E-mail "read" in webmail after POP3 download?

M

mvdg27

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Oct 25, 2006
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Hi,

I'm experiencing some weird behaviour concerning my e-mail messages. Whenever I download an e-mail message via POP3 to my desktop computer, the message in the webmail appears as 'read' .. even though I haven't actually read the message on my desktop.

What I actually would like, is that the e-mail stays marked unread on the server, until I actually read it in the webmail.

I believe this was the default behaviour anyway, before I upgraded to DoveCot.

Does anyone know how to restore this?

Thanks!
 
Why not just use IMAP on your desktop instead of pop3?

And by "webmail" do you mean a pop3 client or imap client?
 
Well, I want to use POP3 to create an Archive of all my mail. Seperate from the live mail on the webserver. Furthermore I have several clients that use this configuration as well.

By Webmail I mean an Imap webmail client, like roundcube or squirrel.
 
Well, I want to use POP3 to create an Archive of all my mail
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Nothing prevents you from doing that with IMAP. Simply copy the mail to a local folder. You can even create a message/filter rule to do it automatically.
 
I understand that, but if I'm not mistaking, IMAP synchronizes with the server, right? So it stores all messages in the inbox and sent mail etc. at the server.

That's what I want to prevent. I have one client for example that easily reaches mailboxes of a few GB. By using pop3 they can archive at local computers, and periodically clean up the mail on the server. The only problem that they (and me myself as well) are experiencing now, is that all messages on the server are automatically set to read, when POP3 downloads them. So for them using webmail to check which messages still have to be answered does not work!

If there are better options to deploy IMAP, I'd gladly hear about it ..

Michiel
 
So it stores all messages in the inbox and sent mail etc. at the server.
Click to expand...

Or you can tell your email client to store it somewhere else such as a local folder(s).

By using pop3 they can archive at local computers
Click to expand...

And you can archive at the local computer with imap.

pop3 and imap are just the protocols. There are certain things you can do with imap that you cannot do with pop3. But everything that pop3 can do imap can do (that I know of).

My point is for most people its not a good idea to mix using imap and pop3 on the same account on a regular basis. That is just my experience.
 
To go back to the original question; once you download to the server by POP, imap has no way of knowing if you've read it or not; it presumes you have.

Jeff
 
I understand that POP and IMAP are both independent systems, and IMAP has no way of knowing whether the e-mail is actually read .. however, I always experienced the behaviour that the messages on the server were still marked as unread after the POP download.

I'd like to return to that behaviour. Is that possible? So instead of assuming that you have read the e-mail, I want it to assume you haven't. Is there a setting I can change?

Thanks, Michiel
 
Try reading the manual (man pages) and perhaps other documentation for the pop client you're using (I'm using Dovecot).

Jeff
 
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