to find a compromise for all edges.

Randolph replied (2006/01/19) [#11]:
I start with the measure tool and “image|rotate canvas|arbitrary” to get something either horizontal or vertical. Then compromise.

3. Convert to CMYK

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/19) [#4]:
Again self explanatory. Scanners usually have RGB sensors so it is natural to import scans as RGB. But comics are printed with CMYK inks. So at some point in colour restoration it makes sense to work in CMYK. But it is important to have your Photoshop CMYK set up properly. You should be using GCR, with “Black Generation” set to Maximum. The purpose of this is that greys are thereby generated only in the black (K) channel, not by various combinations of all the channels.

NB: In Photoshop 7, go to menu item: Edit > Color Settings. At the end of the CMYK field is a checkmark, clicking it causes a list of options to be displayed. Choose “Custom CMYK”.

In the CMYK Setup dialog, in “Separation Options” select “GCR” and in “Black Generation” select Maximum. Click “OK” (twice).

4. Auto Levels

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/19) [#4]:
“Auto levels” is a quick and dirty tool. I have tried it and compared the before and after. It seems to maximize the ranges of the CMY tones, but does not seem to do much to the K channel. This has the effect of giving stronger colours to the image. This is important because the tone range of the CMY channels is generally low and uneven. This is due to the original poor printing that comics received, the fading of the inks with age, and the limitations of the scanning. It seems to do a good job on the CMY channels, but I prefer the full control I get from working with the Level tool.

5. Curves to Blacken

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/19) [#4]:
Since the auto level did not do much to the K channel, I suspect you are using it to enrich your blacks. I remember an article I once read that recommended using the Curves tools to do colour adjustment. Curves does seem to provide the maximum flexibility. But again I prefer the Level tool, because it provides a histogram. I find this gives me a better insight into what is going on in the image, and what I should do to correct some of the problems.

6. Gaussian Blur each channel separately

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/19) [#4]:
This is step one of the de-screening process. I mainly de-screen to remove the Moire patterns that often show up when resizing an image. I do not resize all my work, and only use de-screening when actually needed. On the matter of blurring the channels separately, it shouldn’t matter. Certainly there is no harm in doing it. It might be possible to use different settings for the blurring of each channel, but I am not sure what the benefit would be.

Randolph replied (2006/01/19) [#11]:
It is *all* about using different settings on the blurring of each channel. I may have picked this up from Dan Marguiles, a photoshop expert, in a magazine column or website. Or some other photoshop experts forum.

Harry Mendryk replied (2006/01/20) [#12] [#13]:
I recall one guy who generally worked using the Curves tool. I followed that approach back then, but have since switched to using the Level tool. You get more control over how a channel is adjusted from Curves, but I find the histograms help by giving me better insight into the image itself. As for working on channels separately, when bluring during de-screening, now that you mention it, perhaps I can see some advantages. In a recent cover restoration I had to do some severe bluring to get rid of some Moire. Maybe working on the channels seperately would allowed a less severe blur, or require less post-blur re-touching.

7. Re-size

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/19) [#4]:
I’ve been re-sizing *after* de-screening, not in the middle. But, to be honest, I never thought about it. Since you did not get your de-screening technique from me, did the source give any reason for doing re-sizing here? This is something I definitely want to experiment with.

Randolph replied (2006/01/19) [#11]:
I came up with the order of these steps after considerable testing. I think it is about re-assuring that the blacks are where I want them to be after the bi-cubic resampling that takes place when resizing.

Harry Mendryk replied (2006/01/20) [#12]:
It’s always a good idea to keep track of what has happened with the channels as you work. I have only begun using de-screening for restoration recently. I’ll keep this tip in mind.

8. Curves on K channel only

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/19) [#4]:
Again I am not sure what to say about this step. Does your de-screening process somehow affect the black channel? Like I said, I’ve just started to experiment with de-screening.

Randolph replied (2006/01/19) [#11]:
As I noted above, this is just doing a little more adjustment after the resizing.

9. Sharpen all

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/19) [#4]:
I presume you are using the unsharp mask filter to do this, the last step in the de-screening process.

Randolph replied (2006/01/19) [#11]:
No, just plain old “sharpen” and “sharpen more”. I know the unsharp mask filter is a powerful tool, but have never put the time in to figure it out.

Harry Mendryk replied (2006/01/20) [#12]:
I admit I don’t really understand the Unsharp Mask tool. And having three adjustments to use makes it hard to just twiddle until you get the results you want. But I have found settings for two of the adjustment bars that seem to work pretty well. This leaves adjusting to just one (Radius). At that point it just becomes a “sharpen” adjustment. The re-sizing I do for covers is not much. I think that is the reason why I find that the “Sharpen” and “Sharpen More” tools don’t do much.
This does not include hardware issues.
Colour Correction : Conversion to CMYK alters colour

Topic: Loss of “out of gamut” colours
Dario [vulcaniano99] (2006/03/06) [#105]:

The colour adjustment suggested in this list involves, firstly, a rough level adjustment in RGB, then a finer one after a conversion to CMYK.

I am puzzled that when I convert colour mode from RGB to CMYK, the colours change a little (sometimes quite a bit).
Harry Mendryk (2006/03/06) [#106]:

I have seen a slight change when converting to CMYK. This is expected, because the “colour space” for CMYK is smaller than that of RGB.

But I am surprised if you see a significant change, except for purples in RGB changing to more of a grey in CMYK. I fix that by adjusting the middle triangle when I am working on the RGB correction.

Most browsers won’t display a CMYK .jpg file, but Photoshop will have no problem doing so.
Dario [vulcaniano99] (2006/03/08) [#107]:

That was the problem I observed, mainly with purples. Other colours seem to be okay.
David [betroot] (2006/03/09) [#108]:

A computer can display some colours that can’t be printed.

The exclamation mark in the colour pallette (the big one), in Photoshop, demonstrates this: a means of indicating out-of-gamut colours.

When you scan a comic, you convert a CMYK printed image to RGB, but Photoshop then converts the RGB image back to CMYK. The purple region of the spectrum is the part most likely to be altered by this process, because of incompatibilities in the filters used.
Harry Mendryk (2006/03/09) [#109]:

What you are saying is true, but is not the explanation for the problem I had with purples. In my case, when I went from RGB to CMYK the purples really did became greys. Converted back to RGB, they were still grey.

Once I made the proper adjustments, that was no longer true. The purple might change slightly, but it was still a purple.

David [betroot] (2006/03/09) [#110]:

When you scan the colours that are on the page, it takes the data and records it as RGB colours for screen display. When you make a conversion to CMYK (a sub-set of RGB), the RGB colour number of every single pixel ‘jumps’ to the value the Photoshop algorithm thinks is the closest CMYK equivalent: it just converts it to the nearest one that it was programmed to.

