The Bat! versions

Secure desktop email client for Windows, built to protect your correspondence
Apr 3, 2024
Dec 22, 2023
Oct 5, 2023
Jun 1, 2023
7.4
Dec 13, 2016
Review
7.1
Dec 15, 2015
Review
May 12, 2016
7.0
Aug 3, 2015
Review
6.8
Mar 31, 2015
Review
6.7
Oct 22, 2014
Review
6.6
Aug 28, 2014
Review
6.5
Jul 23, 2014
6.4
Apr 26, 2014
Review
6.3
Mar 26, 2014
6.2
Dec 31, 2013
6.1
Dec 18, 2013
6.0
Nov 15, 2013
Review
5.8
Sep 24, 2013
Review
5.4
May 25, 2013
Review
5.3
Dec 1, 2012
Review
5.2
Aug 22, 2012
5.1
Apr 20, 2012
Review
Apr 13, 2012
Review
5.0
Apr 2, 2011
Editorial review
rating
Mar 31, 2011
4.2
Jun 8, 2009
Jun 5, 2009
4.1
Dec 21, 2008
Dec 21, 2008
4.0
Mar 1, 2008
Oct 21, 2008
3.9
Feb 14, 2008
Review

What's new

v11.1 [Apr 3, 2024]
The Bat! v11.1 (02 April 2024)
New features
Indexing process indication is now displayed at the main window's status bar
Improvements
New index file names (Index.db -> TBIndex.db in the root of the mail data folder) to ensure correct database structure
Automatic conversation view update when new messages arrive in the conversation
Optimization of message base indexing algorithms
Speed up indexer database initialization
Improved performance of database updates during runtime
Skip indexer for virtual folders as not necessary in the current model
Remove possible delays on editor startup due to overcrowded system’s recent documents folder
Fixes
Fix for SmartSpace reading page height in HTML (classic preview pane)
Messages viewed in conversation view could become read despite account settings
The issue which caused the "Invalid class typecast" error message in summary view has been resolved
Revision History

v11.0 [Dec 22, 2023]
The Bat! v11.0 (21 December 2023)
New Features
Conversation Thread View - a new feature that offers a swift summary of messages that share similarities. It provides users with a comprehensive and coherent display of email threads, making it easier to follow and manage conversations without switching between folders and accounts
Revision History

v10.5 [Oct 5, 2023]
The Bat! v10.5 (04 October 2023)
Improvements
Google and Outlook Calendar synchronization function smoother and do not require extra OAUTH tokens
CEF v117
Workaround for the "file is locked" error while loading template images from a file
Add /CalendarSyncLogEvents and /CalendarSyncLogCalendars parameters for logging calendar and event lists sync
Fixes
GnuPG signature with empty password was losing first line of the input
In the 64-bit version, PGP/MIME option was not set properly
PGP options were not used in mass mailing
Notification of missed events was not working for non-recurrent events
Tables from the original email were not properly displayed in the reply
Some attachment files got lost when multiple forward to a single recipient was executed
Attachments that had been added via the drop-down menu of the "Attach a file" icon were not displayed on the recipients' end
Extra empty lines appeared in the Quick Reply if the template had been set to the HTML format
An attachment's contents had been put into the message body in case the message was digitally signed
Text pasted into PureHTML editor from an Excel spreadsheet could be pasted not as a table
Highlight color had darker background in all themes
Time zone could be not set for use when importing from an .ICS file
Template Preview did not switch between HTML/Plain Text outputs
Embedded images were not shown in the Template Preview
Some external images were not displayed upon download
Attachment clip was mistakenly shown for messages with inline images and hidden after message was loaded
Images from Quick Templates could not be seen in Gmail
Revision History

