<p>The advantage of Identities is most of the hard work (not that it is that hard) is only done once</p><p>I run 21 ID's across multiple ISP's, mail is filtered (AutoFilter) to a folder for that ID, any reply is sent from that ID (ID attached to folders), some times I "may" forget when starting a new mail to change to the correct ID, but that's user error (senior moments) </p><p>You can start Pegasus with the -ID switch, which sets the initial ID used </p>

<p>PS- Thank you.. everyone here, and also in a similar tread that I started called "Can I run multiple instances". (I wouldn't ordinarily have come so close to cross posting, but I thought I'd learned years ago that the answer to the simple question was "no". Glad I checked!)</p>I remain slightly unclear on proper terminology, and underlying concepts. For those struggling with questions along the lines of mine, be very careful about these words: user, identity, folder, directory, mailbox, mailbox location. Note in addition that your whole hard disk is organized by your operating system (Windows), with an every-day, across-the-board hierarchical structure of folders and folders within folders to many levels. These folders are also known as directories. Here, I will call them "OS-folders" (or OS-directories). In addition to THOSE folders/ directories, INSIDE PMail, there's another, a different folder/directory hierarchy. I'll call those folders/ directories PMail-mail-folders. They do not map in any simple way to the OS-folders. Your saved messages go into PMail-mail-folders... which is, of course, enormously helpful if you use your email beyond the most rudimentary way. The PMail-mail-folders are all contained within one "parent" PMail-mail-folder, called "MyMailbox".<p>A lot of my problems revolve around not always being entirely clear about which sort of folder something I'm reading about is connected to. </p><p>I gather from help received here, and at the other thread mentioned a moment ago, that either of the approaches I sketched in the original post approach can work, each with it's own pros and cons, of course.</p><p>For my purposes, I am going with "two separate instances of PMail running concurrently, independently, on one computer". Inefficient probably. But I like Simple. I like to "divide and conquer". I'm also switching back and forth a lot between my two "presences", and I know that (for me) just changing from one PMail-mail-folder to another can be a tediously slow process. (I have far too many emails in my "New Mail" PMail-mail-folder, and that is populated differently than are the others... and, unavoidably, does take a bit of time to reload each time I switch into it.)</p><p>So maybe, for me, the inefficiencies of having two separate instances running concurrently will be worth it, in time saved.</p><p>So! It is early days, and the following hasn't had much testing yet, but what seems to work for me is as follows....</p><p>In the next paragraph I am speaking only of OS-folders</p><p>Somewhere in the distant past, I managed to get my PMail "going" with one PMAIL folder. Inside that JUST two more folders. No files at this level. The folders are: MAIL and Programs. I always STAY OUT of the "Programs" folder. (I LOVE the way PMAIL is set up, behind the scenes, by the way!) In MAIL: A text file called PMAIL.USR, and three more folders:ADMIN, MyPrivate and MyPublic. (Not really. Actually my system has folders with names relevant to my actual use, CORRESPONDING TO those I said I will use to frame this discussion. I DO have a folder there ACTUALLY called "ADMIN"... it was set up for me when I installed PMail. I'm not entirely sure how the other folders arose! I doubt I tried to create them "by hand", outside of PMAIL, and then trick it into using them. (I believe that PMail has to establish an initial "skeleton" of various things inside any new folder of this sort, and I doubt I'd get that right.) One of them would have arisen during a fresh install of PMail. (I've used it on many generations of hardware, and still have messagess from 2004 in my current installation.) I suspect I invoked "Addresses/Users/UserManagement" at some stage to create the other. (I've been struggling with these issues for many years!)</p><p>PMAIL.USR is a pretty simple text file...</p><p>A;Admin;Mail Administrator A;MyPrivate;MyPrivate A;MyPublic;MyPublic</p><p>Not a lot to go wrong there! More good underlying design. (One of the duplicated items can probably be tweaked, it is probably a human-friendly label for what the other one, the computer-friendly ID, specifies.   But I'm not messing with something I don't need to mess with!</p><p>How I got there during an initial install on a "virgin" machine will have to be a story for another day. I THINK you can get there with a "normal" install, followed by using "Addresses/ User Management".