Way to block read emails?

[grrgoyl]

Hi,

I've had my G1 for about a week and am still exploring all its possibilities. I've searched around on this forum and can't find anything regarding this.

I have it set up to check my email once an hour to save on battery (not gmail, my Comcast account. I wasn't ready to sell my soul completely to Google just to use this phone!) I work on my computer all day and naturally read emails on the PC as they come in, and it's kind of annoying when 45 minutes later the G1 notifies me of an email that I've already read. Is there an app that will let you configure the phone to only retrieve unread emails? I've searched superficially in the phone but the menus seem pretty general and not able to do this.

Any help/ideas appreciated, thanks

 

[punkzanyj]

Hi,

I've had my G1 for about a week and am still exploring all its possibilities. I've searched around on this forum and can't find anything regarding this.

I have it set up to check my email once an hour to save on battery (not gmail, my Comcast account. I wasn't ready to sell my soul completely to Google just to use this phone!) I work on my computer all day and naturally read emails on the PC as they come in, and it's kind of annoying when 45 minutes later the G1 notifies me of an email that I've already read. Is there an app that will let you configure the phone to only retrieve unread emails? I've searched superficially in the phone but the menus seem pretty general and not able to do this.

Any help/ideas appreciated, thanks

I use K-9 and I've never had read emails show up on my phone. In fact, Once I read them on my PC using Thunderbird, they magically disappear from my phone.

 

[grrgoyl]

Thanks, I'm giving K-9 a try.

 

[cyberbob25]

It's not so much which client that you use, but the configuration that you have setup on both the G1 and the PC. If you are using POP on your PC to connect to your mailserver, then the email will be downloaded to your PC and removed from the server, which of course means that there is no email for the G1 to receive. This does not sound like your case obviously.

There is an option in Thunderbird and Outlook when using POP to keep your email on the server however, which does just that: leaves a copy of your email on the server after downloading to the PC. This of course means that when the G1 connects, it will see that same email as a new email, download it, and alert you. This sounds more like your scenario.

A somewhat better solution would be for you to configure both your G1 and your PC to connect to your mailserver using IMAP. IMAP keeps all of your email on the server, but also stores state information (read, new, etc). This means that all email that you see on your PC would be available on your G1 also. If a new email comes in on your PC and you read it (but don't delete it), that email will also appear on your G1, but it will appear as already read (so no alert) (the converse is also true...if you read a new email on the G1, it will also appear as a read email on your PC). If you delete that email from either client, it will also be removed from the other one as well (or never downloaded at all). Only downside to IMAP is that since the email is stored on the server, you cannot view old email if you are not connected to the internet.

Hope that this helps.

 

[grrgoyl]

It's not so much which client that you use, but the configuration that you have setup on both the G1 and the PC. If you are using POP on your PC to connect to your mailserver, then the email will be downloaded to your PC and removed from the server, which of course means that there is no email for the G1 to receive. This does not sound like your case obviously.

There is an option in Thunderbird and Outlook when using POP to keep your email on the server however, which does just that: leaves a copy of your email on the server after downloading to the PC. This of course means that when the G1 connects, it will see that same email as a new email, download it, and alert you. This sounds more like your scenario.

A somewhat better solution would be for you to configure both your G1 and your PC to connect to your mailserver using IMAP. IMAP keeps all of your email on the server, but also stores state information (read, new, etc). This means that all email that you see on your PC would be available on your G1 also. If a new email comes in on your PC and you read it (but don't delete it), that email will also appear on your G1, but it will appear as already read (so no alert) (the converse is also true...if you read a new email on the G1, it will also appear as a read email on your PC). If you delete that email from either client, it will also be removed from the other one as well (or never downloaded at all). Only downside to IMAP is that since the email is stored on the server, you cannot view old email if you are not connected to the internet.

Hope that this helps.

Wow, thanks for the detailed response. Unfortunately I'm not really skilled enough with IMAP/POP yadda yadda all that good stuff. I think part of my problem is I'm running Windows Live Mail on my PC so whatever activity is happening at the server level, the Windows program has already retrieved mail so I'm going to see it both places no matter what (unless someone comes up with an app to sync with WLM).

I'm not going to worry about it, it's really a small annoyance compared to what else the phone can do. Thanks again!

 

[puremalice]

cyberbob25:

I have three accounts setup on my G1 all of them are pop and my home pc is pop as well. I get notifications one time only on two accounts. Once it downloads an email I don't get consecutive notices if I have not downloaded from my mail server on my home pc. However on one of my accounts I keep getting new mail notices when there is no new mail. I am showing 87 new messages even though I have only recieved about 10 throughout the day.

If what you are saying is true and that it will keep notifiying until the mail is downloaded off the server then why are my other accounts not doing the same thing?

Also, if you are using imap wouldn't Outlook create an ocd file so that you can view the emails offline if needed?

Thanks,

P

 

[grrgoyl]

cyberbob25:

I have three accounts setup on my G1 all of them are pop and my home pc is pop as well. I get notifications one time only on two accounts. Once it downloads an email I don't get consecutive notices if I have not downloaded from my mail server on my home pc. However on one of my accounts I keep getting new mail notices when there is no new mail. I am showing 87 new messages even though I have only recieved about 10 throughout the day.

If what you are saying is true and that it will keep notifiying until the mail is downloaded off the server then why are my other accounts not doing the same thing?

Also, if you are using imap wouldn't Outlook create an ocd file so that you can view the emails offline if needed?

Thanks,

P

That's not what I'm saying. I was looking for a way for the phone not to get notified at all if I'd already read the mail on my PC. As I said, the new mail notification is a bit anticlimactic when I already read it on my PC 45 minutes ago.

I don't think it can be done as of yet. As far as IMAP/POP, etc. please see above where I confess I don't really understand all that lingo.

 

[puremalice]

That's not what I'm saying. I was looking for a way for the phone not to get notified at all if I'd already read the mail on my PC. As I said, the new mail notification is a bit anticlimactic when I already read it on my PC 45 minutes ago.

I don't think it can be done as of yet. As far as IMAP/POP, etc. please see above where I confess I don't really understand all that lingo.

No I understand that. I am having the issue that cyberbob25 was stating and was looking for an answer to that. I can use imap but I have two accounts working with POP.

I may just end up posting a new thread to try to get the answer or just play with IMAP

 

[grrgoyl]

No I understand that. I am having the issue that cyberbob25 was stating and was looking for an answer to that. I can use imap but I have two accounts working with POP.

I may just end up posting a new thread to try to get the answer or just play with IMAP

Oops, sorry, got confused on the thread. Stepping aside now

 

[LansdowneMike]

. . . . If you delete that email from either client, it will also be removed from the other one as well (or never downloaded at all).

Hope that this helps.

Great post. Helps me a lot (even though I didn't ask the question). I just can't figure out how to configure the IMAP server from the G1's email client to do something like "remove deleted emails from the server." What am I missing?