iPhone email (also diplomacy between experts and laymen)

I have home Internet (and email) through AT&T. Until last month, I had Internet/email through TWC. The following situation started since the switch to AT&T.

I have an iPhone with AT&T service. This has been the service I've had for years. Yesterday I tried to get the below issue fixed through AT&T's technical support, but the agent didn't seem to understand my angle. I'm going to take my phone to the Apple store this afternoon in hopes they can solve this, but I thought it would be helpful for me to ask around here, for two reasons:

1- Explaining it here might help me better explain it in person. If y'all understand me, then maybe the tech will understand me.

2- Maybe someone here can tell me what to do and save me a trip to the local Apple store.

I usually check my email through my iPhone. When I get home in the evenings, I check it again on my home computer (with Outlook). On my home computer, I can save emails to certain folders for future reference, or I can delete them as unneeded. I sometimes like/need to keep some emails on my iPhone for reference, even after I've checked it on my home computer.

I had my home computer/Outlook set up to delete messages from the server when I checked my email. This hadn't caused me any problems until this recent switch from TWC to AT&T.

Here's what I used to could do:

Emails came to my iPhone during the day, and stayed on my phone until I intentionally deleted it. When I got home in the evening and checked my email on my home computer/Outlook, the message would be deleted from the server. But the message would still be on my iPhone as well as my computer. So I could have an email message on both my phone and on my home computer even though it was deleted from the server. No muss, no fuss. I like this.

Now though, I'll get email to my iPhone during the day. When I get home and check through Outlook, and the message is deleted from the server, it also deletes it from my iPhone.

Obviously, what happens is when my iPhone checks for email, it shows me what's on the server. If there's nothing on the server, my phone shows nothing -- even if it was showing a mail a moment before. A mail that was showing on my phone a moment before will disappear right before my eyes. It doesn't go to trash, it just vanishes. That's not what used to happen.

I know I can set my home computer Outlook to not delete from the server when it checks. And I have now set this. Now it will only delete from the server when I delete from Outlook. But that means that if I want to keep an email on my phone, even if I don't want/need it on my computer, I can't delete it from my computer.

Again, this is something new that didn't work this way a month ago. I'm thinking there must be some setting in my iPhone that I've done differently when setting up my new AT&T email account that wasn't so for my old TWC email account. But I can't tell what.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Bullgrit

"I had my home computer/Outlook set up to delete messages from the server when I checked my email."

This right here is the source of all your problems.

I cannot use enough swear words to emphasize how this is the most horrible configuration to possibly be running with your email.

It's called POP3.

It's an anciently crappy protocol based on the idea that a human would only possibly access their email from a single machine ever.

Thus, the email on your PC is a copy of whats on the server, or a Move of what was on the server (the deleted scenario).

Once you have one client deleting, you are in a race condition with a second client to see who sees it.

If you use the "just copy" mode, now you've got emails piling up and filling up your server, and your email clients will get stupid about that as well.

What you NEED to do ASAP is switch to an email provider (like Google) that provides IMAP or Exchange based connections.

IMAP means your client effectively doesn't copy emails down from the server, it always relies on the server as the master copy (note, for performance, your client may CACHE a copy of viewed emails, but it doesn't consider them as the defacto master copy). This means, when you delete a file, it sends a signal to the server to delete that file.

This means, that multiple clients can read the same email account's inbox and come back with the same answer. No confusion, no mad calf scramble to see who downloads it first.

Anybody not running IMAP is asking for the kind of problems you describe. They were solved by inventing a new protocol that was called IMAP. There is nothing magical about IMAP, just some providers (like Hotmail) are total retards about not enabling IMAP.

Sorry for being harsh, but run, don't walk to your nearest IMAP providing email provider.

"I had my home computer/Outlook set up to delete messages from the server when I checked my email."

This right here is the source of all your problems.

Click to expand...