v10.4 [Jun 1, 2023]
The Bat! v10.4 (30 May 2023)
New features
Calendar Manager
Synchronization with Google Calendar
List of recently created/modified files and source folders in the drop-down of the "Attach a file" button in the message editor window
Improvements
/NoDirectX command line parameter to disable the usage of DirectX in PureHTML editor
Fixes
In certain cases, the new interface toolbars were not saved on exiting the program
The font size is now preserved when replying to an HTML-message
Pressing the Tab key in the message text area now works as expected
Replying to an email using the PureHTML format caused infinite Access Violation error messages
Wrong email addresses were inserted as additional emails in a contact's properties
It was impossible to delete secondary email address in a contact's properties
In was not possible to overwrite any email address in a contact's properties
The sorting of contacts in the new address book interface was wrong
Zoom in/out buttons in plain text switched the message format to PureHTML
"Zoom in" in the message editor did not enlarge the row height
The path for the Synchronize operation required a trailing backslash for the operation to start
Issues with Calculate command in HTML editors were fixed
Some iCalendar files could cause AV errors
Alt+Insert (Paste as quotation) was not working properly in both HTML editors
Weekly/daily repeating events were starting one day later
Time zone issues when importing from iCalendar files
Images copied from MS Word were not pasted properly in HTML editors
Automatic replies were losing the original HTML formatting
It was impossible to deselect text in the PureHTML editor
The issue which caused the Access Violation and "A component named FolderEditor already exists" error messages on opening folder properties has been resolved
Missing indication on the current message format - plain text or HTML
"Paste as plain text" doesn't work both in RichText and in PureHTML
"Invalid image. Error" upon replying to messages with certain image files
RichText includes the background color in HTML-messages depending on the interface theme
Revision History

v7.1 [Dec 15, 2015]
New features
OAuth 2.0 authentication mechanism for GMail and Mail.Ru
The "Use Address Book display names" option for message list
"From (Address Book)" and "To (Address Book)" message list columns are now available
EWS autodiscover logging in the "Create New Account" dialog
Priority, receipt/reading confirmation options for sending messages from EWS accounts
EWS accounts: moving and copying messages/items between folders is now possible
Server-side deletion of messages/items in EWS accounts
"Load Active Directory contacts" option in the EWS accounts properties
While retrieving Exchange items via EWS, the company Active Directory contacts are now also retrieved
"Get only items later than:" option in EWS accounts
Improvements
When HTTP proxy is defined in The Bat! under "Network\Administration", it overrides operating system’s Internet options
Sound after finishing search is made optional
Files’ creation time is used as the received time for messages opened from .EML files
Fixes
Search is now working in Virtual Folders
The "Create New Account" dialog was missing EWS pre-configured settings for some well-known email services
Registration keys from some HTML messages couldn't be copy-pasted into the key input form, if The Bat! used Windows OS HTML viewer
The Bat! didn't properly handle Unicode text files and could only load text files in Windows or UTF-8 encoding, not UTF-16. As a result, tips files in UTF-16 could not be displayed
RSS error unexpected exception EXMLDocError, Details: "Element "content" does not contain a single text node" has been eliminated
Access violation error upon saving HTML-templates with changes of test formatting in tables has been fixed
Access violation error, which appeared while copying emails with inline images and Content ID between different accounts has been fixed
If the user entered a registration key from a previous version, The Bat! did not properly display the program’s version number
Fixes in displaying of RSS subject lines for those aggregators that treat titles as HTML and second level of encoding may be expected to comply with HTML
Memory leaks have been eliminated
Reply-To and In-Reply-To fields in EWS accounts are now properly displayed
Access violation error message that appeared while downloading external images for HTML emails has been fixed
Program’s interface could get frozen while retrieving a large number of messages (1000>) with broadband access
The Bat! didn't import the gender field from tab delimited files to the address book
Access violation error messages, which appeared in the account log, have been fixed
Search within the found messages in the Message Finder was not working
The warning upon opening of more than 5 messages in a separate window at once is functioning again
Problems with extended IMAP authentication mechanisms (like CRAM-MD5, NTLM, etc) have been fixed
The "D-TRUST Root Class 3 CA 2 EV 2009" certificate has been added
Access violation error that appeared when searching contacts on LDAP servers has been fixed
Fixes in displaying folder names in the folder selection for Mail Ticker
(#0000635) Truncated checkbox "Action" and option "Load signal string..." in the Sorting Office | Selective download section
(#0000596) Truncated checkbox "With attachments" in the Setup Message List Tab dialog
(#0000543) Truncated captions in folder maintenance results pane
(#0000637) Short strings in the Connection Center window
Fixed some caption truncation by width and height
Access violation error that occurred while processing large accounts with Inbox Analyzer has been fixed

v7.0 [Aug 3, 2015]
Support of the EWS protocol to connect to MS Exchange Server 2007 and later versions
Support of the CardDAV protocol to synchronize address books
New dialog to create new accounts. Supports server settings auto-configuration.