</p><p>I start by doing the install as if I am going to be starting a new MyPrivate" "presence" on the new machine. This establishes an adequate "shell", with the same NAME as the presence that I am moving to the new machine. I then copy the whole of the "MyPrivate" OS-folder from the old machine to the "MyPrivate" OS-folder already existing on the being-set-up machine, over-writing anything previously in the OS-folder. (I would delete any contents by hand beforehand, if I remembered to take that precaution.) </p><p>---</p><p>So! How did I make "it" work? How did I get my two instances sharing my screen?</p><p>==----</p><p>I should mention... </p><p>1) I am using a stand-alone system. Yes, it is on a LAN, but all the software and all of the stuff held in OS-folders is on the same machine I'm using.</p><p>2) A general "thing" about Windows 10. The items in the "Start" menu come from plain old had-them-forever shortcuts in...</p><p>%AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs.</p><p>(Just use the ordinary Windows File Explorer to go there.) </p><p>==... </p><p>I already had a shortcut to invoke Pegasus. The only command line option present was "-A". And it remains.</p><p>I made two copies of my old shortcut, which was named "Psus". (When that launched, I was asked for the User I wanted, and I answered MyPrivate. (MyPublic was present in the system, but I hadn't used it for a while, because that meant, before today, shutting sown the active instance of PMail and restarting the application. </p><p>I named one of the copies Psus MyPriv, and the other Psus MuPub.</p><p>I then edited the "targets" of the two new shortcuts.</p><p>To the -A command line parameter that was already there, I added...</p><p>-ms and -i  MyPrivate</p><p>... to the first new shortcut, and...</p><p>-ms and -i  MyPublic </p><p>... to the other new shortcut.</p><p>---</p><p>First use!... </p><p>I made sure no instance of PMail was currently running, and tried the two shortcuts... WHOOSH! I was in! Two instances running smoothly, one for each presence!</p><p>(I then deleted the old "tell it which User on invocation" shortcut.)</p><p>----------------------------------------------------- </p><p>So... as I said... THANK YOU! I am now back to where I was a few years ago. I don't know how I got "lost" in between. But this mode of working is Just Fine for my wants. I hope all of that may be useful to someone else one day.</p><p> </p><p>========================</p><p>======= Original post </p><p>For years, I've had two entirely separate Windows PCs on my wooden worktop (That which my grandfather called a "desk" long before "desktop" came along, meaning something else.)</p><p>And I had an instance of Pegasus running one each, because I have two email addresses in constant use. I want everything at each separate from everything at that. (More on this in footnote) </p><p> At one point, I had two separate instances of Pegasus running on a single computer, but I believe that is no longer possible. (True?)</p><p>===</p><p>I would like to be able to work as two "separate" "people" on one (Windows) computer, and having done some R'ing of TFM, and past posts, think that maybe using two "Identities" (in the Pegasus sense) is what I need to do? I won't be clever, and teach it to pass any mail between the identities. The whole point, my wants, is to keep them separate.</p><p>If I do this, would each identity have it's own sub-folder in my PMAIL directory (folder)? With everything relating to that identity (apart from a line or so in PMAIL/PMAIL.USR) in that folder?</p><p>Can anyone see any questions I am failing to ask before I risk rocking my quite happy, quite stable "boat"? </p><p>---</p><p>Footnote: Why do I WANT the two accounts entirely separate? One is for "important" things, like conversations with my bank, and friends and commercial contacts I trust not to be selling or compromising my email address. The other is for things like trying a new supplier, who may turn out to be less scrupulous that one would wish about helping me avoid spam. // If a child under my roof were to have his/her own email account, wants similar to the ones I've tried to describe would arise. Think of my wants in those terms, if it helps. </p>

<p>[quote user="Sheepdog"]I would like to be able to work as two "separate" "people" on one (Windows) computer, [/quote]</p><p>This desire is key, and based on it, I suggest  having two instances of Pegasus Mail on the same PC.  You can run them simultaneously by adding the -ms option to their command line.  The only problem with multiple instances running is that you can't control which instance is invoked by a Mailto: link or Sendto action.</p><p>Identities are ideal for someone who has multiple mailboxes but wants all that mail under one roof.  You can filter the incoming messages into designated folders and can easily change identities so the sent messages appear to come from a different person but this can be challenging to always remember to do. </p>