Gmail (aka Googlemail) is beauteous in many, many ways - but its POP access is not one of them. Sure enough, it does have it, and for free, which is an improvement on many webmail services, but it's a bit weird. This isn't normally a problem because most often you might as well use the website rather than drag your email down to your computer using Outlook et al.
One such exception is if you have a mobile device that can't handle either the mobile website or the Gmail mobile application (which doesn't work on the Google Apps version of Gmail anyway) or can't always be online."
The Poorhouse's main bugbear with the POP access is unlike most other implementations, there is no real control from your receiving program over what happens to mail that you download via POP. Sure, you can choose whether when you download the mail it gets archived, deleted or left in the inbox of your webmail interface as a whole but that's it. You cannot selectively go through your mail and delete and move it from the web interface, and you cannot (without tedious website intervention) downlad the same mail more than once - there is no real implementation of "leave on server" from a POP point of view. This ruins it for you if you want to download your email in more than one place.
It seems also a bit dangerous for Pocket Outlook users. The Poorhouse is no Pocket master but it seems upon every send and receive all existing email in Pocket Outlook is got rid of, presumably because it is expecting gmail to still have it on its server.
However, there is kind-of a solution in a newish feature Gmail has included (including Google Apps). For some reason it seems to have not really been announced greatly, let alone to the huge blogo-fanfare that normally accompanies anything with the Google logo on it. This feature is called Recent Mode.
Basically, if you add the word "recent:" to your POP username (e.g. "recent:billy@gmail.com") then your program always gets the last 30 days of email, no matter if it has already been downloaded. Therefore you can have as many mail clients as you want, use whatever strange software you want and all should be well - assuming you don't need more than 30 days worth.
There is still weirdness in that it downloads mail you have sent which is a bit of an annoyance for super-basic devices that don’t have email filtering-to-folders. Most likely (but untested by the Poorhouse) you also risk getting every message every time - but at least it provides a partial solution for now.
Comments
Pop.
Thanks that artical helped me. I've not been able to get mail for some time.
Re: Pop.
No problem, glad it helped. Don't know if you're using Pocket Outlook like I was in the example above but it seems trying to use that in conjunction with Gmail and its slightly unexpected version of POP is nigh on impossible without this unless I am missing some obvious configuration option.
As far as I can tell, Pocket Outlook tries to synchronise with a POP server (as though it was IMAP in a way...), as opposed to provide its own local copy of email a la desktop Outlook - which doesn't work well at all when after the first POP gmail doesn't let you leave it on their POP server!
I cannot get anyone at
I cannot get anyone at Google to answer me on how to stop getting copies of emails I have sent when using recent mode. My mail client already keeps a copy of what I have sent, and if I'm sending messages from somewhere else and want a copy I can BCC myself. It's driving me crazy that their POP access won't act like a regular POP3 server.
Yep, I largely agree, it
Yep, I largely agree, it would be much easier to use if it behaved more typically rather than just plain weirdly at times! Depending on how you need to access your email, have you tried the IMAP option as opposed to POP? It is also not entirely "normal", but I've found using that a rather more pleasant experience to POP.
One possible solution with
One possible solution with the 'sent' mail being downloaded as new mail in the inbox is as follows.
In Gmail, create a filter with your email address in the From field. Then have Gmail delete it from the server. Whenever email arrives that is from the same email address that it is being sent to... Gmail will delete that email.
Two drawbacks to this solution. If using the web interface while writing a new message, Gmail will alert you via a popup box that you are sending mail from a trashed conversation. The other drawback is that you cannot sent mail to yourself without it being deleted.
However, this solution can work well if you never use the web interface and never need to send yourself messages.