POP from two machines downloads all emails everytime

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aquila

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Jul 2, 2007
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63
Hello,

I have a customer who has hosted his emails on our DA server. He uses his emails from his blackberry, MS outlook 2007 on his laptop and MS outlook 2007 on his desktop. There is a problem he is facing now. Since he wanted the emails on all three devices he has checked the box so that outlook leaves a copy of the email on the server. Now when he accesses his outlook from his laptop or PC, he gets all the 400+ emails downloaded everytime outlook checks for new emails. However, his blackberry gets only one copy of the emails.

He has tried to deleted inbox,imap folder and spam from DA, tried to delete and create his email account once again - but still has the problem.

I am confused if this is a problem with the server. Please help!
 
The customer should use the IMAP protocol (instead of the POP3 protocol) for all of his e-mail access points.

IMAP will keep a copy of all his mail on your DA server, and it will synchronize the new mail every time he connects from one of the devices.
 
To go a bit further... Have him delete the email account entirely then recreate it and access it with only IMAP clients. Much less headaches.
 
Hello,
Thanks for both the replies. I understand that IMAP is good. But, my client wants to store emails in different personal folders on both the machines. For eg, an email from directadmin will be stored in the "directadmin" folder or "directadmin" personal folder on the laptop and the same will be stored in "official" folder in the home pc. i assume this is not possible with IMAP.

By checking "leave a copy of the emails on the server" one is able to POP into the mail box from another location and retrieve it once again even if he has retrieved on his first machine before. This used to work well, but for some reasons it doesnt work now. Will it be a problem with Outlook itself? Maybe outlooks file that stores the information about the downloaded emails are corrupt or something?

Can someone enlighten me in this angle? Will a reinstallation of Outlook solve the problem? Or am i totally wrong?

Thanks,
Abilash
 
i assume this is not possible with IMAP
Click to expand...

You assumed wrong. You can do anything with IMAP that you can do with pop3 and much more. Simply copy the mail to the folders on the local computer.

BTW ass-u-me.
 
I actually had this exact same problem.

The problem is that the blackbarry modifies the UID everytime it looks at it. I fixed the issue by upgrading to dovecot and veryifying the email UID's didn't change when the blackbarry looked at them.


Oh yea, and the blackbarry wouldn't do pop until I called them and had them manually set that on their end.
 
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donkeyKICK said:
I actually had this exact same problem.

The problem is that the blackbarry modifies the UID everytime it looks at it. I fixed the issue by upgrading to dovecot and veryifying the email UID's didn't change when the blackbarry looked at them.


Oh yea, and the blackbarry wouldn't do pop until I called them and had them manually set that on their end.
Click to expand...

Hi buddy,

Can you give me more information on how exactly you went ahead with the upgradation and did you "the blackbarry wouldn't do pop until I called them and had them manually set that on their end"?

thanks in advance
 
I had the customer call blackbarry and force the device onto pop. It took a couple transfers before we found a person who knew how. The first couple people said that the server is either a pop server or imap. I explained it can do either, they didn't understand. I insisted on moving up the chain until finally someone said "okay, no problem" and forced the blackbarry on pop... regardless of what the initial person says, it can be done.

The upgrade I made to my server was the standard dovecot upgrade found here:

http://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=143


aquila said:
Hi buddy,

Can you give me more information on how exactly you went ahead with the upgradation and did you "the blackbarry wouldn't do pop until I called them and had them manually set that on their end"?

thanks in advance
Click to expand...
 
Great, thanks for the information. I'm currently converting to dovecot by following the instructions on http://www.directadmin.com/features.php?id=590 as mine is a customapache.

Once that is done, I will check with my customer and get back to you and let you know if everything is sorted.

thanks a lot again.
 
Hi KICK,

Your solution was just awesome. The problem has now disappeared after upgrading to Dovecot. Also, I see that I can delete all spams over 30 days with dovecot which is something i've been looking for and thats just great.

When I mouseover on an email account it used to show the usage of inbox, imap and spam, but it doesnt seem to show for dovecot? I can only see imap, webmail. Is there anything I should do to fix this?

Thanks,
Abilash
 
Well, actually, I never noticed that feature. Kinda cool though. Since the spam isn't listed there maybe someone knows how to add it.
 
Hello KICK,

Unfortunately the client still has problems. Is there anything that I could have missed? All I did was to upgrade to dovecot and nothing else. Should I ask the client to change any settings on his blackberry or something?

I've asked them to try IMAP as I dont have any idea on what may be wrong.

Please help!
 
Same problem as before. The client's outlook downloads all the emails (over 300+) in the inbox every morning when he first opens it up. His blackberry only picksup the emails that arent downloaded before. His problem is only with outlook/pc.
 
The solution is the same as before. Don't use pop3 in Outlook. He will always have the same problem when using an IMAP client on one device and pop3 on another.
 
No he has been using POP on both the machines. Anyway, now I have asked him to change both the machines to use IMAP.

I know IMAP solves the problem, but I used to use POP on different machines with "leave a copy on the server" and it used to work fine. I used to get the emails delivered to all the machines (just once). I'm just wondering why he has problem with it. Maybe because of his blackberry? But how to sort this out by still using POP and not IMAP?
 
No he has been using POP on both the machines.
Click to expand...

You stated there were 3 devices involved.

He will always have the same problem when using an IMAP client on one device
Click to expand...

Device = computer, blackberry, smartphone, pda, probably more.

Maybe because of his blackberry
Click to expand...

Yes. I thought that was clear. Guess not.

Every time the Blackberry checks the mail the id on the mail changes and all pop3 clients thinks it new mail.
 
donkeyKICK said:
I actually had this exact same problem.

The problem is that the blackbarry modifies the UID everytime it looks at it. I fixed the issue by upgrading to dovecot and veryifying the email UID's didn't change when the blackbarry looked at them.


Oh yea, and the blackbarry wouldn't do pop until I called them and had them manually set that on their end.
Click to expand...

Ok, sorry about the confusions. The problem is I've never used a BB and don't know how it works. Does BB also have an option of IMAP and POP? I understand that blackberry changes the UID. Now, can you tell me how I could verify that the UID dont get changed by blackberry?

Sorry about the confusions once again. thanks
 
The solution is to use IMAP on all devices. There is nothing else to be said. Leaving mail on server is a work around. The only real solution for using multiple devices to check the same email account is IMAP.

If you still insist on using pop3 then another acceptable solution is to create 3 email boxes (one for each device) and forward the email to all of them. That is what I do.

EDIT: I started doing the above before I realized the advantages of IMAP. Now I am just set in my ways and too lazy to change.
 
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Ok great. Like I said, I've already asked him to change everything to IMAP. I will also suggest him the second option of creating 3 email boxes. Thanks a lot, floyd.
 
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