POP3 or IMAP for Apple Mail?

imap is superior in just about every way. Yes, all those features still work. But imap offers a host of other things, like the ability to create new folders for organizing your mail, and having those folders be accessible from your Touch, from your Mac, from your web-based email, and from any other application accessing your account.

Well, it's just that the mail server is the repository of all mail. On the mac, you can set your imap account to keep copies of all mail, which is what I do. So it's really on the server AND my mac. For backups, it's there. In time machine, it's there. It's everywhere! It doesn't have to download each time, as it just updates to mirror the server. Anything you've already got it doesn't download again.

Just to echo the previous posters reply, IMAP basically syncs your mail on devices set to check your account.... letters sent from one device show up as sent on another.

messages read on one show up as read on another

messaged deleted on one, show up as deleted as well. Make e-mail housekeeping a breeze.

On Gmail's web site they should be able to tell you that. They give detailed instructions on how to set it up for Apple's Mail program. On mine it shows imap.gmail.com but I would assume the UK version will show you something different if that's needed.

Or you can simply try both and see which one works.

You must tell Mail to move junk mail to the junk mailbox (in Preferences > Junk). Otherwise there is no Junk mailbox in Mail, so you can't pair it with gmail's.

Hello,

As explained above, IMAP is way much better that POP to manage mails between your mail server (called MTA) and your mail program (called MUA).

MTA = Mail Transport Agent
MUA = Mail User Agent

On top of the advantages posted in earlier reply, I'll add one:

-> IMAP lets you be free to choose which MUA you want
-> Your mails are always available in the universal "mbox" format, instead of being copied to a proprietary format.
-> 20 years old mails can still be read, even if the application you've used at that time no longer exists
-> IMAP "protects" your mails from crashes after-effects that can occur on your MUA or its hosting platform

This makes that, even if I have POP accounts at my ISPs, I copy immediately them back over to an IMAP server I backup weekly.

I run on my Mac my own mail server (MTA) associated to an IMAP server. There are NO mails stored uniquely on my Apple Mail.app application. All my mails are safely formatted and store on the postfix server that sits in every Macs and only awaits to be "activated".

Some critical details to know:

- There are 2 widely known IMAP server software: Washington University and Cyrus IMAP

* Cyrus is very advanced.
* WU is very easy to deploy but lacks some features

- Mail 3 is very nasty with WU servers. The Notes stuff is useless and Mail adds some extra header fields unrecognized by WU servers that make moving mails to fail

I use Mail 3 with several WU servers. It's a pain when I copy mails from one account to another (the copy must be done one mail at a time and is reported failing, but it's not). Mail can't "update" mails in the Draft folder. So, you end up having tenths of copies of mails in the Draft folder that you have to manually delete.

We all hope Apple will correctly implement IMAP4 protocol, which is designed to prevent such from happening.

Then:

- WU cannot let you create a folder that contains mails and sub-folder altogether. Mail (any version) create folders for mails, by default. There is no command to create a folder to contain folders!

In the old days, Netscape Communicator was capable to handle both types of folders.

--> Now, there is a "trick" to do that in Mail. I've discovered it by sheer luck. Here it is:

a. Create a folder in your "On my Mac" place.
b. Create another folder within that folder.
c. Select the first folder you've created (the top one)
d. Control-click and "delete" it
Miracle: It's not deleted, it has changed color to White.
e. Select again the top folder and drag it to your IMAP folder (no the Inbox, the folder that shows up as the name of your IMAP account.
Miracle: Mail has created in your IMAP server a folder that contain a folder.


I hope this helps.
Thierry

Just wanted to note that you can create a folder to contain a folder if when you specify the name you put a trailing slash "/" which indicates that it is to be a parent folder rather than hold emails themselves.

That's cool. Thanks! I've learned one more thing today ... on a subject I believed I knew well.

igrok-mac wrote:
Just wanted to note that you can create a folder to contain a folder if when you specify the name you put a trailing slash "/" which indicates that it is to be a parent folder rather than hold emails themselves.

I had recently posted [an example of using IMAP -vs- POP|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6429943#6429943] for someone in the iPhone group that may or may not help here.

And please remember it's a simplistic example, so the never and always in regards to using IMAP are obviously dependent on you personal settings, but you should get the idea.


-Mike

Yes, that's it. You can prevent Mail from displaying the superfluous \[Google Mail\] folder by using "\[Google Mail\]" as the IMAP path prefix in Accounts > Advanced. (This will also prevent Mail from accessing folders which are not subfolders of \[Google Mail\], so you should not do it if you plan on using such folders).