IMAP

[robwhizz]

I want to change from POP to IMAP. The main reason being that I'm sending stuff from different PCs for the same account(s) and therefore have different histories of my sent items etc.
I get how IMAP works, but what I'm having trouble getting my head around is this...

I want each PC (Thunderbird) to save every message locally, but the server only keep a few months worth.
The only way I can see to do it is to set up a filter to move mail over X days old into Local Folders, but then that will only keep mail on one PC as the others will sync the mail, removing messages before they get moved.
Am I missing something?

[robwhizz]

I think I may have found myself a solution...

Set Thunderbird to copy messages over 10 days old to Local Folders and another filter to remove messages over 150 days. That will give me 10 days to delete spam etc. and sync, and will keep a reasonable amount of mail on the server with complete archive on the PCs.

But if there are any better ways please let me know.

[keri]

an alternative method is to use another mail provider as an intermediate

I use gmail to collect several pop accounts and then on my pc, laptop and phone i connect to a single gmail account and can see all the mail, star mail, see what's read/unread etc

I think you can do the same with hotmail and probably yahoo too

Gmail can send as a domain via the webmail version, not sure about the local, but then you could quite easily use a non gmail smtp server to get around that.

Hope that makes sense

Keri.

[robwhizz]

Thanks. That might be an idea for my personal accounts, but it will get too complicated with emails from 3 different companies and a couple of employee emails that I keep my eye on too. I like to keep those separate.

I'm probably being too bottom wanting to keep all my email. I do have a need to look back on old mail sometimes, but not very often. I should probably bite the bullet and just over to IMAP and be more disciplined over what I keep.