Error! Faulty! Analyse!
Dammit, IMAP is deleting messages off the server… possibly just the ones I move on the client using a rule, but that’s a lot of my messages. I guess I need to go back to POP and just deal with marking the same message as read repeatedly.
Ah, well. Learning experience.
Tags: technology
What? Nothing you just said makes any sense whatsoever. IMAP doesn’t delete anything, but your client might be deleting things – that’s because with IMAP, you’re supposed to keep your folders on the server (all of them, not just the inbox). So when a client moves a message to a folder because of a rule, it deletes it because when you say “move” it assumes you mean “move”.
POP with “leave messages on server” (probably what you’re used to) works completely differently of course, but even then you shouldn’t need to mark messages read, even if you leave them on the server they should show up as present, but read to the other client.
However anyone who is doing POP with leave messages on server *should* be doing IMAP. Period, end of story. Just move all of your folders to your server and your life will be wonderful – I can’t even begin to describe how much more sense it makes than POP.
You’re right, it doesn’t make any sense. All I know is that I looked at my mail this morning on the laptop, and read several TCon staff messages. When I went to look at the from work, they were no longer there.
Until I figure out what I’m doing wrong, I figure I better go back to what I know so I don’t miss something important. I want to move to IMAP as soon I straighten myself out, because it would really save me some time.
I told you what you’re doing wrong. You need to move all of your folders to the server (and ideally do your filtering there too).
Your statement assumes that the network is ubiquitous, high-bandwidth, high-reliability, and high-security. I don’t think that’s enough of a general case to be making flat statements, even here in the US. There are also other considerations such as server storage and policy; you have to trust the entire chain to treat your stuff with the same care you do in perpetuity.
I can’t agree with this – you seem to be arguing under the impression that IMAP forces you to keep your mail ONLY on the server and somehow prevents you from keeping a local copy. IMAP just as available as with POP, just tell your mail client to sync everything (or “make available offline” or whatever the client calls it) and you’re in the same boat as POP, but with way more usability since you can do that on multiple machines with no issues. In the unlikely event your IMAP server dies with no possible recovery, just sync back from the machine with the most recent copy, and again you’re in the same situation as with POP.
In short, IMAP is literally EVERYTHING POP is, and much more.
The only place where issues arise is if your central server doesn’t provide enough storage, in which case you can do like an exchange user and archive your old mail.