Select a colour, then check its compatibility with CMYK by clicking the ForeGround swatch in the Toolbar (that brings up the large window for colour choice, with shades of colour and numeric info).

Chances are the purple will force a ! (exclamation point) prompt, meaning “this colour is unprintable in CMYK”, and when clicked it ‘leaps’ to the nearest colour which DOES have a CMYK equivalent.

Often, the purple goes ‘grey’ (dull).

You can cheat this ‘leap’, by selecting an alternate purple colour that has a rich saturation; but by doing so you’ve probably shifted the red or blue component.

That’s why the current comic colourists work in CMYK and avoid RGB if possible (some filters don’t work unless RGB).

I’m not suggesting a method to avoid the problem, just stating the basic facts about RGB/CMYK.
Harry Mendryk (2006/03/10) [#111]:

You are writing about colour space in general. But my discussion with Dario about purple has nothing to do with that colour space issue.

If you change the Foreground colour, but do not use the swatch, but instead enter in the CMYK boxes 100 for C, 100 for M, 0 for Y and 0 for K you will get a purple. There will be no exclamation mark to indicate any colour space problem. Make a new RGB file and Fill it with the Foreground color, and you will get a purple. Convert the file to CMYK and it will still be purple. Convert it again to RGB and it remains a purple. If you are observant, you might have seen that the info box shows the CMYK is not exactly 100,100,0,0 it has shifted a little. But it is still purple.

Colour space difference may explain slight changes in colour when changing to/from CMYK and RGB. It does not explain the big shift to grey that I once had. That shift is an artifact of the scanning process and the settings used. And, at least in my case, that problem was correctable by proper adjustments during my RGB level adjustment step. Hopefully that will be the case for Dario also.

I wish that I could remain in CMYK mode for my restoration. But, unfortunately, scanners actually read the image using RGB detectors, most browsers will not display a CMYK jpeg, and my printer uses RGB.

I do most of my actual work in CMYK. I just have to return to RGB in order to do anything with it.
Dario [vulcaniano99] (2006/03/10) [#112]:

I found a problem even with blue.

When I convert to CMYK, Reed’s costume changes a bit, to a less bright blue
David [betroot] (2006/03/10) [#113]:

FFblues.jpg shows what happens when you sample the blue. The Color Picker says it’s an “out of gamut” (unprintable CMYK) colour – the exclamation mark shows this. If you click on the exclamation mark it will jump to what Photoshop decides is the closest colour numerically, trying to preserve the Hue, Saturation and Value. It’s a grey.

If you just do a CMYK mode conversion, that blue will shift to that grey.

Marked in FFBlues.jpg is an area of blue where, if you click, you WON’T get an exclamation mark warning: a nicer blue.

You are making a judgment here, and saying “colour saturation is most important, I don’t care about value shift”. Photoshop can’t do that, as it’s a subjective judgement.

So, by trial and error, you can find a nicer CMYK blue, and then substitute that. Basically, you would record the number of the ‘nice’ blue. Then, using one of the colour controls (such as ‘selective color’), shift the blues to your replacement colour. Well, that’s how you would evolve a ‘method’ — I can’t give you a step-by-step.

Remember: a comic is a CMYK entity. The scanner (nothing to do with Photoshop) scans the picture and converts it (using the scanning software’s algorithm) to RGB: so it’s a scanner problem. It makes the scan for on-screen representation in RGB. It looks good on the monitor. BUT when you convert it to CMYK, in Photoshop, it isn’t going “back” to CMYK – it’s a first time conversion for Photoshop, which uses its own algorithm to do the CMYK conversion.

David [betroot] (2006/03/10) [#114]:

[This section is valuable ONLY if you intend to print the comic to paper, not if it will only be viewed on a computer monitor.]

One other thing you have to consider. It may look grey on screen, but it’s not until you PRINT it that you can be sure if there is colour loss: it may look dull on screen, yet print perfectly well.

You are converting an RGB screen display to a CMYK printed image, and the concern is for the PRINTING, not for its representation on the screen. It’s the PRINTING that is now important.

He then gets lost in meaningless rambling
The only points he seems to be trying to make are:

a. Do two printouts, one as RGB and the other as CMYK.

b. Ignore entirely what you see on the computer screen, and instead compare the RGB printout with the CMYK printout.

c. Do the CMYK conversion in Photoshop, don’t leave it to the printer, because consumer printers do a crap job of this type of conversion.
David [betroot] (2006/03/10) [#116]:

If you scan a comic, then convert it to CMYK in Photoshop, although it may look duller on the screen it should print like the original!

It’s only the difference on-screen between RGB and CMYK that you’ve been noticing.

The diagram shows how different media react to colour (it’s from an old book, and newsprint, like colour photocopiers, has improved in the last few years). But, in the diagram, see how newsprint can’t handle rich purples, and which colours fall in problem areas.
Harry Mendryk (2006/03/10) [#117]:

What David has said is all true, but I have a different suggestion. The faces have way too much magenta. Was the comic really like that? If not, you have pushed the initial RGB level adjustment too far.

If the comic was heavy in magenta, you can try what David suggested.

Despite what David says, the Photoshop conversion in this case does not push to grey, it pushes to magenta (when I try it). After conversion there is 4% of black in Mr Fantastic’s suit, but 25% of magenta. It is the magenta that is causing the problem.

You can use “Apply Image” to correct that. First select only the magenta channel, and I would advise clicking the little box for combined CMYK. This allows operations to be done on magenta, but shows you how they will look. Then in the menu select Image/Apply Image. Select Cyan for the channel, select invert, and Screen for the Blending. This will remove magenta under any cyan. But there may be a slight shift in the background purples.

Colour Correction : Yellow & Magenta – Edit as CMYK

Harry Mendryk (2006/02/17) [#102]:

I generally do not discuss manual editing of scans. Photoshop provides the tools, but no magic solutions. You have to do a lot of tedious work. But working in the proper colour mode can make some corrections a lot less painful.

Since I work with scans of golden age comics (generally low grade ones), I often work with pages that have a browning problem. My colour correction technique can correct much of this problem.

But sometimes the browning is uneven, so after colour correction part of the page will have white paper, other parts of the paper will have yellow to magenta tones.

I recently scanned a Boy Commandos story from “Detective Comics” that had this type of problem. After colour correction some of the paper was a pretty good white, mostly in the center of the page. But other areas, particularly the left side, were still pretty ugly. Getting the yellow/magenta out of word balloons etc would take a lot of effort in RGB mode.

