Possible to 'get x days' of email and *keep* old emails?

[Guest badbob001]

WM Standard (smartphone) has a 'feature' where if you specify x days of emails to get, it will delete from the device any emails outside of that range. Is there a way to prevent this auto-deletion?

The only option that doesn't delete old emails is obviously the option to download ALL emails, which is bad if you have 10,000+ emails. That is why I want the option to limit the amount of emails to download, but not at the expense of losing old emails. Even gmail's 'recent' trick of 30 days is too much for my taste. I thought it was a problem with gmail's pop3 implementation but the exact same thing happens over gmail imap, so it must be a problem with wm.

I know on WM Classic/Professional, there is a trick where you can tell it to get only headers but strangely also grab x amount of the body:

* [x] Only display messages from the last __ days

* Get full body / get message headers only

* [x] Include __KB of message body

Somehow, this leads to old emails not being deleted.

But on Standard (smartphone), I only see:

* Download messages: Today, past 3, past 5, past 7, past 30, all

* Message download limit: 2K, 5K, 50K, just text, headers only, all

So I can't use that trick since headers and body limit are not separate options.

I just need a freaking: [x] Do not automatically delete old emails.

Sure, I have a copy back on the PC, but I'm screwed if I need to look at that email when I'm not near my PC. How would you feel if wm decided to remove from the device all contacts that you haven't used past 30 days? Or remove photos older than 30 days? Obviously they don't do that, but why do they do it for one of the most important features of the device?!

Is this the choice of have to make?

* Download emails from the last x days and lose all others.

or

* Download all 10,000 emails and get to keep your old emails.

or

* Download all 10,000 email headers, get to keep your old emails, but have to tag and wait for the download each email body I want to look at.

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

In a nutshell, yes, and I agree, there should be more granularity there ;)

You could try giving FlexMail a go, and see if it serves your requirements better?

http://www.webis.net/products_info.php?p_i...tab_id=download

P

[Guest jimbouk]

The work around is to move the emails you want to keep to a different folder.

So for example, after you read them, you move any you want to keep to a new folder called oldmail. This will then keep it on your device until your device's memory fills up.

Or use IMAP and don't specify the number of days.

(Pop does allow you to download 1kb, 5kb, 20kb or all the message by the way)

[Guest badbob001]

The work around is to move the emails you want to keep to a different folder.

So for example, after you read them, you move any you want to keep to a new folder called oldmail. This will then keep it on your device until your device's memory fills up.

Or use IMAP and don't specify the number of days.

(Pop does allow you to download 1kb, 5kb, 20kb or all the message by the way)

Moving an email to an imap folder on the server will still delete that email if it's not within the get range. On smartphone/standard, there is no method for creating a local folder, but moving an email to the drafts folder works to keep the email on the device. The email is really copied locally to the local drafts folder since on gmail, the original email is still in the inbox and not moved to the gmail drafts folder.

From my testing the fastest way to download new emails is to use imap; the protocol seems more efficient in just getting just the latest headers. If you're stuck on using pop3, then you would think setting it to only get x number of days instead of all emails would make it faster but actually, it's slower! Say you have 500 pop3 emails with new 2 emails and set to only grab 7 days. When using pop3, it will grap the 2 new emails but then appear to have to download the headers for the 498 other emails to, I assume, check the date. Obviously this is not cool at all. If you have it set to download all emails, after getting the 2 new emails, there is some sort of optimization going on since the inbox will quickly zip through the remaining 498 emails and end the connection.

Using imap with gmail is nice where if you delete an email, on the server, it goes into the [imap]\deleted folder (not the real gmail trash folder). So you can clear an email from your device and not worry about losing the copy on gmail. Marking items and read/unread works as well.

So I'm just going to set my email limit to 30 days, use imap, and move to drafts any emails I want to keep forever.

Edited November 9, 2007 by badbob001