Manage email on multiple devices with IMAP

Many of us have multiple email addresses, or we use multiple devices to read our email, or both. Without a basic understanding of how email works and how our devices process email, we can get frustrated for so many reasons: lost messages, forgotten settings and passwords, etc.

Email can be accessed in several ways. Two are easy to use and require little or no configuration. There is basic web mail where you simply visit a website, enter your user name and password then read and write email. There are also services like AOL and MSN that provide you with a proprietary application to access your email.

On the other hand, many of us use an email program, also known as a client, such as Outlook, Apple Mail or Thunderbird. You may also have a client on your mobile device(s). This is probably the most common, yet complex, method used to receive email. At its basic level, an email client connects to your ISP (Internet service provider), grabs your mail and displays it for you. It also creates and stores outgoing messages and lets you organize your mail.

There are several ways to set up a client-based email application, but only two that we’ll address here: POP3 and IMAP. POP3 tends to be the default for most mail apps, and if you check your email on multiple devices this isn’t good. Why? Because when you check email with a POP3 client, the messages are downloaded from the server and placed into the inbox of that device, then they’re deleted from the server. This means when you receive a new email on your phone, it will not show up when you open email on your PC. The same holds true for sent messages. If you send a new message or reply to a message using your phone, there will be no record of it on your PC. This can make for confusion and frustration.

To avoid this, most ISPs offer IMAP. Any emails you send or receive are stored on the server. With IMAP, if you create a folder in your devices’s email application, it’s created on the server. When you open your account with the email application on another device configured with IMAP, that folder (and any messages in it) are downloaded to that device and yet stay on the server. In other words, your email account is mirrored across all your devices. All messages and folders stay on the server (and other devices) until you delete them from one of your devices.

So POP3 makes sense if you check your email from one device. If you check the same account from multiple devices, IMAP is the perfect choice.

Here’s the complicated part: setting up your device’s email application. Most applications will give you the option of selecting POP3 or IMAP when you first set up your account (however, you can’t go back and change this). After that, you need to know several key settings, and these are different for each ISP and are entered differently on each device.

Some applications do a pretty good job figuring out the appropriate setting, but not always. My best advice here is to Google “IMAP settings” with your ISP’s name and make note of your settings. Specifically you’ll need your user name (usually all or part of your email address), password, incoming and outgoing server names and possibly incoming and outgoing server port numbers.

It may take several tries to get it right, but just bite down on a stick and keep at it. Once it’s working you shouldn’t need to fool with these settings again.

Sven Mogelgaard is president and CEO of Byte Slaves Inc. Contact him at 425-482-9529 or 877-972-7767 or go to www.byteslaves.com. To get more information on this topic or join in the discussion, go to Mogelgaard’s blog at svensbiztalk.blogspot.com or follow him at facebook.com/byteslavescomputing.