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Stop POP3 e-mail client from downloading duplicates


ck_kent

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Hi guys,

You know when you create/re-create a new e-mail profile on your favorite e-mail client and you happen to have your old e-mail messages left on the e-mail server (for backup purposes or personal preference), all the old messages get downloaded again. Does anyone here got a workaround for that, so that the old e-mail messages won't be downloaded again if you already have copies of it in your client? I have tackled this with Outlook and Thunderbird before but it doesn't seem to have an option for that. :dunno: It's just a PITA especially if the user has hundreds of messages in the server. Everything will be downloaded again. In the end there will be duplicate copies in the user's e-mail client and the user has to remove the duplicate ones. It gets worst when the user has organized his inbox already with multiple folders because he will have a hard time finding the duplicates in the folders.

Any suggestion will be appreciated. Thanks in advance. :)

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There is no workaround for this. Google apps has their own workaround that prevents this action but basically the default pop3 system does not allow what you want.

You can use imap but this is usually slower especially when you have thousands of messages. Gmail allows you to limit the imap download to the last 1000 messages to make it work faster, I don't know of any other mail system that allows a similar feature.

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Thanks Leet. I just thought some of you guys may have found a trick for this that I didn't know of. :) I don't want to use IMAP either.

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Well, most of us here don't have fast internet connection and users who leave messages on the server tend to have thousands of them. Using IMAP is just too slow for them. :)

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My internet is fairly fast but it was no match for the 8800+ emails I had stored on my account. Outlook took over 30 mins to sync. LOL So I understand where you are coming from, I remember trying to use imap when my connection was only 256Kbps and it was sad, I used pop3 for a long time. Honestly though Gmail is the only provider who was smart enough to allow you to cap the imap downloads to the last 1000 messages to avoid massively slowing down your email client. You should migrate to Gmail and never look back.

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