Hi Jewels, Glad you have at least got your email working again. Yes, it is worth taking your time to work out a good email set-up before jumping in and changing things. I am by no means an expert in email systems except what I have had to learn as I went along - guided as we all have been by the generous contributions of others on the list - Daniel & Ronni obviously come to mind here.
Having said that, I am a great believer in trying to work out how things work and, sometimes more importantly, how they go wrong! A couple more thoughts/comments: In your reply to Daniel you said "I will hang on until I get my new MacPro, whenever they become available and will probably have the two machines set up as POP." - I have found this to be a workable solution in the past PROVIDED you have a plan as to how/when each computer downloads messages from the server and how/when messages are deleted from the server. It seem to me there are two basic approaches to this: • You have a designated "main" email computer which downloads all mail and on which you sort/organise all your saved mail and the other computer(s) are secondary and only used to "catch up" on new emails when you are away from your "main" computer - this is the approach which I used and so all the secondary computers were set to "leave a copy of each message on the server" and "Delete copies from the server - Never" whilst on the primary computer "leave a copy of each message on the server" was unselected - so the messages were downloaded and immediately cleared from the server. This used to work fine until I was overseas for a while, using the secondary computer, and found that the server quota was being exceeded. • You want both/all computers to be "equals" and have all emails on them - in which case you would set all computers to "leave a copy of each message on the server" and then set a suitable period to delete copies from the server (you mentioned 1 month) - your main considerations here would be: i) Make sure each computer accesses the mail server frequently enough to catch messages before they are deleted ii) Make sure that any months worth of email can be accommodated by your server mails quota (this ruled out this approach for me) iii) Do all your email sorting/filing separately, but consistently on all computers (I would have found this challenging!) You say " On checking, it appears to change an IMAP to a POP account is rather laborious and difficult." - I suppose it depends how you look at it. The first thing when talking about "email accounts" is to distinguish between the server side setup and the email client. You actual email "account" - as in the email address is just that - an address that points to your email account on your email server. POP and IMAP are just 2 different ways to access that account with 2 different rationales - the POP rationale assumes that you will download all your emails and then manage them on your computer whilst the IMAP rationale assumes that all your emails are retained, sorted and generally managed on the server - your computer email client (or webmail session) is just the gateway to do this. You can think of IMAP as an email equivalent to Dropbox - it keeps everything in sync between computers/devices - actions performed on one device are synced to the cloud (your email server) and then on to the next device which connects to (syncs with) your account. You have already experienced some of the problems associated with mixing POP and IMAP access across different computers however changing from POP to IMAP need not be "rather laborious and difficult." provided one has a clear plan of action. I will give you a few thoughts based on my own experience. I actually use MS Outlook as my email client rather than OSX Mail - so some details/procedures may be slightly different, but the principles are the same. • In your email client you do not "change" an account from POP to IMAP, you create a new IMAP account and then delete the old POP account. • If you use email "rules" to sort and organise your email (I have multiple email accounts and use rules a lot) be aware that your old POP rules will no longer work if/when the POP account is deleted. You can set-up new IMAP client rules - but they will only be effective when the computer that the rules are set-up on is accessing the email server. The other option is to set-up Server rules - which work on the emails as they arrive at the server, irrespective of whether any computer client is actually accessing the account. This way you do not need to worry about setting up the same client rules on different computers. * Deleting the POP account can result in the loss of emails associated with that account - that is emails which have been downloaded to your computer and are no longer on the server - so you need to ensure that you have already filed or otherwise saved these emails beforehand. • You can actually have both an IMAP account and a POP account simultaneously accessing the mail server - though, for obvious reasons, this would not be a normal setup! • As an interim measure, I found that having both IMAP account and a POP account simultaneously active in the email client could be a convenient changeover strategy - eg: 1) You already have the POP account setup and emails stored "on my computer" - temporarily change the account settings to "leave a copy of each message on the server" and "Delete copies from the server - Never" and disable the automatic send and receive schedule - this has effectively disabled the POP account without deleting it. You should probably ensure that this has been done on all devices set-up with POP accounts 2) Set-up a new IMAP account to access the same email account. Set-up all your folders/filing on the email server using this IMAP account. You could also set-up server rules at this point. 