v6.8 [Mar 31, 2015]
The Bat! 6.8.8
Fixes
Quick Search in Quick Template editor was case sensitive
Opening links from a SmartBat scheduler was not working with message URLs

v6.7 [Oct 22, 2014]
The Bat! 6.7
10/22/2014
New features
New dialogue for account creation
"Auto" character set instead of "None" - The Bat! selects optimal character set for the entered text
Support of the GB18030 Chinese character set
Improvements
By default the charset for new messages in new accounts is "Auto"
Internal character processing changed from UCS-2 to UTF-16 to support Chinese characters and other rare characters
Better detection of Chinese, Japanese and Korean user interface fonts
Reply-To-All now fills TO and CC fields corresponding to the lists in the original messages
(#540) Export of multiple messages is now done accordingly to the message list sort order
Smarter imported field recognition in address book import from text files with coma- or tab-separated values
Fixes
Fixed a bug in charset handling (sometimes The Bat! gave an error like "The message characters cannot be encoded using currently selected "Windows-1252" character set. Please use "Windows-1255")
Messages with invalid characters encoded into the 936 code page for gb2312 (Chinese Simplified) were shown as empty messages
New messages were not added to the open MailTicker message lists
Some Chinese and Japanese charsets weren't handled properly; some charset names were not displayed translated in The Bat! interface
ISO-2022 characters were improperly encoded in the message headers with Quoted-Printable method. The "" should have been also encoded
Mouse click selection of a viewer/editor text item in View Profile settings was not functional
Problem with continuing pasted URLs in Quick Reply pane
Registration keys from some dealers could come from resellers in HTML format where line breaks (CR/LF characters) were not properly formatted as or prefixed by
(#486) Open/Save dialogue was not used when the program was started with the "Disable visual themes" option in the compatibility settings
The "Message released..." error message after deletion an attachment from a message
(#590) The "Failed to set calendar selected range" error when opening Calendar

