delete from pop server when deleted from gmail

[rjcarr]

I'm sorry if this is a common topic but my (brief) search didn't give
me any results.

I'm using gmail to download emails from a pop server and gmail leaves
a copy of the mail on the pop server. This is great as I occasionally
need access to the emails outside of gmail.

However, I would like gmail to delete the emails from the pop server
that I delete in the gmail interface. I'm fairly sure thunderbird has
this feature and I'm positive mail.app does.

So I guess I'm asking if this feature is available and I'm missing it
somewhere, or if it isn't an option is there any technical reason why
it wasn't included.

[Uwe]

I think You are getting a bit mixed up. As post office protocols for
Your inbox there are two:

pop3 or pop (same thing) - downloads Your mail into Your client
(usually Outlook Express or Thunderbird the like, but in Your case
it's googlemail) and deletes them on the server (occaisonally You have
the option to leave a copy on the server as in google mail)

imap - synchronises You client (as mentioned above) with the server.
Everything looked at get's marked read, everything deleted get's
deleted.

In gmail there's just the pop3 option available, where all stuff get's
downloaded from the server and where You optionally can leave a copy
on the server (which i wouldn't do, because it allways results in data
mixup - what is where and why . . . ). A "feedback" of the client to
the server, what to delete or mark as read is not possible.

I'm sorry if that doesn't solve Your problem. I would use gmail with
the browser front end and make a "copy" with Thunderbird on one of
Your computers as a backup against data loss.

For further questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Uwe

[Ryan Morehart]

This feature is not available using Gmail POP, although you can choose to archive messages once they have been downloaded them.

The main reason I think Google did not include this feature is to encourage people to use the web interface (where they can put ads) to search for old messages.

Ryan

[rjcarr]

I do understand the difference between pop and imap, however, even
when using POP you can have the client delete specific messages on the
server. Yeah, I realize this becomes very similar to imap in this
case, but I assure you it is possible.

[rjcarr]

Hmm ... okay, but your explanation doesn't make too much sense. If I
tell gmail to only copy emails (meaning, leave copy of email on
server), then tell gmail to delete specific mails, they still aren't
searchable. Meaning, I can't search deleted emails, so it makes no
difference if gmail syncs the deletions with the pop server.

Anyway, thanks for the response.

[Zack (Doc)]

To do this, your local POP program keeps a record of all mail
downloaded from the server and what it's reference number was (POP
servers have a local reference number to the message being
downloaded). This is then used to delete the corresponding message on
the POP server after you next perform a POP download. AFAIK, this is
not a standard for use of the POP3 protocol as defined by the RFC, and
only applies in certain clients. There is a certain amount of
overhead associated with keeping this extra table of downloaded vs
deleted. When the POP3 client is local, the burden is upon you. When
the POP3 client is GMail's, there are a great deal number of other
users to worry about.

Does this mean GMail will never do that cause it's "too hard", I don't
think so, but I don't know that there's a large call for it. Many
users have gotten used to the idea of not deleting in their GMail
account, and probably count on the mail still being the "fetched"
account if they do. This would require the setting of yet another
variable in the configuration.

I don't know if they'll ever do it, but you can certainly suggest it
to them. Try to write your idea more like stereo instructions (plug
cord A into port B) as the way you described it here apparently think
you meant what happens when you POP *from* GMail, not POP *into*
GMail.

[Robert J. Carr]

Thanks Zack ... that was the best explanation I've heard. As I said,
I've seen it done so I know it is possible, but don't know enough
about the POP protocol to know what is involved. Thanks for the
explanation.

About my description, I agree that it wasn't well understood, sorry
about that. And I even went out of my way to avoid using pronouns at
the risk of sounding redundant. :)