3) Work through all your "on my computer" emails to ensure they are suitably filed/archived - eg to your new IMAP folders. 4) When you are happy that your new IMAP account is working fine and all your emails have been suitably filed/archived, you can delete the POP account from your email client. 5) If you have any old POP email rules you can now delete these as they are no longer effective. You mention that you have a good email backup software - Mailer Archiver X - so I suppose you could omit step 3 and instead use your email archive to retrieve any emails removed when you delete the POP account - whatever works best for you and your way of thinking/working - we are all different here!! Just my thoughts. HTH Cheers Neil -- Neil R. Houghton Albany, Western Australia Tel: +61 8 9841 6063 Email: n...@possumology.com -----Original Message----- From: <wamug.org.au-wamug-boun...@lists.wamug.org.au> on behalf of Julie Bedford <jew...@iinet.net.au> Reply-To: WAMUG <wamug@wamug.org.au> Date: Wednesday, 20 November 2019 at 23:58 To: WAMUG <wamug@wamug.org.au> Subject: Re: MAIL BOX Hi Neil, Thanks for your reply Neil. Yes, I’ve come to the same conclusion in regards to having POP and IMAP on the same network. On checking, it appears to change an IMAP to a POP account is rather laborious and difficult. I’ve always used the POP and prefer this option, as I look upon the IMAP to be similar to a Cloud storage system. Now that I have a better understanding of these, I am sure I’ll survive until I manage to purchase the new MacPro and then decide what to do. I do understand what Daniel says though and can see why most prefer this option. I checked my quota on the iinet website earlier and I’m over 1900mb of 1000mb. A bit of a mystery as I do not have that many stored on the server. After speaking with iinet, they think their server is having problems and should be able to clean out my mail tomorrow. A friend today had a look at my system and changed the outgoing port, which actually returned to it’s original number but the good thing is, my email is now working ? I have no answers for this miraculous recovery :) The only out of the ordinary thing I did in my mail recently was to delete about 1gb worth of emails, but that really should not have affected the mail set up or loading up my iinet quota. Yes, I understand your reasoning behind obtaining personal domains, I had thought of the doing the same in the past. Everything was so much cheaper back then, but of course now it is not the case. I do have a good email backup software - Mailer Archiver X - so I guess I could use that to fall back on if all else fails. If nothing else, I’ve learnt from this exercise. Thanks again Neil Jewels > On 20 Nov 2019, at 5:46 PM, Neil Houghton <n...@possumology.com> wrote: > > Hi Jewels, > > I think that, as Daniel says, your basic problem is down to accessing this email account via POP on one computer and via IMAP on the other. You CAN do this (as you are) but, to avoid losing emails, you really need to have a strategy that considers where/how the emails are stored and if/when they get downloaded and/or deleted from the server. > > As Daniel says, the simplest and cleanest email setup nowadays is just to use IMAP on all machines and have all your messages organised in folders on the server - that way your emails and folder organisation looks the same whatever device you use to access your email. > > The main problem with this approach is if you save a lot of emails and your email provider has quotas on email storage which you exceed at some point. > > I guess I am well familiar with this since, back in the day, I purchased personal domains for my wife & I so that we could have our own email addresses - without having to worry about losing our email addresses if/when we changed ISPs and, since we were only using these for emails rather than setting up websites, I just went with a free web hosting account. > > Now, I have to say that the set-up works fine and does all we wanted EXCEPT that our storage & bandwidth quotas are very low ( I'm not complaining - we pay $0 for this!). My original strategy was to set-up all accounts as POP on all machines then designate our primary personal computers to download from the server and all secondary devices to leave on the server. That allowed us to check for new emails on any device but save and store them on our primary computers. This worked OK provided our personal computers downloaded frequently enough to keep the server relatively empty. > > But, as emails became larger, and there were lots more of them, and we took longer holidays with our laptop leaving our primary computers switched off at home - it became harder to manage and to stop our meagre server allowance causing everything to grind to a halt whilst we were overseas. > > The best solution FOR US will be to cough up for paid hosting which will give us enough storage and bandwidth to set-up all the accounts as IMAP - however, I still haven't got round to that yet! > > My interim solution - which works fine but involves a little more organisation on my part - when I took out an Office 365 subscription I got 1TB of MS OneDrive cloud storage which gives me plenty of email storage so I set-up an outlook.com email account, accessed only by IMAP, and set-up my email folder organisation on that. Emails to my personal account that I want to keep are moved to these folders and can then be deleted from the server on my personal domain to keep me below the quota. > > As you will have now realised, there are many different ways to manage your emails and keeps the ones you need whilst not clogging up your quota-limited server. The important thing is to come up with a clear plan that suits your personal wants/needs and then set-up your various accounts and devices so that they all play nice together. > > > HTH > > > Cheers > > > Neil > -- > Neil R. Houghton > Albany, Western Australia > Tel: +61 8 9841 6063 > Email: n...