I need IMAP to act like POP

Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
My school only allows me 4 mbs of E-mail storage on their server. They do allow IMAP access to their servers, but not POP. Their argument is that they want your e-mail to be accesible from anywhere on campus. Great. except I get a lot of e-mail, and I want it all on my computer to look back on later.



If you live in the dorms, they allow POP access, but once you are not on the official university network, only IMAP works (and i think they don't even officially support it).



well this year i've moved out of the dorms (hallelujah!), and I want to reconfigure Mail.



I used to have Mac OS Mail set up so that it would automatically, when I connected, just download everything to my computer, and after a few days delete it off the server. I would like that to happen now, but I can only use IMAP... I thought I had configured IMAP correctly the other day, and I viewed all my mail, but then later I was at a lab computer, not my home one, and through the web-access of my e-mail I deleted the messages, thinking they were all already on my computer, only to find when I returned that deleting them in my web-box deleted the ones in Mail also...



does this make sense?



I am using OS 10.3.5, Mail 1.3.9 (v619). I assume I am just screwing something up in the settings.. please let me know. Thanks!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    boemaneboemane Posts: 311member
    Prefrences - Accounts - Advanced



    from the pull down menu labled "Keep copies of messages for offline viewing: " select "All messages and their attachments"...



    .:BoeManE:.
  • Reply 2 of 8
    even with that selected, when I delete a message via the webmail site, it deletes it in my Mail inbox
  • Reply 3 of 8
    Unfortunately for you, this is exactly how IMAp works... There are a couple of ways around your problem:



    You could set up your own mail server, and have it "fetchmail" everything from the schools server. This requires a little bit of know-how and work...



    Another option would be to make a 'local' folder in Mail.app (one not on the server at all, but only on your computer), and then either manually move old mail to this folder, or setup an AppleScript to move everything over a certain age. The tricky thing about this is that you would either have to setup a cron task to trigger it periodically, or do it manually yourself, as I don't think that there is any hook to triger this in Mail.app (unless you did something weird with filtering incoming messages... and using a counter to trigger things... hmmm...)
  • Reply 4 of 8
    mcqmcq Posts: 1,543member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Karl Kuehn



    Another option would be to make a 'local' folder in Mail.app (one not on the server at all, but only on your computer), and then either manually move old mail to this folder, or setup an AppleScript to move everything over a certain age. The tricky thing about this is that you would either have to setup a cron task to trigger it periodically, or do it manually yourself, as I don't think that there is any hook to triger this in Mail.app (unless you did something weird with filtering incoming messages... and using a counter to trigger things... hmmm...)




    If you can move messages to a local folder using rules, then you should be able to use a rule such as "mail received older than x days" to get them to move automatically. Haven't tried it though.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    Ya... except rules only apply to incoming (new) messages unless you manually apply them to selected messages.
  • Reply 6 of 8
    ok, so how do I make a local folder in Mail.app?



    Like would it be in the Mailboxes drawer? I understand about rules and moving things to that folder, but I guess I just don't know where or how to make a folder to move it to.



    sorry if i'm just an idiot.
  • Reply 7 of 8
    ok, i think i got it... I am at a computer lab mac right now, so I will post again once it works on my computer, but yeah, I am pretty sure I understand now..



    thanks
  • Reply 8 of 8
    works perfectly. thanks i appreciate it.
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