v6.6 [Aug 28, 2014]
The Bat! 6.6
New features
An option to save selected attachments into a specified folder without confirming each file has been implemented
It is now possible to specify macros in backup archive comments
The following character sets are now supported: EUC-JIS-2004, SHIFT_JIS-2004, ISO-2022-JP-2004, BIG5-2003
Added support for ORFO 2014
Extra code pages have been enabled: cp856, cp922, cp943, cp1046, cp1124, cp1129, cp1161, cp1162, cp1163, dec_kanji, dec_hanyu, cp437, cp737, cp775, cp852, cp853, cp855, cp857, cp858, cp860, cp861, cp863, cp864, cp865, cp869, cp1125, euc_jisx0213, shift_jisx0213, iso2022_jp3, big5_2003, tds565, atarist and riscos1
RSS version 0.91, 0.92 and 1.0 are now supported as well
Improvements
Lists of the seen POP messages (from ACCOUNT.M_R and ACCOUNT.M_D) are now updated at the start of each POP session
The Account information tab can be closed now. Should you need the account information in future, you will be able to reactivate this tab in the global preferences
Indication of IMAP folder listing completion in the IMAP Folder Manager to avoid confusion
Extended mouse buttons are now working not only in message lists, but in all message list windows
Web-help is now used if invoked under the Russian program interface language
Memory usage optimization for sending large messages
Multi-tag description in RSS feeds is now supported
The layout of message list context menu was changed to make functions that are frequently used more accessible
(#0297) An error regarding messages containing several text/plain inline parts and displaying them as having a single text part has been fixed
New threading modes: by Sender Name, Sender Address, Recipient Name and Recipient Address
The attachments pane menu was reworked: the option "Select All" was added; the option “Save to a folder” is visible when multiple attachments are selected
/STARTUP_TIMING_LOG now displays which tasks in backup consume most time
Fixes
(#0008) Postponed messages are no longer sent many times after re-editing
(#0142) The Reply-To field is not filled any more, if it is empty upon editing a stored message as new
(#0479) HTML Images from files with names with non-ASCII characters are now stored with correct names
Since version 6.0 The Bat! didn't work with external PGP 5,6,7,8,9,10, that issue has been eliminated
(#0483) Tag statistics are now correctly loaded when on-the-fly message base encryption is used
Split messages are automatically combined on IMAP
The Bat! handles errors in ISO-2022 (Japanese) encoding properly now
The /LOG_PGP_COMMAND_LINE command line parameter is now functional as it used to be in versions prior to 6.0
The Bat! does not pass recipients to GnuPG with curly braces any more
The "Compact folder after each message deletion" option is now once again functional in IMAP accounts
The "Book" button in the "Add to address book" helper dialogue properly works now
The Access Violation error message when moving messages from one IMAP account to another has been fixed
The Access Violation error message when moving messages from IMAP to local folders has been fixed
The issue with restoring folders with the "&" character in the name has been eliminated
A problem with importing of UTF in CSV has been fixed
In issue forcing the usage of Tahoma by default as the message header font rather than Segoe UI has been eliminated
(#0356) Problems with non-ASCII characters in file names in the "Watch and Send files" Scheduler action have been fixed
The issue causing "Unexpected exception EEncodingError" error message in the RSS reader has been fixed
(#0421) The problem forcing The Bat! to crash after closing with user-defined Message Tab has been eliminated
(#0512) Messages left on the POP3 server are now deleted when removed from The Bat!’s Trash folder if the "Delete message from server when it is removed from Trash" option is enabled
(#0233) The issue with color drop-downs ignoring localized names in different dialogs has been fixed
The Access Violation error, which appeared in the Inbox Analyzer while trying to check RSS account, has been fixed
Memory leaks caused by using the operating system’s web-browser as the HTML viewer have been eliminated
Data from LDIF files with international characters is now correctly imported
Contacts with international characters are now correctly exported into LDIF files
The issue preventing the imported groups to be immediately visible in the address book has been fixed
"Reply to All" from the Quick Reply pane does not use all addresses in the "To:" field anymore

v6.4 [Apr 26, 2014]
The Bat 6.4
04/24/2014
Improvements
PGP keys from messages signed using PGP clear text method can be taken without signature verification
Fixes
International characters are now properly handled in the MAILTO command line parameter
ASLR works properly in the new version
The issue related to creating "Normal" folders instead of Aggregate ones while importing RSS subscriptions has been fixed
An error which could lead to RSS folder database corruption has been eliminated
(#0000373) Improper behaviour when dragging an attachment stored on IMAP server
Import from Outlook Express has been fixed
Reworked handling of IMAP filters internally to save valuable CPU cycles
Possible AV error messages when switching to non-RSS folders while entire RSS item text is being loaded has been fixed
"List index out of bounds" error has been fixed

v6.0 [Nov 15, 2013]
The support of Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) has been implemented
32-bit and 64-bit versions are now available (The new The Bat! 64-bit version will be released after November 21, 2013.)
it is now possible to save message text in the UTF-8 format
the new %COPY("text", start, count) macro allows extracting a portion of characters provided by “text” starting from a certain character, e.g. %COPY("%otext", 1, 100) will return 100 characters starting from the first character of the original message text while replying or forwarding messages.
Sorting Office: a new action to extract files by masks