@possumology.com > > > -----Original Message----- > From: <wamug.org.au-wamug-boun...@lists.wamug.org.au> on behalf of Julie Bedford <jew...@iinet.net.au> > Reply-To: WAMUG <wamug@wamug.org.au> > Date: Wednesday, 20 November 2019 at 01:07 > To: WAMUG <wamug@wamug.org.au> > Subject: Re: MAIL BOX > > Hi Daniel, > > The way you described your mail set up with filing emails, is pretty much the same way (if not so intricate) as the way I do mine, but only with selected emails and the rest I leave in the In Box to refer back to when I need to. I sometimes need to refer back to say 2010 - so I know where you are coming from. > > After reading your email, perhaps the problem is that I upgraded my iMac a while ago to Majove, in order to follow MYOB requirements, but left the networked MacPro with ElCapitan (can’t upgrade as you know as MacPro is now too old). So the Mail will be different. Could this be the problems? These are the only two devices I use. I haven’t any smart boxes, folders or rules either. On the iinet server, I have it set to delete after one month, but I am sure that wouldn’t be interfering with my iMac, as it never has done in the past with the MacPro. > > I have just gone onto the iinet web server and it does say I’ve exceeded my quota. So assume I need to delete from the server some emails ! It’s getting late and will have to sort out tomorrow. > > Cheers > Jewels > > >> On 20 Nov 2019, at 12:46 am, Daniel Kerr <dan...@macwizardry.com.au> wrote: >> >> Hi Julie >> >> When you create a new folder in Mail, you can choose to create it on the “IMAP” selection (eg at iinet), or “On My Mac”. >> Eg, go to the Mailbox menu and choose “new Mailbox”. You’ll see a drop down menu, and the “Location” you want to have this set to “On My Mac”. (It doesn’t mean it’s stored as a folder on the actual hard drive you can see (well, it kinda is,..but it’s hidden,..but for this lets pretend we don’t see it)…. >> So in Apple Mail down the left hand side where the Mailboxes are, you’ll see a header called “On My Mac”. This is where all your stored emails will show. You can then have sub folders in these as well. >> For example. I have On My Mac. Then under that I have a folder called MacWizardry. Inside that I have a folder called Customers. Inside that are two folders one called A;L and one called M-Z. And then inside those folders are my regular clients I see all the time. I then have a “non standard” folder called OC 2019, OC 2018, OC 2017 etc. Inside these folders I store all my In’s and outs emails. I can go back 19 years of emails for any one person. All stored locally on my computer and not on my server. So I can look up any emails I want at any time. >> And you can then have many many folders for different things. (My example is just a few folders, but I have lots and lots more. Folders and then sub folders inside those. >> I move messages out of my inbox and sent mailboxes once I’ve dealt with the emails and want to save them. >> As an example I have main folder called Computers and then one of the subfolders are all my WAMUG emails. Inside that one folder alone is 61,500 odd wamug emails. I can quickly look up any old email I want to that folder alone). >> So my Inbox and Sent items are pretty much empty. Bar any I want to save to follow up for the day or week. Anything else is filed away on my “main computer” My other devices are just “slaves”. I answer emails from them, but file away on just one computer only. >> >> But that can help store away emails. >> >> Back to your deleting emails. >> I’m assuming you have other devices collecting email as well? Are they all set to IMAP for the same email as well? Are you deleting from other devices? >> As Mail itself doesn’t really have a “delete from Inbox” setting. It does for Trash…but it doesn’t for anything else. So without knowing or seeing all of the setup, it’s a bit hard to give a full answer unfortunately. As if all using IMAP, then they *should* all be saved in the Inbox. It’s only the Trash folder that deletes after a week/month etc is a setting for. >> So in theory it shouldn’t be doing it from the Inbox. >> Do you have any “Smart Mailboxes” or “Smart folders” or “Rules” or anything like that set up? As they’re the only thing I can think that could be causing the issue. (Or if you have more then one device doing emails, and they have different settings or rules etc. >> Even the iPhone and iPad (though slightly different) only have the delete after x time - but again, it only applies to “Deleted Messages”, not the actual Inbox. >> And I had a quick look at my iinet webmail and can’t see any settings there either that have a “delete after x time”,..so I wouldn’t think it’s coming from there either. >> >> If you log in to iinet webmail, does it show that there is plenty of space available on the server? (You can use webmail.iinet.net.au with full email address and password to log in and check). >> >> Kind regards >> Daniel >> >> --- >> Daniel Kerr >> MacWizardry >> >> Phone: 0414 795 960 >> Email: <dan...@macwizardry.com.au> >> Web: <http://www.macwizardry.com.au> >> >> >> **For everything Apple** >> >> >> Please note : All email, phone and SMS support or consulting will now be charged. An invoice will be sent through on completion of support work. >> >>> On 20 Nov 2019, at 12:26 am, Julie Bedford <jew...