Deleting emails from Android

Mobile apps
1

Hi,

I’ve been a satisfied user of em Client on my PC for around 8 years. I was delighted to see that I could now install the mail app on my Android phone. On the whole I find the phone app is as easy and pleasant to use as the PC version and as sensibly organised. Well done!

However, I find that I have a problem relating to the deletion of emails that have been sent to me. I use the POP3 protocol for a number of reasons. I live in the English countryside and access to the internet is not always available particularly away from home. So if I’m away from home and using IMAP, I wouldn’t be able to see all my emails including those I’ve already read previously. Also I archive a number of my emails on my PC so I can refer to content at some time in the future so they would have to be downloaded. It is good to be responsible for your own data.

I receive emails on my PC without any apparent problems via POP3 over a landline - 4G is unreliable in this house. After my emails have been downloaded to the PC, there is no reason to keep them on the email server and so I have them deleted. I’m sure my ISPs would not appreciate my retaining gigabytes of emails on their servers for a number of years! A number of my emails I archive in em Client - the others I delete when read and dealt with.

I find that with the Android version of em Client on my phone, my choices of deleting emails from the mail server are limited. Any message that has been previously downloaded to my PC will have already been deleted, and the phone will know nothing about it. On the other hand any message that hasn’t been downloaded to my PC has to remain on the mail server so it can be accessed later by the PC.

My problem arises with deleting messages from my phone. Recently I was away from home for about 25 days. In that time I received 896 emails on the phone. The task of selectively deleting SOME of these emails one at a time before I get home is daunting. The settings are not clear what deleting an email manually actually does. Does it put the mail in the Trash folder for me to have another go at removing from the phone at some future time? Does it go to the mail server and delete the email from the server? Deleting masses of emails one at a time seems hard work but I don’t want to remove messages that I’m yet to download to my PC. Maybe there’s something I’ve missed.

A solution that suggests itself to me is a setting on the phone to remove messages from the phone when they have been deleted from the server by the PC.

Regards

Peter O

2

That solution is already available; it is a function of IMAP. With POP3 the message store is on the device, so any changes on the server are ignored.

3

With all respect, your answer does not fully answer my query. I am asking about deleting emails from my phone - exactly what actions do the limited email delete options do?

I also gave the reason why I don’t want to use IMAP. Access to the mail server is not always possible in rural areas. By using POP3 I have access to the emails I’ve received even if I can’t contact the mail server.

Please consider all the information in my original query.

Regards

Peter O

4

It is the same with IMAP. eM Client caches the messages for offline use, so even if there is no Internet connection, you can still read the messages that were received when you had a connection.

1 Like
5

Hi

Thank you for your reply. It wasn’t clear to me that em Client caches the messages within the app on IMAP. When I convert POP3 to IMAP, will my archived emails still be viewable within the app? I have over 20 000 messages in my archive - I trust there will be no problems with this.

With IMAP, if I were to delete an email from my phone that has not yet been downloaded to my PC, will that prevent me from downloading the email to the PC when I return home, so that I’m losing it for ever?

Finally, are there any detailed instructions on converting between the two protocols?

Thanks again for your help.

Regards

Peter O

6

Hello,

My problem also involves the deletion of mails in the Android app. I would like mails deleted from the server immediately (I also use POP3), without them going into the trash folder first. Is there an option I have overlooked? Or would it have to be implemented first? If so, could you make it possible?

Also, after deleting multiple mails the response always reads “Message deleted”, which always makes me wonder, “Has only one message been deleted or all of the selected ones?”

Thank you.