But I converted the image to CMYK mode using the GCR at Maximum setting. Then I worked on first the Yellow channel, and then the Magenta channel. Erasing unwanted tones out of word balloons becomes an easy task, as work done in the Yellow or Magenta channels does not affect the black lettering, which is in the Black channel. Browned paper like in this example will leave unwanted Yellow tones under some of the Magenta, along with some unwanted Magenta under some Cyan. I use low tone values, screen angles and subject to indicate what should be removed and what left. Low values of Yellow probably need to be removed. Higher values of Yellow that exactly match the Magenta screen angle and pattern, are also likely to be undesired. But a low Yellow associated with a strong Cyan in Brooklyn’s shirt makes it Green and should not be removed. Most skies are made using Cyan alone, the presence of Magenta in skies probably needs to be removed. That sort of reasoning. With practice, it becomes pretty much second nature.

If further cleaning up was needed, I would also work on the Cyan and Black channels. But in this case it looks pretty good with just the Yellow and Magenta work. I really don’t want to spend too much time on a non-Kirby work.

Colour Correction : Avoid the Red Halo

Tom Kraft (2006/01/28) [#55]:

I own a Microtech ScanMaker 9700XL.

I’m having a problem with scanning original art. Some of the finer black lines have a blue or red halo, usually 2 or 3 pixels above the black line or in some cased the entire line has a blue or red tint.

I tried scanning at a higher resolution. This diminished the halo but does not eliminate it. I recallibrated the scanner with the included Kodak recallibrator but observed little difference.

Is there something I can do to eliminate the halo?
Randolph Hoppe (2006/01/28):

What software are you using to scan? If it’s not VueScan or Silverfast, it might be worth trying their demos, although the IT8 colour
calibration is part of the paid versions:

VueScan http://hamrick.com

SilverFast http://silverfast.com
Harry Mendryk (2006/01/28):

I recently got a Microtek 9800XL, and do not have the problem you are reporting.

The problem sounds like one of two things:

1. Calibration – I know you said you re-calibrated it. But the Kodak calibration reference is probably smaller then the art page. If possible try calibrating with the Kodak reference placed midway on the glass.

2. Filter & Descreen – Make sure you have both of these set to none. The description of a halo sounds like a sharpen filter is in effect.

This does not include hardware issues. I used to take original art to a digital service in the city. They could scan art much larger than I could, for a relatively low fee. But one time, scans I got from them had the problem you describe. I tried to talk to them about it, and they re-scanned for me two more times. But the problem never went away. In the end they told me they did not want my business anymore.

Colour Correction : Greys

David [betroot] (2006/02/02) [#93]:

I used Harry’s method of digital bleaching, then some ideas of my own to try and get rid of the grey.

There was a post in the Kirby Group about the greys on covers.

Whoever did the colouring around the early Marvel in the transition to the Silver Age was fond of using Grey as a colour – presumably he/she thought it made the colours “pop” more.

I assume that a grey tone was added to a copy of the original art, either with Benday stick-on screens, or in some cases with watercolour, so that the photographed black plate had greys added.

He may of course have done it on the original art.
Harry Mendryk (2006/02/02) [#95]:

I tried to follow the discussion in the Kirby list about the use of grey on Atlas/Marvel covers. But I was never completely clear on exactly what was meant by using grey. In this particular cover, Journey Into Mystery #52, are you talking about the grey in the giant’s costume? If so, the low resolution of the scan makes it hard for me to give a definitive answer.

My experience with original art is that if the grey was added using Benday, the dot size would be different from the screen dot used in printing the colours. Generally, Benday dots are larger. And, since Benday is manually applied, there often are differences in the dot row/column angles from place to place on the image. Differences in dot size (but not angles) would also be expected with the special pre-treated boards that were sometimes used to achieve the greys. Water colour was also mentioned, but I have never seen it on original Golden or Silver Age art.

However, the JIM #52 scan’s resolution is too low to make such comparisons with confidence. But I will hazard a guess that in this case the greys were achieved just like the rest of the colours. That is, by the comic colourists, based on colour guides. They were not on the original art.
Greg T [Greg Theakston] (2006/02/02) [#96]:

Ben-Day, in my experience is a treated board with two lines at 45 degree angles, left and right. One set of lines is 30%, the other is 50%, so if both are used in an area, the result is an 80% tone.

There may have been a dot-pattern Ben-Day, but I don’t recall seeing it. Usually, the dot pattern grey is accomplished with Zip-A-Tone: plastic sheets with a sticky back, cut with an Exacto-knife.

The water-colour you are talking about was three shades of blue ink which were translated at the engraver’s into a dot pattern. The Marvel cover greys were produced by ink-toning a blue-line board: a fifth colour-separation.

Jack Adler and Jerry Serpe did the grey tones at DC. I suspect Sol Brodsky did them at Marvel.

Colour Correction : Colour Noise

Dario [vulcaniano99] (2006/02/17) [#100]:

Using Photoshop CS2, the filter “Surface blur” will remove colour noise.

Colour Correction : Limit Colour to 8 bit
Harry Mendryk (2006/01/25) [#52]:

Subtle colour differentiation has nothing to do with scanning resolution.

Rather, it is governed by the bit depth. Most people scan with 8 bits per pixel, i.e. for each colour channel, in the case of colour. But some scanners allow 12 or even 16 bits per pixel. 8 bits provides 256 tone levels for a channel, 12 bits provides 4,096 levels, and 16 bits 65,536.

Personally, I think 8-bit depth is sufficient.
Darci (2007/09/04) [#147]:

How many colours should a comic’s palette contain? It seems to me there’s no point in scanning for 16-bit colour, for example, if there are only 1,024 possible colours. What do three colours, times three screen sizes, plus one (for solid black) work out to be?
Harry Mendryk (2007/09/04) [#148]:

It seems to me you have reached the right answer for the wrong reason. If in fact we were trying to use a computer to produce new comic book art that uses a silver age palette, then you don’t need a lot of bits for each colour channel. In fact to minimize file size you would probably be better off using an Indexed Colour file format.

But that is not what we are trying to do. I am trying to restore, as close as possible, the original colours from scans of old comics. Primarily the problem is the page has yellowed, affecting the colours scanned. You need more bits per colour channel to make the distinctions, you simply are not dealing with just 1,024 different colours. Having said that, you don’t need to distinquish millions of colours either.

In my restoration techniques, I work with the individual colour channels. What matters to me is how many levels I can get from each colour channel. With 8 bits you get 256 different levels, with 16 bits you get 65,536. I find 256 levels is more than enough. 65K is overkill, and such overkill results in file sizes that are difficult to handle.

Darci (2007/10/26) [#149]:

Comics have 63 colours (plus black and white).

Steven [webster2000] (2009/05/09) [#152]:

There were no colour matching standards before Pantone. Individual printers provided designers with numbered swatch books, but these would vary from place to place.

