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How Best to Handle POP Email (not Gmail)

J

Jethro

Well-Known Member
Hi, I have a Droid Eris, and I haven't really set it up for email yet. I don't need it too badly, as I use my computer for email, but it might be nice on occassion.

- I'm wondering if some folks can lend some advice on the best way to have a good working email setup between your phone and your computer, if you don't have IMAP as an option, and don't really use Gmail?

I use Earthlink for my main email addresses, and I don't believe they support IMAP, so that's not really an option for me.

So I guess my main questions are:
- What's the best app to use for the POP email?
- What's the best technique if you want your master email location to be Outlook on your computer?
- Is there any way to somewhat easily have junk email you delete on your phone not be redownloaded to your computer later on (I know this is more of an IMAP feature)?
- Any other tricks to realistically use your phone to check email, weed out the throw aways, and have the good email still available to download on the computer?

THANKS!
 
I would double check to see if they support IMAP, it's a very, very common standard.

Personally I use IMAP on the phone and POP 3 at home, and rarely, if ever delete mail from the phone. That way my home computer does all the backing up of email and I set it to delete message from the server after 30 days.
 
Yeah, I'm 99% certain EarthLink does not support IMAP. Looked into it b4. Read article about how most ISPs don't want to invest in setting this up as so few people ask for it.

Any other alternatives or workflows?

Thanks!
 
You can have gmail pick up mail from pop3 accounts elsewhere and leave email on the server so you can download later to your pc.

My phone collects 2 accounts via gmail but only sends as 1 account.
 
Yeah, I figured the mail apps would allow u to leave copies on the server.

I think my biggest thing was if I spent time weeding out all the junk on my phone (which I hope is easy enough) , I wouldn't have to download it to the pc later. Or if I was done reading a message and deleted, same thing.

I guess I really want the functionality of IMAP, with good 'syncing' between phone & computer, but don't have that as an option.

Any other good tips or workflows?
 
Personally I would have gmail pull mail from that POP account and delete it from that server as it pulls. This way you can use gmail via the phone, pc, and IMAP. That puts it all into one account and stays in sync no matter which device happens to do something with a message.
 
I'd like more help myself on this. Hero is being delivered tomorrow (I also use a Magic for work) and am wondering how to best set up my emails. I have 1 x Hotmail address which is my main one, 3 x domain email addresses and 1 x Gmail address.

The Gmail address is really only for activating the phone, backing up contacts, calendar, etc. I don't intend or want to use this as my primary address. That will remain as my Hotmail one simply as everyone else knows it and it is also my MSN name and I use that a lot.

So - I want to use the Email app, not the Gmail app. First thing that I hope someone can confirm:

Does the built-in Email app show new email notifications? I have read that it doesn't and my own experience is that it very rarely seems to even check for new email at the interval stated. More often than not I find it shows no new email but when I open the email app and refresh, it downloads email.

I understand the difference between POP3 and IMAP and for a number of reasons, I prefer POP3 (at least until MS sort out IMAP folder handling in Outlook). I can set the phone to not delete from the server, set my desktop to delete and on the next sync, the deleted mail has gone from the phone. Brilliant.

But - I still guess that there's no way for an email I SEND from the phone to show in any sent items EXCEPT on the phone itself? As I understand it the only way I can achieve that is with IMAP (and I assume the Gmail app with Gmail address?).

I don't want to drag all my POP3 accounts into Gmail.

Any advice?
 
In the days when you used a single machine and had to download all mail locally POP was usable but that was a long time ago. It simply isn't designed for what we do these days. Those 'brilliant' tricks are just hacks and not good enough anymore.
So why not drag all those accounts into gmail? Is it because you prefer Outlook which is the worst IMAP client ever made?
Once per year I look at outlook and always go back to t-bird which is much better at IMAP and handles the reply to address for multiple accounts in a fool proof manner. The syncing across multiple clients (home, work, phone, etc) is done properly. On the other hand you are trusting 'the cloud' to keep the messages safe but they generally do a better job than most users will. Or as I do, I run my own server and can trust my cloud.
When I was using the bundled email client I found that it checked mail as per schedule. And because my accounts are all IMAP I can hit delete on the phone and it would be in sync on the PC without any worries.

I think I would suggest pulling it all into gmail and use labels to auto file into folders but that has other issues if you like to live in hotmail. I have an account that requires me to use a VPN or a really bad web interface so I have it forward to gmail (but leave it on the original server) just so that I get instant notification on the phone. Then I can decide if I want to go to the main app and deal with it.
 
Only really stuck with Outlook as it's a good contact and diary handler and having that tied in with email just works really well. Outlook is one of the things I think MS have got right. Outlook Connector does an okay job of working with Hotmail to provide a good sync.

If I move to something else for IMAP for my domain emails (which I have considered) then I lose the benefit of them all being together in one app, with my calender, etc.

What we REALLY need is a Google replacement for Outlook on the desktop. Something that syncs with Google Mail, Contacts, Calendar and also has built in note handling and support for additional IMAP and POP3 accounts. THAT would solve a lot of my syncing problems!
 
Well T-bird has connectors for most of that but if you're comfy with Outbreak you might not like it. Because I needed solutions years before MS even knew what the internet was much less how to do an email client I did things differently. Trying to go to Outlook is much too painful and runs too slowly for me. Outlook is much better than it used to be but I still hate it and it still hates IMAP and always will.

There might be good suggestions for you coming from other users. My needs and solutions are very different.
 
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