I don’t feel comfortable disagreeing with someone trying to help me, especially when they know more about the subject than I do, but I don’t think that is the source of my problem. I don’t want the email sitting on the server after I’ve downloaded it to my computer. I want it deleted off the server, because as you say, “now you’ve got emails piling up and filling up your server.” But I don’t want my iPhone to see an empty server and decide, “Oh, the server inbox is empty, so let me just vanish the mail I’ve previously downloaded and am currently showing in my inbox.”

Basically, if I have the mail in my iPhone and/or computer inbox, I don’t need it kept on the server. But if I delete it from the server (to save space there), I don’t want it to disappear from my iPhone, (or computer).

As for POP3 and IMAP – are you sure you haven’t reversed those? Looking at my set up now, my current AT&T email account (the one giving me this problem) is IMAP. The old TWC account (the one that worked fine) is POP.

Bullgrit

IMAP keeps all of your clients (mulitple computers, phone, tablet, etc.) all synced. So, if I open my email on my laptop, my inbox, sent, and folders are identical to when I open my email on my phone or on my desktop. (For the record I use Gmail with Apple's Mail application on laptop/desktop and Apple's iOS Mail app on my phone). If I make a change on one: delete (or for me, archive) an email, move an email to a folder, etc., that change propagates to all of my other clients. Is this not what you want? To make this happen you need an IMAP email provider connected to by all of your clients (each device you check email on). I think the way you've set up Outlook on your PC is the culprit here, because altering the server rather than mirroring it will mess up the syncing of your other devices—they will not all look the same. I would recommend: 1) archiving all of your email from Outlook, just in case, and then 2) deleting your email account from Outlook and starting it again from scratch. If your email provider really is IMAP, it should look identical to what you have on your phone.

Modern email services like Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, or whatever have enough server storage space that you'll never need to permanently delete something from the server. I've never hit more than 10% of my cap on Gmail, for example. And while some may distrust the idea of having years worth of emails archived like this, I've actually found it very useful on rare occasions when I need to find something 3 years old (usually a license key for some piece of software I need only once a year). Is there some reason you don't want emails to live on the server assuming you have the space? Because with an email provider like Gmail you'll definitely have the space...

I also recommend severing the link between your email provider and your ISP. I've had my Gmail account for 10 years, with no need to mess with it or send out mass emails listing an email address change, even though I've lived in probably half a dozen different locations during that time with probably 3-4 different ISPs.

Just talked with a guy at the Apple store. He said the iPhone doesn't check and download emails, it syncs with the server and shows me what is on the server -- No choice for any other method. But that's not true. Or, rather, it wasn't true a month ago.

I still have my old TWC email account set on my iPhone, and I've tested this today. The TWC downloaded and kept emails regardless whether I later deleted the server copy. I have proven this to myself this very day.

Enforcer said:

IMAP keeps all of your clients (mulitple computers, phone, tablet, etc.) all synced. So, if I open my email on my laptop, my inbox, sent, and folders are identical to when I open my email on my phone or on my desktop. (For the record I use Gmail with Apple's Mail application on laptop/desktop and Apple's iOS Mail app on my phone). If I make a change on one: delete (or for me, archive) an email, move an email to a folder, etc., that change propagates to all of my other clients. Is this not what you wan

Click to expand...

Nope, that's not what I want. And that seems to stun everyone I've talked to about this.

I don't need or want my iPhone's email to duplicate my home computer/Outlook. I don't need/want my systems synced up and showing the same stuff. I don't use them for the same stuff. I just don't. My phone is not my computer, and my computer is not my phone. (To me, it's like having my microwave and alarm clock synced up.)

Anyway, all this is frustrating because it was working fine until recently. And now the AT&T and Apple folks just tell me this is the way it works, like I'm asking something ridiculous.

Bullgrit

Enforcer said:

I also recommend severing the link between your email provider and your ISP. I've had my Gmail account for 10 years, with no need to mess with it or send out mass emails listing an email address change, even though I've lived in probably half a dozen different locations during that time with probably 3-4 different ISPs.

Click to expand...

