Webmail resend read emails

[Jeceris]

BT Mail sends emails to my phone after they have already been downloaded and read. The only way to stop this is to set my account on my pc email client to not keep a copy on the server. But this means that if I view them on my pc first, they never get sent to my phone. It's only started happening recently. 

[gg30340]

If you want to be able to read them on your phone and your PC you will need to have a copy saved on the server so that regardless of which device you use to read your emails first the email will still be available to be read from the other device. 

Where are they "already" downloaded and read. Is it on your phone or on your PC?

How are you accessing your emails on your phone?

Are you using an email client/app or a web browser?

If it is an email client/app do you have it set up as an IMAP or POP3 account?

[Jeceris]

Hello. New to this so forgive my ignorance. I just posted a reply to this response, but can't see it anywhere. How do I know it was actually posted?

[gg30340]

If you click on your username then view profile it will bring up your posts. It looks like you did not post a reply. Perhaps you hit the "cancel" button instead of the "post" button.

[Jeceris]

Thank you .

Here it is again.

I am aware that a I need to keep a copy on the server and have set up my pc client, which is Windows Live Mail, to do so by setting it up as POP3. My phone is a Samsung Galaxy A3 with the standard Android email client provided. Emails are automatically downloaded to both phone and pc and everything has always worked fine until recently.

Starting some weeks ago, for no apparent reason, emails downloaded to my phone are now being sent again, sometimes several times, until I delete them from the server. I can also stop this happening by disabling the "keep copy on server" option on my account settings on the pc client, but this means that they never reach my phone since once they are delivered to my pc they are deleted.

I can find no way to check whether the phone client is set to POP3, since there are no server settings available as there are with the pc client.

I hope this is clear, but if there is sny more info I need to provide please let me know.

Thank you.

[gg30340]

It sounds like the problem is that your emails are not being marked on the server that they have already been downloaded onto your phone. This could be a fault with your phones email app or with the BT servers. 

To check if your email account is set up as an IMAP or POP3 account open your email app and click on the three bars at the top left. This will bring up your account. Click on the "cog" at the top right. Then click on your account name. This will bring up the account settings. Scroll down until you see "Server Settings". Click on that, a new page will open and you should see  under "Incoming Server" if it is an IMAP or POP3 account.

I suspect that you have it set up as a POP3 account as this will download emails where as IMAP replicates what is on and  synchronises with the server. 

IMAP may suit you in that if you read or delete an email on your phone it will show as read or deleted on the other device but you need to be aware that if you want your emails downloaded onto your PC which is set up as a POP3 account you would need to either ensure that you read them on the PC first or if you read it on the phone first you do not delete it because this would delete it from the server before you downloaded it to your PC. 

[Jeceris]

Thanks again. I have found the phone's server settings and incoming is IMAP/SSL/port 993.

[gg30340 · Accepted solution]

An IMAP account will always replicate what is on the server  so even if you download it via POP3 on your PC, if it is still on the server it will show up in the IMAP account inbox.

The only way to prevent that would be to remove it from the server either by deleting it from the server after downloading it in POP3, which is what you are now doing or by deleting it on your phone after you have read it. This will of course remove it and not allow it to be downloaded onto your PC if you have not already downloaded it.

[Jeceris]

Thanks for your continued response.

If I understand this correctly, if I want to be sure emails go to my phone as well as my pc, I have to set my pc POP3 account to keep a copy on the server, and put up with the duplicate downloads to my phone, which is fixed as IMAP, until I have deleted them from the server. If this is the case, I'm not sure I understand why, given that for two years I have been using the same pc/Samsung setup and this has never happened before. A copy has always been kept on the server via the setting on my pc client, and I have not experienced the re-delivery issue to my phone until recently.

Can a smartphone email client not be set to POP3? It seems that if it could it would operate in exactly the same way as the pc client, i.e. deliver once and leave a copy on the server until deleted.

[licquorice]

You can set the phone client to POP3 if you wish, however, if you have multiple devices and wish to (a) keep mail on the server and (b) keep all devices in sync, then it is best if you configure everything as IMAP. That way all your devices will sync including sent mail which currently won't be  synced between a POP3 account on your PC and your phone. You can't change from POP3 to IMAP on the fly however, it will entail deleting the account and re-creating it, whichever way you choose to go.