A question on email and deleting from server

Dave G

Dave G

Member
So I have a customer who, for some unknown reason decided to set there email software to leave there POP3 email on the server so here is my question.

If the customer has deleted the email from there email software Inbox and has deleted it from there email software Trash, then resets there email software to remove there email from the server will the emails that were deleted from the Trash be removed from the server or will I need to delete them?
Hope I explained this correctly.
Thanks for your help on this.
 
If the email software is set to "sync" any changes between the server and what you've downloaded then the files should have been deleted.

You can always double check by logging into their webmail account but you should be good to go.
 
Daniel
Thanks for the reply but, don't you hate "buts"
I should have been a little more clear.
We are talking Outlook and Outlook Express.
The mail accounts are POP3 not IMAP
I don't believe there is a "sync" function in POP3, or am I missing something?
As I don't use/have Outlook or OExpress I am kind of at a loss when it comes to this customer.

Thanks
 
It's been a while since I've used Outlook as well. Thunderbird for the win ;).


I was able to dig up with KB article from Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2419526

If you look at the pop3 section as long as "Remove from server when deleted from 'Deleted Items' " has been checked then it should keep everything upto date.

Its possible that if this has just been recently checked the emails could still exist on the server but I 'believe' it compares the two lists and removes whatever was sent to the deleted folder. Of course the easiest way to tell would be to compare the inbox with the webmail inbox to make certain of this but I think it syncs everything up.
 
I'm guessing, by looking at the customers mail box using "ConfigServer Mail Manage" there are over 1000 emails in the /cur box in more than one box.
I have been told by the customer that there trash is empty.
So I am going to assume that "Remove from server when deleted from 'Deleted Items' " was not checked
I'm thinking that if there is no trashed email for Outlook, OEX to compare to then it does not see any email to delete, correct?

Thanks
 
Since it's pop3 all email will be left in the /cur folder until deleted. Even if the customers pop email in outlook is sorted into folders. The only real way to tell would be do they have 1,000 active emails in outlook or do they have much less (this would include all mail sorted into folders).
 
Hi there Dave,

I'm going to venture a guess and say that your client is using all of their space in their account due to so many emails. I would tell them to log into their account using webmail and to take a look themselves as I would not think you would want to be poking around in someone else's emails ;)

Then I would ask why in the world they would use POP3 but leave the emails on the server. Obviously they don't even use webmail because if they did then they would have known all those emails were stacking up there and would have addressed it before it got so bad. So either switch to downloading the emails from the server or switch to IMAP but manage it better as space is of course limited.

I have a user with several email accounts but many of the users of those accounts only use webmail to access their accounts. They frequently run up their quota and I have to email them showing them disk usage of which accounts have gotten so large. Funny thing is that it's almost always the deleted items that is so full LOL
 
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