Resizing : Moire Patterns

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/19) [#5]:

My restoration of Young Romance #6. The front cover is surprisingly well preserved. There were relatively few tears or creases.

I needed to slightly reduce its size. Moire patterns occured when I did. I had particular problems with patterns in the man’s brown jacket. So I had to do a special job on it.

I ended up with 3 layers: one with severe de-screen of the man’s jacket, another for the lesser de-screening of much of the figures, and a final layer for the solid colours that required no de-screening (mostly the background).

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/23) [#24]:

David wrote:
> surely in the “Tomorrow Man” cover
> there’s ways of getting out the grey
> other than the Eraser tool

The grey in the word balloon is close in tone to some of the grey in the background. Removing the grey from the balloon using the “Level” tool, will adversely affect the cover as a whole.

If for some reason I really did not want to use an Eraser tool, I would probably create a selection of just the word balloon. Lots of ways to make such a selection, perhaps the Lasso tool would do. That way I could use my Level tool on the grey without affecting the rest of the cover.
David [betroot] (2006/01/24) [#30]:

Your mention of moire in the “Tomorrow Man” restoration was of interest. My scanner has built-in filters to get rid of “dots” in printing — using ‘Magazine’, ‘Newspaper’ print (it doesn’t have an ‘Art magazine’ filter that I’ve seen in other scanners). I tried to scan an art picture from a library book and none of the filters (de-screeners) in the scanner was perfect, and left a diagonal line moire (they were very small pictures and I was enlarging them). Do you have an idea for getting rid of moire?
Harry Mendryk (2006/01/24) [#37]:

Moire problems are a recurring headache. The most general solution is to scan at high resolution. Usually the further the scanning resolution is from the comic’s screening density the better. When I work with 600 dpi scanning (and even at times 1200 dpi) I generally do not have any Moire problems. That is unless it becomes necessary for me to re-size. Then it may show up. Both Rand and I have discussed de-screening techniques, and some scanners already come with their own de-screening utilities. If you like we can go over that more carefully. But there is no magic bullet that prevents Moire at all times.

Rand once mentioned getting some of his procedures based on some columns by Dan Margulis. When I dug out some old magazines that helped me, when I first got into doing image manipulation in Photoshop, it turns out that they were also written by Margulis. Dan’s articles are well written and contain valuable info. But his writings are geneally for use with images ultimately used in commercial printing. I do have some articles by Margulis that talk about how to prevent Moire. But I want to experiment with some of his techniques to see if they are truly useful for our type of work.

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/26) [#54]:

Reducing Moire from scanning –

Previously I was asked about how to prevent Moire patterns when scanning from printed material. The short answer is that there is no way that is guaranteed to work in all cases.

However Dan Margulis wrote some articles on the subject that I recently re-read. He provides a shortlist of practices to follow. I’ve reordered them slightly, and added some notes in brackets.

1. Always scan printed material at the highest possible resolution. These scans can be resized down later. (Although a high-resolution scan is moire-free, this does not mean that the resized image will not have Moire.)

2. Don’t use a sharpening filter. (Most consumer scanners use automatic sharpening filters when scanning. To avoid this you would have to get into the setup for your scanner and turn off sharpening.)

3. Don’t use an automated descreening package. (Some scanners have descreening capabilities. Some are better than others. But even when they work they destroy detail. Dan advocates a manual approach in Photoshop. But Dan’s approach is complicated, and I have not actually used it. So I would say if your scanner has descreening, first try scanning without using it. If that does not work out well, try again with descreening.)

4. Learn to read the screen angles of the original. (For black and white, this is pretty easy. For colour there is a different angle for each CMYK ink. Generally it takes some effort to determine these individual angles. Converting the file from RGB to CMYK in Photoshop helps. But it still takes some practice.)

Dan Margulis also provides a 30-degree rule: to minimize Moire, scan the original at an angle 30 degrees from the original’s screen angle. For black and white prints this is not difficult to determine: most B&W images use a 45 degree screen angle. Using the 30 degree rule would mean scanning with the original at a 15 degree angle. Occasionally some B&W are screened at 0 degrees. That would mean scanning the original at 30 degrees. I have never come across B&W screened at any other angle; but if you read the screen angle, you can determine the best scanning angle in all cases.

Or if you cannot read the screen angles, scan a B&W image first at 15 degrees, and if that doesn’t work try 30 degrees.

After the image is scanned, you can use Photoshop to rotate the image back to the original vertical.

Attached are two versions of the same image, cropped to keep the files relatively small. The original was from a movie ad in a newspaper. View them at 100%, or at Actual Pixels: viewing at other than 100% makes it harder to see the Moire; viewing at a reduced size may show Moire on the monitor that is not really present in the original file. The first (angle_0.jpg) was scanned normally.If you look at the forehead of the actress, or in the background, you will see the Moire pattern. The second image (angle_15.jpg) was scanned at a 15 degree angle, then rotated back using Photoshop (Edit > Transform > Numeric). This second image, scanned at an angle, has no Moire.

I can’t say if following the 30 degree rule will always work perfectly. But it should always minimise the Moire pattern.

But things get messy when scanning colour prints. These prints have a different angle for each ink, and they attempt to follow the 30 degree rule themselves. But although a screen is said to have some particular angle, it really is composed of rows at that angle and columns 90 degrees to the angle. This means that only three colours can follow the 30 degree rule in CMYK, the fourth ink must be at some other, non-optimal angle. The eye is less sensitive to Yellow, so that is the ink that normally gets the poor angle.

For CMYK prints, the screen angles normally are Cyan (15º), Black (45º), Magenta (75º) and Yellow (0º). There simply is no perfect scanning angle available, the best that can be done is to be 30 degrees from two of the ink colours. Which two can vary depending of the particular image. But Margulis suggests that the best screening angle is 45 degrees. This is best for Cyan and Magenta, but not so good for Black and Yellow. In fact it is the absolute worst for Black, so I am a little surprised by his suggestion. So I would say try his 45 degrees first, then scan also at 15, 75 and 0 degrees. Use whichever one is best.

Years ago when I first started doing comic scans, I re-read Dan’s articles. But I never tried following them. One of the reasons is a practical one. Most consumer scanners scan up to about 8.5 by 11 inch images. This is fine for comics, until you try scanning them at an angle. Even at 15 degrees, a comic will not fit on this size of scanner. Dan Margulis’s advice is only useful if you have a large scanner, or for scanning prints smaller than comic books.

High Resolution scanning : Advantages
Harry Mendryk (2006/01/24) [#33]:

Scans obtained from eBay have severe limitations with respect to the colour correction method I use.

