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Help Mail Server pop3 locks down mail received on Nexus

This is a strange thing that is tripping me up a bit when opening the Inbox of my email using InoMail on the Nexus 7. Both my accounts, when I go to see what's in the Inbox, get the new email manipulated by the system as "Read" or "Downloaded" according to what I do with them, but oddly whichever state they are in, I can't then download another copy of the same email using Thunderbird Mail on my Windows 7 PC.

I've set the Nexus to make InoMail leave a copy of email on the server.
Also set to never delete automatically from the server.

But as soon as I try to fetch them again using Thunderbird mail on the PC the emails are gone.
Makes no difference if I mark them as 'Unread' on the InoMail Inbox they still won't come down.

I've found a solution for this problem but it was a bit drastic. It does look suspiciously like it's a shortcoming I can blame on InoMail Android application, because I just fetched a new copy of AquaMail free one from google play and set it up for both email accounts and it doesn't action this fault at all. Needless to say I have closed and uninstalled InoMail and will start using the AquaMail from now on - it looks better and even shows proper folders on the left side column.

I had a feeling it was software based trouble because using my Macbook when I'm out roaming around I can fetch and read all my mail on the server using the 3G network or WiFi as normal, and then when I get home, fetch it all again on the Windows 7 PC.

Is this problem a bug in InoMail that they should be advised of I wonder?

I hope someone has met this before as I'd like to tell them at InoMail they have a problem.
--
Plado
I can read them and leave them there, but still the only way to
 
I use Aquamail and it leaves stuff on the server. I can get to the mail with any device.
The PC is set to delete if I delete. I can drag stuff I want offline. I do mostly check the mail on the PC anyway.

I have a Nexus 4 phone, and an Acer A500 tablet.

Whose email? If Gmail, have you checked on the settings on the main page for Gmail on the computer? The same for almost any other web based. If it's your ISP's mail, then check with them. Gmail is POP3 and the other service is IMAP on my phone.
 
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Well thanks to both of you for those tips. Certainly it seems Aquamail has cured the problem.
But just to clarify, I only use Nexus 7 built in Gmail fetching app to handle my Gmail and never download it to my Windows PC using Thunderbird. The two accounts I have set up in my Aquamail and formerly in my InoMail are btinternet.com (owned by Yahoo) and virginmedia.co.uk who are my cable broadband supplier.
I do take on board what you say about IMAP against POP mail but I've never used IMAP and I have no idea what the settings should be. Both the InoMail and the AquaMail set themselves up automatically from my entering email address and password so I think it went straight to setting itself up as pop3 for fetching and the usual smtp protocol for sending. I'm not sure what you mean by multiple access Nelviticus I've always had no problem using POP3 for multiple accounts over the last 20 years - even Dos based email in 1992 used it. So is this a security or encryption issue you're warning about or is it something related to using mail servers from an Android roaming device (3G or WiFi etc).

Thanks for your help, it all looks interesting.--
Plado
 
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One more quick reply. I've just discovered a very good reason not to use IMAP because I have found that Aquamail automatically uses IMAP for the setting up and configuration of email and as such it won't recognize that the Nexus is "online" state when I connect using 3G (ie tethered bluetooth to a BlackBerry phone using Blue VPN (DUN)) so sadly I've had to re-install the InoMail and re set it all up for pop3 and smtp so that I can use it in both 3G mode and WiFi. So they've got us over a barrel it seems.

I may try to find another Android email app that can be configured for pop3 and smtp and will avoid doing this email hiding.
 
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I only use Nexus 7 built in Gmail fetching app to handle my Gmail and never download it to my Windows PC using Thunderbird. The two accounts I have set up in my Aquamail and formerly in my InoMail are btinternet.com (owned by Yahoo) and virginmedia.co.uk who are my cable broadband supplier.

You can use Gmail to check other accounts for you and forward them to Gmail, allowing you to access them all transparently from the Gmail app. I do this for my btinternet account :)

Open Gmail in a browser (preferably on a PC) and click on the "gear wheel" settings icon, top right. Now from the settings page click on "Accounts" and under "Check email from other accounts (using POP3)" click "Add a POP3 mail account you own" and take it from there.

Once set up you can forget about POP3 altogether - all your POP3 mail will appear in your Gmail account, accessible from any device without the vagaries of having to use various clients on different devices that may or may not play nice with each other.
 
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I wasn't warning you off POP3, merely saying that IMAP can be a lot easier if you access email from more than one device. Access from more than one device was not part of POP3's original design so although it was subsequently added, it's a bit clunkier than with IMAP. I was always having odd trouble with it, such as loads of messages I'd already read appearing as new.

I had a nightmare setting up my Android phone so that it could both send and receive my Virgin (ex-NTL) mail over both wi-fi AND 3G. Lots of settings worked for one but not the other. In the end I settled on smtp.gmail.com for outgoing mail (using my Google account rather than my Virgin/NTL one) and and imap.ntlworld.com for incoming.

If I remember correctly, when using POP3 I had to add 'recent:' in front of my email address in the settings otherwise I couldn't see emails on more than one device.

In fact this Virgin help page might help you:
How do I download mail from the same account on more than one PC or mobile device, using "recent" mode?

