Help - GoogleMail

[John Ross]

Hi,

My partner’s email account is with virgin (virgin.net), she has used this successfully for many years, downloading her mail to 2 machines (both POP3), one set to delete messages on the server after 7 days, the other set to never delete messages on the server. She has been receiving a copy of all incoming mail at both machines, just as required.

3 days ago Virgin transferred her account to the googlemail system (as they are doing with all their email accounts), now incoming emails are only being collected at one of the machines, which ever one polls first after the message is received at the server.

I guess there’s a setting somewhere which will re-enable the required behaviour, we’ve never had any joy in getting responses asking questions of Virgin, so any ideas welcome please.

Regards,   John.

[Rick Squires]

Hi John

 How did they inform your partner that they were changing her over to googlemail?  I'm on an ntlworld.com address, which also belongs to the bearded ones' empire..........

Rick

[John Ross]

Rick,

She has had several emails over many months informing her that it would happen, and that all their email is going to Googlemail. They never quoted the date but we spotted the problem that we now have and on looking on the server you can see the breakpoint (different highlight colour of emails!).

John.

[Drew Reece]

It sounds like it is using POP3 as it was doing so before. POP3 is really not good for syncing with multiple machines with email, IMAP is generally better, especially if it is Gmail account because everything is kept on the server. POP3 is like a post man, once delivered it shouldn't arrive again. 

To use IMAP…

Log in to your gmail at mail.google.com (unless Virgin have given you an alternate address for webmail). Click 'Settings' in upper right, then click 'Forwarding and POP/IMAP' in the tabs. From there you can enable IMAP, and then find the settings from the 'configuration instructions' link. Set up both macs using IMAP.

If you don't have the options in the gmail account it will be because Virgin are managing the gmail account, you'd be better off signing up for a free gmail account, so that the whim of Virgin doesn't alter your email.

Re:co

[John Ross]

Re:co,

Yes, both machines are set for POP3 and neither has been changed, and POP3 is what I want to use, I don’t want to go to IMAP, I prefer the messages to be stored on my systems not the server.

John.

[Drew Reece]

Sorry, you're probably in for a flaky experience then. 

Gmail religiously keeps everything on the server anyway even if you access it via POP3. It's the whole point of GB's of free email storage.

POP3 isn't really intended for use with several clients. You are at risk of messages disappearing or not getting synced to the other client. Also you will have issues with sent/ drafts/ junk not being the same on each machine. Not really an issue until you need the email from the other mac. POP also doesn't support simultaneous connections for the same account.

I never managed to get 2 clients dealing with the same mail account via POP to be reliable. You can tweak the 'save on server' & 'delete after x days' options in Mail account > Advanced preferences, but if one person has a 'move to…' rule then the other will miss that message. You may also need to alter the options in Gmail to 'keep (or not) the mail in the inbox' for POP, it is in the same page as the IMAP settings.

You can make IMAP accounts move or copy messages to local inboxes if you want offline browsing.

Don't get me wrong IMAP can also be painful, it is just a lot less painful compared to POP3 & multiple clients.

Dr. POP or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the IMAP

Re:co

[John Ross]

Re:co,

Thanks for your reply. How do I set IMAP to “You can make IMAP accounts move or copy messages to local inboxes if you want offline browsing” I don’t want to rely on historical mail being only on the server?

Also if I change the emails accounts from POP to IMAP, will all the historical emails I have on the main Mac be deleted to match the state at the server?

John.

[Drew Reece]

I wouldn't change the old account settings, just add it as a new account for the IMAP details.

Your old POP account should be left as is, perhaps just turning off the 'Include this account when checking for new mail' in the account prefs. You could move it to a 'local mailbox' if you really want to archive it. Use the + icon at the bottom of the mailboxes & add a new mailbox 'on my mac'. Take care if you do move (instead of copy) it, you don't want the other mac repeating the steps or just removing the messages from the inbox. POP shouldn't sync changes but it might try. Make sure both are inactive, remove the passwords (in /Apps/Utilities/Keychain Access) to be 100% sure it won't connect to the server. 

Turn on IMAP on the gmail settings page.

Create a new account to handle the IMAP settings in mail, add the settings that Google provides.

Add another new local mailbox to store the offline archive.

You can add a rule to Copy to 'local mailbox name here' to duplicate messages into the local mailbox. That will give you an offline copy. Chances are that you may not need it because IMAP caches locally anyway. See how it works. You may want to create some folders on the server to better organise the mail. They will then appear in each client using the IMAP settings.

Some Gmail tips.

'Mail account prefs > Advanced' set the IMAP path prefix to '[Google Mail]' (no quotes but keep brackets) to remove the 'Google mail' container in the sidebar.

Select the 'sent mail' for the new Google account in the sidebar and do 'Mailbox > Use this mailbox for > Sent' 

It will insert the mailbox into the main sent items container. Repeat for Drafts & Trash. I can't really remember if Spam should be left to Google or Apple mail, I think it should be left as is to let Googles filters dump it into the spam folder.

Hope this helps 

Re:co

[John Ross]

Re:co,

Thanks for all that, that sounds like a viable option for me to try. I’ll give it a go.

John.