@iinet.net.au> wrote: >>> >>> Hi Daniel, >>> >>> I checked under the Server Settings and it is IMAP. Excellent idea on saving the emails On My Mac, especially as I am always going back referring to them. Excuse >>> my ignorance, where do these files get stored though ? meaning where would I find the folder/emails. >>> >>> All my inbox emails disappear after a month. At the moment the oldest email in the inbox is dated 18 October 2019 and tomorrow it changes to 19 October. I’ve >>> never had this problem before either. >>> >>> I had been relying on my MacPro which is networked to the iMac, but now Mail on the MacPro is playing up but rather than confuse matters, I’ll ask for some assistance in a separate email for the MacPro. This has made me decide this evening to purchase one of the new MacPro’s when it eventually becomes available - even though it will cost a fortune. >>> >>> Thank you for offering to help >>> >>> Jewels >>> >>> >>>> On 19 Nov 2019, at 11:13 pm, Daniel Kerr <wa...@macwizardry.com.au> wrote: >>>> >>>> Hi Julie >>>> >>>> Deleting from the inbox isn’t “standard” practice for email,…so could either be something in the account itself or the settings. >>>> How do you have email set up? Is it POP3 or IMAP? (Or Exchange?) >>>> As I have POP3 and IMAP accounts and have never had email deleted from it at all. >>>> >>>> So might need a bit more info to advise. >>>> >>>> As a “short term’” fix, you could create a folder in Apple Mail “On My Mac” and put older emails in to folders there,..rather then in the Inbox. >>>> This saves them all on the computer rather then in the Inbox. >>>> (There’s a whole other long post on the benefits of doing this, rather then leaving lots and lots of emails in Inbox, Sent etc). Saving them in “On My Mac” folders is more beneficial generally). >>>> >>>> Is it just an iinet address or another? >>>> Let us know the above and we can try and help. >>>> Kind regards >>>> Daniel >>>> --- >>>> Daniel Kerr >>>> MacWizardry >>>> >>>> Phone: 0414 795 960 >>>> Email: <daniel AT macwizardry.com.au> >>>> Web: <http://www.macwizardry.com.au> >>>> >>>> >>>> **For everything Apple** >>>> >>>> NOTE: Any information provided in this email may be my personal opinion and as such should be taken accordingly, and may not be the views of MacWizardry. Any information provided does not offer or warrant any form of warranty or accept liability. It would be appreciated that if any information in this email is to be disseminated, distributed or copied, that permission by the author be requested. >>>> >>>>> On 19 Nov 2019, at 11:05 pm, Julie Bedford <jew...@iinet.net.au> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> HI Stephen >>>>> >>>>> Thanks for the assistance. I already have the Erase Deleted Messages as Never, but >>>>> its the ‘In Box’ that gets deleted after one month. Thing is I am forever going back to my >>>>> in box for work, so I really need to keep them all in the In Box. On my MacPro (on El Capitan), the emails >>>>> stay in the In Box until I delete them, which is how I prefer it. Just can’t seem to work out >>>>> how to set up the iMac in the same way. >>>>> >>>>> Thanks >>>>> >>>>> Jewels >>>>> >>>>>> On 19 Nov 2019, at 10:20 pm, Stephen Chape <chap...@bigpond.com> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> Hi Jewels. >>>>>> >>>>>> I now use Mac OS Catalina, but I don’t think this has changed. >>>>>> So I just took a look at mine. >>>>>> >>>>>> Mail/Preferences/Accounts >>>>>> Then click on "Mailbox Behaviours" >>>>>> Then in the box “Erase Deleted Messages” select “Never” >>>>>> >>>>>> I have mine selected for “After One Month" >>>>>> >>>>>>> On 19 Nov 2019, at 9:50 pm, Julie Bedford <jew...@iinet.net.au> wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Hi >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I have an iMac O/S Mojave and am unable to alter the behaviours in the Mail Preferences so that my Inbox does not delete my emails. >>>>>>> I have managed to figure out how to retain the sent emails now, but am finding the Mail Behaviour options a little ambiguous to say the least >>>>>>> and can only manage to save my inbox for a month. Under the ’sent mailbox’ option in Preferences it does not list an ‘Inbox’. My >>>>>>> mail application does show an inbox though. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Would be grateful if anyone can give me a step to step instruction on how not to have my inbox emails automatically deleted. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Many thanks >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Jewels >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- >>>>>>> Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> >>>>>>> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> >>>>>>> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Regards, >>>>>> Stephen Chape >>>>>> >>>>>> >> >> -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- >> Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> >> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> >> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug> > > -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- > Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> > Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> > Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug> > > > -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- > Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> > Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> > Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug> -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug> -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>