Going from Comcast's SmartZone to Mail

Question

Going from Comcast's SmartZone to Mail

Not long ago I cranked up Mail and it automatically brought in all the Inbox emails but almost none of the Sent emails from my Comcast account. I'd like to go from using the standard Comcast email (SmartZone) to Mail but don't know how to get Mail to see all of both 'Inbox' AND 'Sent' emails.

Strangely enough, SmartZone's Inbox now only sees the emails received since I cranked up Mail a few days ago. However, all the 'Sent' emails in SmartZone appear to be where they belong. What's going on??
Any help would be appreciated.

iMac 24", Mac OS X (10.5.4), G4 dual 450

Posted on Oct 7, 2009 4:08 PM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

245,117 points

Oct 7, 2009 4:15 PM in response to Marcus Merritt

Is this a POP or IMAP account you set up?

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Answer 2

Oct 7, 2009 8:22 PM in response to BDAqua

Beats me! I was looking at an item on Craigslist and, when I clicked on the person's email, was asked to set up a Mail account. I did so out of ignorance and realized too late that I should have just entered their email address in my Comcast email window. Anyway, Mail seemed to have hijacked my Comcast email but only imported some of the Comcast emails. I was happy enough with the Comcast email but could be equally happy with Mail if it had captured both inbox and sent emails.

Can you tell me how to determine if POP or IMAP?

Thanks.

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Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

245,117 points

Oct 7, 2009 10:35 PM in response to Marcus Merritt

Right click or Control+click on that Account, choose get Account info, it should show the Name of the account and grayed out the Type... POP or IMAP.

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Answer 4

Oct 8, 2009 8:55 AM in response to Marcus Merritt

Thanks. I went to the Account information and it says: 'Account Type: Comcast POP'. I googled POP vs IMAP and it looks like my Mail account should be IMAP instead of POP. Is it a big deal to change the Mail account to IMAP or is that done in Comcast?

Is there a chance of losing emails when changing from POP to IMAP? It appears that my Mail account imported the 'Inbox' emails but not the 'Sent' emails. I need to make sure I don't lose either so assume that I need to copy the Inbox emails in Mail and put them back into the Comcast email. Or, is there a better way to do this?

Thanks for you help.

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Answer 5

BDAqua

Level 10

245,117 points

Oct 8, 2009 9:52 AM in response to Marcus Merritt

Is there a chance of losing emails when changing from POP to IMAP? It appears that my Mail account imported the 'Inbox' emails but not the 'Sent' emails. I need to make sure I don't lose either so assume that I need to copy the Inbox emails in Mail and put them back into the Comcast email. Or, is there a better way to do this?

For safety... First Quit Mail, then I'd backup these two Mail folders, by right clicking on them in the Finder, then choose Archive/Compress.

Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail

Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail Downloads

(Could be a different folder here if you chose such in Mail Prefs)

Right click on that Mail folder, choose archive, you'll get everything in the folder, and the folder itself in a file called Mail.zip, move it to a safe place, same for the Mail Downloads folder... only the plist is separate.

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist

Then, don't change the account, set up a new IMAP account, after it syncronizes let us know where we are.

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