One major shortcoming is their low resolution (typically only 100 dpi). Golden and Silver Age comics typically are printed with a screen pattern of 85 lpi (lines per inch). At 100 dpi a screen dot pattern on the comic page does not sample well. In Photoshop, first view the attached file at 100% (x1) magnification. The dot pattern is readily seen. Now use Image > Image Size, making sure “Resample Image” is set; then set the Resolution to 100 dpi (at this point DO NOT SAVE). Look at the image again: you no longer can see the screening. (After doing this test, discard the Image without saving it).

My method works best when the scan is fine enough that the comic’s screening dots can clearly be distinguished from the paper background. I usually work at 600 dpi, the 300 dpi of this example is a compromise for email purposes.

The other limitation of files on eBay is that they are generally adjusted to look good. This is usually an auto-adjust. But when an image is adjusted it often loses data that would have been useful to my colour correction technique. Actually my example just barely escapes losing data.

Harry Mendryk (2006/01/24) [#34]:

If you have Photoshop and are going to try to use my technique on the Hi-Res scan I posted, you must have CMYK conversion set up properly in Photoshop. I have two versions of Photoshop.

In Photoshop 5, the setting dialog can be found using menu item File > Colour Settings > CMYK Setup.

In Photoshop 7, getting the dialog is a little more involved. First bring up menu item Edit > Colour Settings. At the end of the CMYK field is a checkmark, hitting it causes a list of options to be displayed. Choose “Custom CMYK”.

Once you get the CMYK Setup dialog, in the Seperation Options select GCR, and in the Black Generation select Maximum. Click OK (twice in Photoshop 7).

NB: The purpose is that now the black channel will have a better black, and there will be less black in the colours.

This CMYK setup is important in that it defines how greys are converted. Commercial printers often want part or all of the greys to be made with CMY inks. For colour correction we want greys to only be in the Black channel. This setup provides that.
David [betroot] (2006/01/24) [#39]:

The first image is an example of colour mis-registration: you can see the mid-ground girl’s lipstick colour is ‘off’ – is this solved by moving the red channel, so the red registers correctly?

NB: The red of the lipstick does not coincide, on the image, with the girl’s lips/mouth. This is due to a mis-alignment of the K plate (holding the line art) and the M plate (holding the Magenta ink), known in printer’s jargon as mis-registration.
Harry Mendryk (2006/01/25) [#53]:

I goofed, and failed to convert the file from CMYK to RGB.

The reason for this image is so that anyone following my procedure by themselves processing the original scan I posted could have something to compare their results with. If they use the same settings I did, they should be getting the same results.

But if they decided to use different settings (a valid thing to do, particularly when doing the CMYK adjustment) they could see if their version turned out better. I expect people will have different preferences on how the final image should look.

I purposely did not do any manual editing on this image. The image is posted as an attempt to allow members to understand my colour correction technique.

In Photoshop you can select the Magenta channel, then use the Move tool to shift it about (i.e. move the Magenta colour patterns to coincide more accurately with the line art: termed ‘registration’ correction). If shifting it up/down and left/right is not sufficient, you can also use Edit > Rotate to do rotation.

Unfortunately, fixing registration problems, particularly on interior pages, almost always ends with a lot of fixing and touching up. As you move the magenta into proper registration, areas which originally were under the black line art (i.e. were over-written by black) become exposed. These newly exposed areas will have to be re-touched.

Photoshop LAB Color
Harry Mendryk (2006/02/15) [#97]:

I am currently reading “Photoshop LAB Color” by Dan Margulis.

The subject of the book concerns adjusting photographs, but I am interested in adapting his ideas to digital comics restoration.

LAB colour is an alternate colour mode used by Photoshop. It provides some benefits as compared to RGB or CMYK, but is not as intuitive.

It consists of three channels: A, B, and Lightness. The Lightness channel is the easiest to understand. Its name pretty much covers what it shows, it is similar to the grayscale of the image. The A and B channels are colour channels. Both A and B show the range between two different colours, with absence of either colour indicated by a midway point. A-channel is for green (negative numbers) and magenta (positive). B-channel is for blue (negative) and yellow (positive). For the following simple adjustment, it is not important to know which colours are part of A and which are part of B.

I will describe a way to do a quick colour correction for a comics scan using LAB colour. This could replace the RGB level adjustment I described previously for colour correction (also for digital bleaching). Like the RGB adjustment, the LAB adjustment only makes an initial rough correction, which can be further improved by secondary adjustments in CMYK mode. I described these other adjustments in previous posts.

1. Convert the scan to LAB colour:
Image > Mode > LAB Color

2. Open the Curves tool:
Image > Adjustment > Curves

3. I work with the Lightness channel first, it should be the default when the Curves Tool dialog comes up. I mouse click the cursor over an area that should be white, in this case inside the word balloon in the center. While the mouse button is held down a little circle will appear on the Lightness curve. I note where it occurs, and then drag the nearby curve end horizontally to the right to match that location. If I now hold the mouse button over the same area, the small circle should be over the point where the Lightness curve starts rising from the axis. The info box will show the L channel in this spot to be in my case 94/100. The first value (94) depends on the particular scan’s white value, but the second (100) is what we are aiming for.

4. Still using the Lightness channel in the Curve Tool dialog box, I hold the mouse button down over an area in the image that is black. In my example I used the lettering inside the yellow heart. A gain a circle will appear on the curve to indicate where to adjust. This time I moved the nearby curve end to the left. When finished the Info Box shows the Lightness channel of these letters to be something like 18/2. Again the 18 value may differ for other scans, but the 2 (or 1 or 0) is my goal.

5. Having adjusted the whites and the blacks, I noticed that the image has become too dark overall. I click the mouse button on the Lightness curve someplace in the middle and drag the curve to the right. This dragging causes the curve to no longer be a straight line. You can tell if you are dragging the curve in the correct direction, because if you go the wrong way it has the opposite affect of what you want. I have attached an image of the Lightness curve having made the three adjustments to it.

6. I now select the “A” channel in the Curves Tool dialog box. For this channel I will only be adjusting the white. I hold the mouse button down inside the same word balloon. In my case the little circle shows up right in the middle of the curve. The Info box indicates the area has 1/1 for the a channel. 0 is the ideal value for no colour cast, but 1 is good enough. So in my case I make no adjustments to the A channel. Had this not been the case, the adjustment would have been similar to what I describe below for the B channel.

7. I next select the “B” channel. When I hold the mouse button down with the cursor in the word balloon the little circle appears on the curve. This time the circle is on the lower half of the curve. The Info Box shows values of something like 17/17. I drag the opposite end of the curve, in this case the top to the left. I keep trying different settings until the clicking the mouse in the word balloon has the circle showing midway and the Info Box showing for the B channel something like 17/0.