If you do ever fancy giving IMAP a try you can find the Virgin settings here:
Email settings for addresses ending in @virginmedia.com (I assume that covers .co.uk too). Unless your 3G also comes from Virgin though you should probably use smtp.gmail.com for outgoing mail as Virgin will only let you send mail from their servers if you're connected to their network.
 
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You can use Gmail to check other accounts for you and forward them to Gmail, allowing you to access them all transparently from the Gmail app. I do this for my btinternet account :)

Open Gmail in a browser (preferably on a PC) and click on the "gear wheel" settings icon, top right. Now from the settings page click on "Accounts" and under "Check email from other accounts (using POP3)" click "Add a POP3 mail account you own" and take it from there.

Once set up you can forget about POP3 altogether - all your POP3 mail will appear in your Gmail account, accessible from any device without the vagaries of having to use various clients on different devices that may or may not play nice with each other.
Well that's a darned good idea. I had forgotten that Gmail allowed fetching of Pop 3 other accounts.
It's quite a good idea to set them up for the other two email accounts. One thing that slightly bothers me is can you send email from the identity of those alternative email addresses when you are reading and replying to them after downloading them on Google Mail? It could be awkward if there's no facility to spoof the reply or the writing of new email so that it appears to come from joe**gs@virginmedia.com instead of the new email looking like it's coming from joe**gs@gmail.com Normally in Thunderbird and Outlook Express in the past I've been able to spoof the identity of my email so as not to advertise my private email address to people I am writing to from my business "known" email address.

Putting the settings and identity into Gmail slightly worries me that I would lose security of identity when using them out of Gmail as the root application. Am I wrong on that?
 
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>If I remember correctly, when using POP3 I had to add 'recent:' in front of my email address in the >settings otherwise I couldn't see emails on more than one device.
That was a clever move but I don't know how you got it to accept an email address in settings with 'recent' in front of it. Doesn't the email address reject anything outside the main email address in the line such as when it has cherons either side like this <user@domain.co.uk>

In fact this Virgin help page might help you:
How do I download mail from the same account on more than one PC or mobile device, using "recent" mode?

I will go and take a look at that link, thank you very much.
Also if I may tag on a little update here. Aquamail turned out not to be to my liking. So I searched a bit further and tried a free copy of Mail Droid. This proved to be perfect. It leaves all my mail on the server and if I try to delete any of it, I'm given the choice to Delete on Device or Delete on Device & on Server as well. This means I can more easily remove the mail once read from the Nexus and leave it on the server and fetch it again when I get home.

I set up the Mail Droid manually and used Pop and Smtp. Virginmedia worked once I'd used the correct port which needed to be Port 995 for fetching and Port 465 for sending. Somehow the program wanted the sending Port to be a different number so I only had to change that and it works fine fetching and sending on both accounts. It works when connected to home Virginmedia WiFi as well as when sending or receiving via 3G. So I'm well pleased so far.

It will get a full test tomorrow as I'm off to north coast of Cornwall where there is a good O2 signal and I shall see if it works.
Meanwhile thanks also to John Bean - I will check out that Gmail pop3 option as I'd like to try it out and see how well it works having all 3 accounts in one place. Seems a good common sense solution to me.
And thanks to all who have helped on this one. Your efforts are much appreciated.
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If you do ever fancy giving IMAP a try you can find the Virgin settings here:
Email settings for addresses ending in @virginmedia.com (I assume that covers .co.uk too). Unless your 3G also comes from Virgin though you should probably use smtp.gmail.com for outgoing mail as Virgin will only let you send mail from their servers if you're connected to their network.[/QUOTE]
 
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Thanks for the confirmation that MailDroid is a good idea. I don't want to appear ungracious or defeatist but I just went to my Gmail and tried looking around the settings for downloading other POP3 mail from other accounts and there's a mass of unexplained complicated information written by people who know what they are talking about in their own jargon, but clearly have no regard for anyone reading that stuff who hasn't a clue what they're talking about. That includes me.

Setting up for retrieving alternative mail from other "outside" accounts only seems to be a setting for fetching that mail. It says nothing about whether you can then reply to that email in the same identity. Or write new mail in those identities. I suspect it's a trick to get us using gmail more for everything we do in a wholly unacceptable invasion of the privacy line between public and private life.

Also there's masses of other settings put in there just to confuse the issue for such crazy things as sharing access to your private emails as if you are in an office and want other colleagues to have access to your mail. Utterly bonkers. What's with this mad obsession with sharing everything globally. I'm a generous person not prone to selfishness but I'm sorry Google I don't wish to share 90% of my life with you or anyone else globally thank you. Let them get on with a life of their own. So I'm sorry to say that I'm not even 1% impressed with Google's idea of interfering with our other email connections.
I'll stick to using a separate client and keep my personal email separate thanks and google mail is there for when I want to give people an email address to write to that won't bombard my other accounts with spam.

So the situation now is simply I use MailDroid for pop 3 fetching and smtp sending of mail on two accounts with my Nexus 7 and Gmail can stay with my googlemail account and never the twain shall meet !

Here endeth the rant!
 
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You can specify other accounts for reply as well as checking in the same settings page in Gmail, see "Send mail as". There's even a "Learn more" link for the option.

I don't understand what you mean by Google "interfering with our other email connections" either; all Gmail is doing is acting as a POP3 client on our behalf - with all the associated "complicated information" needed to configure any POP3 client to behave the way we want with a myriad of different POP servers out there.

Oh well, each to his own. Choice is good :)
 
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