I've been using Microsoft Outlook for many years, both at work and home so it works for me, but the spousal unit complains bitterly that it's too complicated for her. She uses her own laptop with the usual touch screen and has a single email address (a comcast one, if it makes any difference). I set it up with Outlook long ago, but it's not really working out for her.

All she does with it is read, write, delete & send emails along with opening links in some of them that come from her Bible study group and/or a university that she works with. Any recommendations for a dirt-simple email program that I can add to her machine that is easy to use and will cover the basic functions I've noted above? Computer-literate, she isn't! Appreciate any suggestions.

Back when I was a Windows user, I liked ThunderBird. Pretty straightforward.

The guy who ran the business next door to me was really computer-ignorant. I set him up with ThunderBird, he had a short learning period, then all was well.

The price was right -- FREE.

What OS?

W10 has a built in one.
Also I have found that many "seniors" like the web enabled interface such as GMAIL, Hotmail etc.
YMMV

I'd say that outlook is less complicated than Thunderbird (the buttons are where you'd expect them). But free is a good price.

What is complicated about Outlook? You compose a message and send it. Messages come into your Inbox. It's possible to reply to them. It is possible to file messages in folders or delete them. What do other mail handlers do differently?

The only problem I have with Outlook is that it doesn't work well with my Yahoo! Mail sometimes and I have to reconfigure it (and Yahoo!).

flashguy

I've set my 89 year old mom up on Gmail and she has been able to use it without issues.

Outlook is pretty easy to use and secure. I found Gmail let's spam in.

Gmail. Pretty much impossible for her to foul up, unlike Outlook. Also, Google's periodic changes to interface don't seem as dramatic as the ones the online, free version of Outlook is subject to from time to time. (My mother has a outlook.com email address, and they seem to change things up a lot in ways that don't seem particularly intuitive to me.)

I don't know what could be much simpler than Outlook.

But maybe the Yahoo or Gmail interfaces are more to her liking.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
I don't know what could be much simpler than Outlook.

But maybe the Yahoo or Gmail interfaces are more to her liking.

With a program like Outlook, it's easy to accidentally hide critical buttons and folders, and significantly alter the interface, especially if you don't have a steady hand. Also if the PC isn't well maintained and backed up, there's the risk of losing everything. I had to help an old guy with outlook for a few years and he got into trouble fairly frequently.