8. Having done all the adjustments, I click the “OK” button in the Curves Tool dialog box. I would now convert the image out of LAB colour mode to RGB (if all I wanted was a rough correction) or CMYK (if I wanted to get even better adjustment). I have also attached a before and after image of the cover I tried this on (“Young Romance” #4). Note this example only shows the results of the LAB Curve adjustment, no other work has been done on it.

I have just started experimenting with using LAB color adjustments. I do not yet know whether it provides any benefits as compared to the RGB adjustment I described in an earlier post.

I have also experimented with improving the colours in general (not just the blacks and whites) using LAB. But those maneuvers are a bit more complicated.

Digitally Colour the Lineart

Dario [vulcaniano99] (2006/02/17) [#100]:

In Italy they started to publish Marvel comics in 1971. The paper quality was much better than that used in the USA originally, so the pages are much better printed than in the American originals. However, due to the high cost of colour, they print only half the pages in colour, printing only the lineart of the others.

I would like to digitally colour the lineart. Do you have a process for that?
Harry Mendryk (2006/02/17) [#101]:

To digitally colour the pages originally printed as line art, I can made a few suggestions. I’ve done something similar, using line art that I digitally bleached from some Joe Simon covers.

The first step would of course be to scan a line art page. If the printing quality is pretty good, in Photoshop use first Filter > Noise > Median with a very low Radius setting (perhaps 1). Then use Image > Adjustment > Threshold to covert the line art to pure black and white. If the print quality is not good enough, you may have to just use Image > Levels or Image > Curves to improve it as much as possible. In either case, you now have the line art in grayscale.

Next open a new file that is the same size as your line art image. But this file should be in whatever colour mode you want to work in. I generally do my work in CMYK. Make a new Layer: Layer > New > Layer. Right now this Layer is blank, but eventually will hold the Line Art.

On the new file, create a new Channel, again for the Line Art. Now going back to the original Line Art file, Select > All and then Edit > Copy. Go to the Line Art Channel of the new file and Edit > Paste. Now Select > Load Selection, and in the Channel selection of the dialog box, choose the Line Art Channel. Also click on the Invert box. After clicking OK, go to the new Line Art Layer you created before. Make sure your foreground is pure black. Now use Edit > Fill with Foreground Color, 100% Opacity and Normal Mode.

You now have a Layer for the Line Art, and a Background Layer that you can use to do the colour work in. Working in the Background will not affect the Line Art. Use whatever tools you want: Pencil, Paintbrush, and Airbrush are commonly used. You may not need the Line Art channel any more. But I would keep it, in case you mess up your Line Art channel by mistake.

You’ll want to match the colour to the Italian comic’s coloured pages. Take a scan of one of them, and use on it Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set the Radius high enough to remove the screen dots. You can then use the Eye Dropper Tool to select colours from this file.

Modern Reprints : Colour Techniques

Davis Trell (2006/08/09) [#124]:

Some of the colouring in recent recreations, the colours are too lurid.

For the one of the Rawhide Kid (“Two Gun Kid” cover), the colourist even coloured the Kid’s hat yellow! It was really hard on the eyes. Your cover was okay, Harry; it was the insides I disliked.

Some on the Kirby group argued that we are used to seeing old yellows on Kirby’s pages, that are faded, but when first printed they weren’t!

Also the colourists back then had a limited range of colours available, most noticeably in value, and couldn’t overwhelm the black line art. With modern colour the lines seem less important, with the oversaturated colours fighting for attention.
Gregory A Huneryager (“Greg”) (2006/08/09) [#125]:

I agree. The stories need to be coloured with modern paper stock in mind. I prefer the look of “Batman Chronicles” to the Archives, for that reason. The paper on the former is cheaper looking, but it doesn’t hurt to look at.

Another prefered variation was the recolouring on DC’s hardcover “Best of the ’40s“, “Best of the ’50s” books, which was a less white stock with some nice colouring, particularly by Greg Theakston on the Lou Fine stories.

I really think the best way to do it is to photograph the story. I don’t know if that’s more expensive or time consuming, but I like the way it looks in the Marvel “Five Decades” book and the recent Krigstein comics book.

Harry Mendryk (2006/08/09) [#126]:

There is always personal preference when it comes to colouring. Particularly when reprinting Golden or Silver Age comics. The printing technology just isn’t the same. IMHO a bright red on flat paper looks very different than when printed on high quality glossy paper.

But still, common sense should prevail. Rawhide Kid with a yellow hat? Everybody knows that good guys wear *white* hats! As they used to say in old Westerns, when someone would not come out to fight, “yer yellow”.

Craig Ede (2006/08/09) [#127]:

The Will Eisner “Spirit” Archives do the best job matching non-slick paper and colour, improving on the originals.

But, of course, the original “Spirit” didn’t have glossy covers.

Harry Mendryk (2006/08/10) [#131]:

I agree. The Spirit archives are amazing.

Craig Ede (2006/08/09) [#128]:

There was a lot more restoration involved in the Krigstein book than just “phographing” the stories, as the article in the book makes clear. That book is my top choice as an example of how comics reprinted in hardcover should be handled.
Huneryager, Gregory A (2006/08/09) [#129]:

In the Krigstein volume, I’m sure the Marvel “Five Decades” stories — those in the back of the book — were just photographed, and they look great.

It’s amazing how sophisticated some of the old stories are in terms of their colour use, most of which gets lost in the reprint. The early Sub-Mariner stories in “Marvel Mystery” are sometimes quite exquisite, as are some of the Vision. “Marvel Mystery” #13, which has the first Vision, has very interesting colouring on both of them, especially on the clouds and smoke. I’m assuming that Marvel was so small that the individual artists did their own separations.

Marvel should have found some way to do a better reprint of Marvel #1-4. That may be the worst of the archival reprint books.
Matthew Moring (2006/08/09) [#130]:

The guides we were given on the “Captain America” Masterworks volume were pages sourced from the Microcolor microfiche sheets. The colour was way off on them.

On other books such as “The Rawhide Kid“, they want the colourists to follow the same colours as originally appeared in the original issues, albeit with proper trapping.

I agree. I’d like to see a wider range of colours & gradients used, then flat colours, as in the first wave of “Masterworks” from the 1980s.
Harry Mendryk (2006/08/10) [#132]:

Not all of that “Captain America” Masterworks volume, because I supplied them with good scans of “Captain America” #2.

Matthew Moring (2006/08/10) [#133]:

Some of the pages were fine, but most weren’t. I worked on a Tuk story for it (might have been the one in #2), and that was among the cleanest, easiest to restore stories I’ve encountered: good quality scans.
Harry Mendryk (2006/09/22) [#136]:

So far all the comparisons I have made between the original comics and the “Masterworks” volume, for Captain America, show that Marvel has done a great job in keeping to the correct colour.

