ah thanks for that info. Unfortunately I can’t change email address as too many people in my family are completely clueless about anything technical! I did once try to get them to use a new address, and a load of people just didn’t understand, and others would send messages randomly to either address (to be fair, probably the fault of their email clients remembering previously used addresses).
So I’ll see how it goes with this set up. My dad won’t use WhatsApp, which the rest of the family use - not clear why as he loves Microsoft so it’s not a privacy issue. If messaging with him works well with Delta Chat I might be able to get him to use it himself, and from there it might be possible to get more family on it, especially for group chats. So that’s what I’m trying to do, get the family off WhatsApp! But with a minimum of disruption for everyone else. From what you’ve said, maybe it won’t be possible, but I’ll give it a proper try out.
Losing all my emails was a learning experience for me, and I know I got off lightly. Emails can be very valuable for people so it might be nice to offer an option to move emails to a trash folder or to not delete messages on the server when deleted locally. Or perhaps just a clear pop-up warning that messages are permanently deleted when someone connects to an email account with messages already in it.
Thanks a lot for your help!