This is good advice, and I've already been considering it. We were with TWC for 12 years, and so had no problem with our email being linked with our ISP. But now, it is probably time to make this separation in case we change ISPs again sometime.

Bullgrit

Sigh. So now I have Outlook not delete from the server when I check it. But if I have an unread email on my iPhone, and I check Outlook, the iPhone changes the unread email to read. Dammit, I swear.

Bullgrit

Bullgrit said:

Sigh. So now I have Outlook not delete from the server when I check it. But if I have an unread email on my iPhone, and I check Outlook, the iPhone changes the unread email to read. Dammit, I swear. Bullgrit

Click to expand...

Did you read the email in Outlook?

Nope. Didn't open the mail in Outlook.

Bullgrit

Bullgrit said:

Sigh. So now I have Outlook not delete from the server when I check it. But if I have an unread email on my iPhone, and I check Outlook, the iPhone changes the unread email to read. Dammit, I swear.

Bullgrit

Click to expand...

Remember that cloud explanation I gave a bit back in the iOS7 thread?

This POP3 vs. IMAP is the classic example of that concept. POP3 = the old way of stuff on one machine isn't quite accessible on another machine (be it mail server, PC, and iPhone). IMAP is the new world order (ain't even bloody new, it's been around for like 20 years).

All it really is is centralization. Stuff stays on a central point (the mail server), and clients slurp down what they need and send change requests back (deletions). This ensures that the same presentation is available to both devices.

Now I don't know why your life was better with TWC. But as I said in many other threads about this kind of thing (and another dude repeated the same advice): don't host yer mail on yer ISP. TWC, AT&T are all ISPs. use gmail or hotmail (I recommend gmail, they support IMAP).

I'm certain the Apple store guy gave you a fuzzy "Bullgrit".Replace('g','s') answer. If you been popping with 2 clients on the same mail server, you got fricking lucky if you got the right stuff on the right device.

We're all looking at you funny, because from a home IT perspective, you're doing everything the risky, don't make sense to us. It's solving the problem the wrong way because of how you think a feature works, when in reality it is screwing you over.

The point of a mobile device is to get access to stuff that's out there on the internet. Everything on your PC is crap, because it ain't a server on the internet. Which means that in a pinch, when you really need that email with that hot chick's address, you can't get it.

Or when your house/PC burns down while your at the movies, all your email on your PC is lost, because you insisted on POP3 download-deletion instead of keeping it on the server (which only works well with IMAP, in POP3 that would have been insanity).

If you don't want the mail on yer PC to be available on yer phone, then use 2 different mail accounts, one for each device.

I have a buddy who wants his iPhone to buzz when he gets email from work, because he's out working in the field all day and the orders come in that way.

So, he's got it wired to his gmail, with no push/no notifications, just so he can see that WHEN he wants it.
then he's got his work email wired up with push/notifications because that he HAS to see.

Consider it this way from out perspective:
you had a PC hooked up to bullgrit@twc.com and yer iphone hooked up to bullgrit@twc.com.

You said "I don't need or want my iPhone's email to duplicate my home computer/Outlook. I don't need/want my systems synced up and showing the same stuff. I don't use them for the same stuff. I just don't. My phone is not my computer, and my computer is not my phone. (To me, it's like having my microwave and alarm clock synced up.)"

Now how in the bloody heck is the PC or the iPhone going to know which emails on the TWC server you wanted on which device?

There' ain't no freaking way that's just going to magically work that your iPhone just happens to download stuff you want to see on the iPhone from a shared account with a client doing POP3-move.

IMAP is the thing you want. Don't resist. Do what the nerd herd tells you on this. If you read in on your PC, that's a "change" which is sent back to the mail server. That means, when you open yer iPhone, it'll fetch the latest states of yer email, and that will be reflected (it will show as "read").

If you somehow want to segregate what email is on your Phone, from the rest of the stuff you work with on your PC, there's other tools for that. Dicking around with POP3 ain't the right way to that end and its just bad.

Friends don't let friends use POP3.