The line art for “Captain America” #1 does not appear to be based on bleached comic pages like the rest of the volume. I have compared them to copies of the flats (a type of proof that uses line art and no colours) that Joe Simon has. They appear to be an almost perfect match, and do not show the type of blurring that occurs due to the original primitive printing techniques used.

The “Captain America” Masterwork volumes seem accurate and are great buys. I doubt many on this list could afford to buy the original comics: I do not have them! My only complaint is that I dislike the use of glossy paper for Golden and Silver Age comic art. I much prefer the flat paper used in DC’s “Spirit” volume, which I consider the gold standard for reprints.

Greg [Theakston] (2006/09/23) [#137]:

That book was photographed from flats in the Jack Kirby Collection. Wish I’d been using the computer to retouch the rest of the volumes, but those were more primitive times.

Note on other Methods

Greg [Greg Theakston] (2006/02/01) [#86]:

1. Destructive methods (Painting Covers)

There are times when the chemical approach simply won’t do. Bill Black asked me to convert a Frazetta GHOST RIDER cover for him, and the black plate just floated off of the page. Whatta mess. Ditto on Harvey covers of the same period. And Atlas.

Those covers were printed on “clay-coated paper.” A low grade paper, coated with a fine layer of clay for a gloss finish. Cheaper I suppose, but a pain in the neck for me. Charlton used clay-coat as well. When the paper gets wet, the clay-coat lets go, and the result is a mess.

Maybe I should have sun-bleached them, as I did during the 1970s, but that’s so time consuming, unless it’s summer. I’ve been searching for the perfect process for 30 years.

These days I paint bucket white for results, on covers, but it takes forever!

Alex Toth Reader Vol.2 is on the newsstands this week. I took great care in reconstructing the Ben-Day patterns on CRIME AND PUNISHMENT #66. Hours and hours spent unclogging lines, and reconstructing patterns.

Destroy a comic? HAW! I’ve done that to $150,000 worth of comics. As Spock said, “One must die, so that many will live”. Or, as Walt Simonson said about Theakstonising, “You gotta break some eggs to make an omlette.” F.Y.I., I use as low grade copies as I can get.

2. Non-Destructive method (Tracing)

Next up, RAWHIDE KID #24 for Marvel. Seems the proofs and film are missing. Gawd those covers are a bitch. I’ll probably re-ink it on vellum. Short-cut method used on some of the “All-Winners” covers, and interiors. So much faster to just trace them off at 300% than scrub, and scrub, and scrub.

I believe that it’s important for retouchers to understand how the inker worked, and his intent.

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Science – Curvature of Spacetime

Posted on 16 April 2020 by StephenPoppitt

Reasons for Curvature

Curvature of spacetime is an illusion.

Because gravity is a field which propogates spherically (i.e. it radiates outward from a central mass in all directions equally), points of equal gravitational strength (being at an equal distance from the central mass) necessarily lie on a curved surface, because that surface is a sphere.

As objects in motion within that field follow a path of equal strength (unless acted upon by an outside force), because that path is a curved one the object will follow a curved path through spacetime. It is the field strength which is curving, not the actual underlying fabric of spacetime, but the effect creates the illusion that the fabric is itself curved.

What does Einsteinian curvature of spacetime imply?

General Relativity is usually interpreted (albeit misleadingly) as predicting that mass curves Einsteinian spacetime. Although this is inaccurate, it is a common form of shorthand (harmless so long as the true state of affairs is borne in mind: that what is curving is actually the field strength).

This curvature influences the path of light and other electromagnetic waves (and perhaps gravitational waves), as these waves propogate through spacetime along the (curved) path of least resistance, and hence follow that curvature.

As the universe is circular, theoretically such a wave could, by following a curved path – and if given sufficient time – arrive back at its starting point. In practice, this does not occur, because the journey time would exceed the current age of the universe.

However, this curvature of spacetime might imply that there is a shorter path between two widely separated points: in other words, if the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but electromagnetic waves do not follow a straight line, this implies that there exists a shorter path – between, say, star A and star B (or galaxy A and galaxy B) – than the path taken by electromagnetic waves.

Electromagnetic waves follow a low-energy path. A more direct (i.e. shorter) path is of necessity a high-energy path: one which can only be followed by injecting energy, because instead of following a line of constant inertia (i.e. constant gravitational strength) it involves crossing the gravitational field, passing through points which have a greater inertial value than the starting point.

A Non-Curved Path

On a related point, is a particle (anything which has mass) constrained by the same principles which restrict an electromagnetic wave (which has no mass) into following only a curved path?

Does the inertia inherent in mass, which Newton theorised as tending to make it follow a straight path unless acted upon by an external force, distinguish massive from massless objects in this respect? The answer seems to be that it does.

The implication is that there are conditions under which it is possible for an object or particle having mass to follow a non-curved path (perhaps as a factor of mass plus acceleration), although impossible for a massless one (which cannot be accelerated).

Given that a shorter path is theoretically possible, a massless particle (such as a neutrino), which does not interact noticeably – or at all – with the fabric of spacetime, might be capable of making the trip between point A and point B in less time than light, because it is capable of following the shorter path.

Some theories of quantum entanglement imply that effects are occuring faster than it would be possible for a signal to pass between the two points concerned at the speed of light. If a neutrino is capable of following a shorter path than light must follow, that would explain how a signal might be transmitted in a shorter time.

A neutrino is not restricted to the curved path of electromagnetic effects, since particles are free to move in any direction, hence are free to move across the field lines. An ordinary, i.e. massive, particle would not do so, since its inertia would cause it to tunnel along the path of least resistance, the same path which (when encountering local gravitational pockets, such as a star) electromagnetic waves follow. However, since a neutrino is massless, having almost no inertia, it does not interact with the field: it does not possess the inertia which restricts the movement of mass (hence can move at the speed of light). When it tunnels, it does not need to follow the line of least resistance: to it, all paths offer no resistance.

Accordingly, in theory, despite propagating at the same rate as electromagnetic waves, a neutrino could take a more direct path, thereby moving from one point to another in less time than those waves.

Since a galaxy has a center of mass which generates a gravitational field of broadly spherical shape, within a galaxy electromagnetic effects must be following a curved path between any two points. A particle which is capable of following a straight path must necessarily travel between those points in less time.

In theory, because a galaxy is circular in shape, its gravitational field is also circular. Light might curve around its rim, in a great circle, whereas neutrinos might pass through its centre. The distance from one edge to the opposite edge is less in a straight line through the galacic core than it is in a great circle that follows the circumference.

A neutrino must have a minimum mass, hence a small response to the inertial constant of the spacetime field.

That constant exists in an unmodified form where there is no gravitational
field; the value of the constant falls as distance from a centre of mass
reduces; and it attains a value of nil at the event horizon (because the
tunnelling distance falls to zero).

