Help Delete mail on EVO but leave on server?

[swillardo]

I did a search and found nothing in the forums that was directly related to this so I started a new thread.

I just got my EVO last night. I have two email accounts. A hotmail account, and an Exchange Activesync account. Both are set up and are working fine.

Coming from a Blackberry, I am used to deleting the least important emails from the phone as I am on the road, leaving them to be handled later when I am at the computer. My job is email driven so I get 100+ per day from my work account. It is important to me to be able to delete the emails that can wait from the phone, leaving only the most important ones for me to answer while on the road.

I called Sprint and after they played with the phone for 20 minutes while on hold, they could not find a way to delete emails from the EVO but leave them on the server for later download by computer.

If this can't be done with the factory email app, is there another app out there that will allow it?

Thanks in advance for the help.

John Mangiantini

 

[Wadester]

Mail accounts use one of 3 protocols: Exchange, IMAP and POP. Both Hotmail (as of a few weeks ago) and Exchange use over-the-air (Active) sync technology so when you delete a message on your phone, it's removed from the server and thus your client program as well (web/Outlook). IMAP also supports a similar 2-way update.

In order to only delete messages off your phone but not the server, you need to set up your mail accounts with POP instead. POP downloads a copy of and sends mail to/from the server -- nothing else. Hotmail supports POP but your Exchange server may or may not (a lot of larger companies policies do not). You'd have to contact the Administrators to find that out.

If they don't allow POP on Exchange, then ask if they can forward a copy of your mail to another public mail service, like Gmail. Then you can add the Gmail account to your phone via POP.

Remember, if you still want to sync your Contacts and Calendar with Exchange, you need to keep those and just uncheck Mail instead of deleting the Exchange account entirely.

 

[swillardo]

Thank you Wadester! That was a big help.

 

[Irish2Ice]

Great response Wadester. Here's my problem; I have yahoo mail and unless you pay for their premium service, you have to register your email as IMAP and they will not forward mail.

Are you aware of a way, or an app that you can use that will allow you to keep email on the server?

This is driving me crazy because any email I want to keep on the server, I HAVE to keep on my phone as well!

 

[Wadester]

There may be an app that uses IMAP but downloads mail to the app and doesn't send the delete command to the server, but I'm not aware of one (regardless of O/S). The design of the IMAP protocol is to sync mail between the local client and the server. That's pretty much why there is a POP and IMAP protocol. POP downloads while IMAP syncs.

 

[TF1984]

Great response Wadester. Here's my problem; I have yahoo mail and unless you pay for their premium service, you have to register your email as IMAP and they will not forward mail.

Are you aware of a way, or an app that you can use that will allow you to keep email on the server?

This is driving me crazy because any email I want to keep on the server, I HAVE to keep on my phone as well!

K9 Mail will handle IMAP protocol. It also has an option in it's cumbersome menu settings to allow user choice on whether to delete or leave on server. Give it a go.