v5.8 [Sep 24, 2013]
Features
- The option of locking The Bat!'s interface toolbars has been implemented.
Improvements
- The /LOG_PGP_COMMAND_LINE command line parameter has been implemented
- The default mail server settings for t-online.de wanadoo.fr, mail.ru, list.ru, bk.ru, inbox.ru have been added
- Warning when parked messages are moved is back.
- German user interface translation update.
Fixes
- The issue related to the processing of the print command invoked via the key combination Ctrl P in The Bat!'s internal Image Viewer has been fixed.
- The Invert case feature now works properly in all The Bat!'s editors for all the regional languages of the operating system.
- The reply counter in the German language "AW:" now works as the reply counter in the English language "Re:".
- The issue related to pressing AltGr in the mail editor for Hungarian and German keyboard layouts has been fixed.
- The search function in Cookies has been fixed.
- The negative counters issue in IMAP accounts, caused by the access of more than one client, has been fixed.
- Outlook Express contacts could not be imported.
- Creating messages using HTML-templates with images could lead to the loss of the last angle bracket.
- Program errors regarding the Quick Reply panel have been fixed.

v5.4 [May 25, 2013]
The new version contains two minor issue fixes.

v5.3 [Dec 1, 2012]
New features
- The "Quick Reply" feature has been introduced
- Added the support for PGP 10.0.2
- Added a new item "Workspace" to the Main Menu
- The "Mark replied messages as read automatically" option has been added to the account's properties and set as default for the new accounts
Improvements
- The Bat! now adds SmimeCapailities attribute to signed messages
- Message Search now starts from the latest messages in the local folders
- Messages about invalid Regular Expressions in the sorting rules are now stored in the account log and a warning is given when a filter contains wrong Regular Expressions
- Read Filters are now executed in an additional thread (in order to reduce workload on the main thread)
- The "AFTER" condition is placed before the "BEFORE" condition in the Message Finder dialogue (to specify date interval more naturally)
- Message Dispatcher: Creation Date/Time is now shown accordingly to the message list settings
- Fixes in the HTML Viewer form (the settings description was not visible)
- "Check for updates when The Bat! starts" option has been moved from the stand-alone tab in the "Preferences" dialog to the "Confirmations" section
- Better handling of additional mouse buttons
- A note was added to the "Shortcut Editor" dialogue that only one shortcut per item is supported (Toolbar2000 limitation)
- (#0000111) When a message is created from an address book, the Subject field is focused by default, if that field is empty; if the Subject is not empty (e.g. filled by a template), then the message body is focused
- Separate settings for the Quick Reply pane in additional message viewers
- A folder should be unsubscribed before deletion (some servers are known to keep subscription for the deleted folders)
- More smart algorithm to determine UIDs of appended messages in the absence of the UIDPLUS extension
Fixes
- When an IMAP folder's cache was checked for integrity, partially loaded messages were generating errors
- IMAP. Remotely stored viewable attachments were not shown as tabs
- IMAP. "Access Violation" error message when trying to view a message containing an image as the sole element of structure (message has Content-Type: image/*)
- IMAP. The "BEFORE" and "AFTER" criteria produced an invalid "SEARCH" command
- IMAP. Some filter actions could not be executed, if a message was stored remotely (full message had to be downloaded into the local cache)
- "Access Violation" error message when closing the "Select folders" dialogue for virtual folders (if nothing was selected in folder tree)
- When Microsoft CryptoAPI implementation was used for TLS, and a certificate did contain multiple hosts, The Bat! took only one host
- White-space characters must be skipped in BASE64-encoded message part
- Message Source Viewer was not using colours from the Preferences
- (#0000022) "Copy folder columns settings" was working only if a View Mode was associated with a folder
- Original messages were not marked as read when they were replied to
- (#0000098) Source View was not decrypting message source in the OTFE mode
- The "Limit first column auto-expansion" option was not working in threaded message lists
- Folder maintenance could not be stopped
- Sometimes The Bat! did import Microsoft Outlook messages without attachments
- (#0000081) It was not possible to define delivery type for forwarding several messages to the same address(es)
- Multiple messages to the same address were forwarded with the source messages attached
- Warning about group deletion if a group contained only one message displayed as the root of a tree branch
- The Bat! didn't check for updates at start-up even when this option was configured ON
- Some valid JPEG images were reported as damaged on image tab
- Images with internally unsupported formats were reported as damaged
- Accelerator "R" was used for several fields in "Search And Replace" dialog
- It wasn't possible to use macros in account name portion of folder path in "move/copy" filter action
- Wrong "Reply-To" header when a message was sent after editing it "as new"
- Possible errors caused by the deletion of a View Mode, when it was used in a visible message list
- (#0000119) Sometimes the "Read filters" could not be triggered
- The default external image download rule was always reset to "Reject unknown" after the programme restart, if no additional rules were defined