A particle’s response to it is governed by additional factors: the mass of
the particle; the velocity of the particle; the acceleration of the particle
(if its velocity is not constant); and its angle of incidence to the gravitational
field. These factors are usually summarised as its angular momentum.

The neutrino, having almost nil momentum (because it has too little mass to
respond normally to inertia), has almost no connection to the spacetime
field. So it does not follow the curvature when the field strength curves,
because it does not respond to the field strength.

Space: The shortest distance is curved

It’s interesting how often people say “the Earth is pretty flat”.

On a very local scale there is some truth in that (just not very
much, as the Earth is a sphere); but there is a nice analogy with
space, since on a very local scale space, too, appears ‘flat’, and
its curvature gradually emerges as the distance scale is increased.

The shortest distance isn’t really curved, but the lowest energy
transfer orbit always is, because resistance to movement
(i.e. gravity) has a spherical pattern, since it radiates outward
(spherically) from a central point, the Sun: what is curving is
the field strength.

Dark Matter

In theory, a particle which does not interact electromagnetically with ordinary matter, e.g. a particle of dark matter, would also be capable of moving from one point to another in less time than an electromagnetic wave. It is unclear whether dark matter possesses inertia: it is believed to generate gravity, a purely structural effect, which modifies inertia (defined as that resistance to movement which spacetime offers to ordinary particles), but it is unclear whether dark matter itself possesses inertia (i.e. whether it feels that resistance).

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Science – Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle

Posted on 16 April 2020 by StephenPoppitt

Indeterminacy as an aspect of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

One way of looking at Heisenberg’s theory is to consider the Apollo XI mission to the Moon, in 1969.

The spacecraft needed to be guided accurately: to such a degree of accuracy that it was considered impossible to plot its trajectory in miles per hour, so instead all measurements of velocity were calculated in feet per second.

During the outward journey to the Moon, the spacecraft had a velocity of about 3,000 feet per second. This meant that it was impossible to state with accuracy the position of the spacecraft at any given moment: in the space of a second the vessel’s position altered by 3,000 feet (put another way, in any given second there were 3,000 possible positions for the spacecraft).

Even if an interval of one-tenth of a second is used, there is still a margin for error (an *uncertainty*) of 300 feet, the amount by which the vessel’s position must alter during that period.

This error is not resolved even by employing an interval of one-hundredth of a second, or one-thousandth of a second, for in either case there remains an uncertainty (of 30 feet or 3 feet) in the position of the spacecraft.

This is a pretty good analogy for Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, for it demonstrates that where an object is in motion (even at far lower speeds than the sub-atomic particles with which Heisenberg’s theory deals), it’s impossible to precisely identify the object’s position: that there is necessarily an uncertainty in any measurement of its position, caused by its motion.

This implies that a body’s motion, which causes a constant change in position, by continually varying its location within the (arbitrary) co-ordinate system being used, makes a nonsense of the notion that a moving body can have a precise position, at least in the sense that a stationary body has.

Since all objects within the universe are in motion at some level (on the Earth, objects share – simultaneously – the planet’s rotation about its own axis, the planet’s rotation about the Sun, and the Sun’s rotation about the galactic centre), this implies that no object can have a precise position (relative to an absolute frame of reference, if such a frame is even possible in a system lacking any fixed reference point).

An object can have an approximate position, relative to the chosen timeframe in use (i.e. dependant upon whether we – arbitrarily – choose a time interval of one second, 1/10th of a second, or 1/100th of a second); but not an absolute position.

What we are in fact measuring in a moving object is its change in position over time, so we should not expect to be able to measure, also, an absolute position for it: since an absolute and a relative position (i.e. relative to the chosen timeframe) are logical opposites.

Velocity is really a measurement of the extent to which position alters within a chosen time interval, and this, although yielding a speed for the motion, is also a measure of the uncertainty in the positional data.

Motion within a frame of reference that is itself in motion (such as motion relative to the surface of the Earth, a body which is continuously rotating) implies that such motion will not follow a straight line (if measured relative to an *external* reference frame, such as one centred on the Sun). Such motion, if viewed against any external frame of reference, will follow a curved path.

One consequence of this curvature is that the shortest distance between two points is not, in reality, a straight line. Following what appears (without the aid of a fixed, external point of reference) to be a straight line, the object in motion has in fact described an arc in space (or curve) instead.

Where the destination point is itself in motion, unless the journey time is instantaneous the destination point will be at a different location by the time of the journey’s end, compared with its position at the time of the journey’s commencement.

If we consider, once again, the 1969 mission of Apollo XI: on the outward stage of the mission, upon leaving the Earth, the spacecraft’s trajectory was aimed at a point in space where the Moon would be, 3 days later, when the spacecraft reached the Moon’s orbit (and its velocity was adjusted to rendezvous with the Moon at that location). It could not be aimed at the Moon’s position as it was on the launch date, because the Moon – being itself in motion – would no longer be there at the end of the 3 day journey time.

In its initial phase, immediately following lift-off, the spacecraft entered Earth orbit. In orbiting the Earth, a spacecraft might be placed into a geo-synchronous orbit (also termed a geo-stationary orbit) – although this did not occur with Apollo XI. In such a case, however, the spacecraft maintains a fixed position relative to the surface of the Earth: to an observer on the ground, it remains stationary above a single point on the surface.

However, it is obviously wrong to suggest that the spacecraft is actually stationary. Both it and the Earth’s surface are in motion, and the appearance to the contrary is an illusion, created by the fact that both are in motion with an identical velocity and an identical rotation.

The illusion occurs if, but only if, both the Earth and the spacecraft are viewed from a frame of reference which excludes all external reference points: if the spacecraft is viewed only with reference to the planet it is orbiting.

In a real sense, all motion shares this characteristic: by limiting the frame of reference, i.e. by omitting external points of reference, a false impression of any situation emerges.

For example, a Pacific Islander might sail East from Australia (we will, for the sake of this example, assume that it is possible to sail around the world without running aground). He sails always in a straight line due East: but less than a year later, although he has never turned aside from that straight path, he is astonished to find himself arrived back in Australia.

Because this hypothetical sailor has no external reference point, he has based his world-view on his straight-line course, employing a point-of-view which sees the world as flat. We, who have a point-of-view which recognises the Earth to be a sphere, can see that he must eventually return to his starting point. But only by expanding his reference point, from a 2-dimensional perspective to our 3-dimensional perspective, can he gain a true picture of his situation.

For us, only by expanding our 3-dimensional perspective to one which is genuinely 4-dimensional (i.e. which incorporates the concept of time, in addition to the 3-dimensions of space), can we gain a true perspective on the universe.

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Wave Theory – Electromagnetic Vibration

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