v5.1 [Apr 13, 2012]
Inbox Analyzer is a new mechanism that helps users to handle emails more efficiently. It analyzes the correspondence stored in the Inbox, divides messages into groups depending on its senders and date and offers suitable actions to users. With the Inbox Analyzer users can sort messages to folders and create an efficient set of filters that will sort messages in future - from scratch and in no time at all. Thus, the Inbox Analyzer will divide all messages into "Correspondents" (person-to-person messages), "Mailing lists" (communication in groups) and "Newsletters" (informative messages that don't require replies) and will offer to move these messages to certain folders, creating them if needed. More to that, basing on the results of the analysis, Inbox Analyzer will offer to create filters to sort newly received messages, as well as to divide each of the abovementioned groups into current and old messages, moving old ones to the Archive folder. The results of Inbox Analyzer work are shown in a separate window and users can change them according to their own preferences. The Analyzer helps to sort and filter messages quickly, but its actions are just recommendations, final decision always being the user's exclusive prerogative. Besides, users can manually set up the Inbox Analyzer to their needs - for example, to create their own sorting groups. In The Bat! image download can be controlled much easier. Image download manager is equipped with the option of creating various rules, blocking or allowing image download according to their URL, folder or sender. Thus, users can block images in the Newsletter folder or get rid of the most annoying banners by their URL. The Bat!'s intuitive interface makes it possible to start working with it right away after the installation. However, there is an option of activating pop-up hints that can be helpful to entry-level users. These hints contain active elements - for example, from the hint that appears on pointing at a certain folder users can compact this folder or change its properties; if the cursor is held over an address, the hint will offer to add it to the Address Book, etc. Users can set up various parameters of these hints - display mode, duration, place, etc. If not required, hints can be switched off. Now in The Bat! there is also an option of viewing HTML messages using the external module based on the Windows Internet Explorer system browser core. Users can choose which module - built-in or system-based - satisfies their needs best or just switch between these two modules. Developers added Multi-SMTP support - now users can define multiple SMTP servers for one account and choose among them. This function is helpful to those who use The Bat! Voyager, the portable version of the software; it can also help if the PC is relocated or some SMTP servers are blocked. In The Bat! the developers added English (US) as a new interface language. From now on, there will be English (US) and English (UK) available. Among other The Bat! improvements it is worth mentioning better functionality of the internal image viewer - it can now print images and has other related functions. Network engineers will appreciate extended logging of POP3 and IMAP sessions that allows finding setup problems fast and easy. Sorting Office can now process groups of filters at the same time. Encryption was also improved - developers added PGP 8, 9 and 10 support. There is one more significant detail - starting with, The Bat! continues working after the 30-day trial period expires. The only exception is that connections for incoming and outgoing mail are switched off. Thus, users have access to the program and to message bases - messages and Address Book entries can be read, printed, exported, etc.

v5.0 [Apr 2, 2011]
- When The Bat! connects to a POP3 or an SMTP server, it now displays the host address and the port in the log and in the status line, so the user can trace problems easier caused by improperly entered server addresses and ports.
- If The Bat! can't connect to a POP3, SMTP or an IMAP server, it gives the reason (error message) which can help identify the problem, rather than simply "cannot connect" result that gave no further clues.
- Added some debug information if The Bat! does not start
- Colour Group selection now reflects colour and style setting of the groups

v3.9 [Feb 14, 2008]
Exhchange Server MAPI Support, Import from Outlook, HTML Editor, Scheduler, Anti-SPAM plugins, full IMAP support.

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