Deleting emails

[queby3]

I'm hoping someone can help with this. I have an iphone 11 my husband has Motorola android phone. If either of us deletes emails, they are also deleted on both phones and our desktop PC. This has only started happening recently. Can anyone offer a solution so that emails are only deleted on one device at a time? Nothing too technical please! Thanks

[gg30340 · Accepted solution]

You have apparently set up your email clients/apps as an IMAP account. 

What this does is  synchronise your email accounts across all your devices so that if you delete an email on one device this is replicated across all the devices. Likewise if you sent an email from one device it will show in the sent folder across all devices.

The only way to avoid this is to set your email accounts up as POP3 accounts. This means that your emails will not be synchronised across devices so if you delete an email on one device it will not be replicated across all devices. 

This also applies to sent emails, if you send an email from one device it will not show on any of the other devices.

It all depends on what you want to achieve and what suits your working practices as to what is the best system for you.

If you like the fact that you can see all emails sent/received and deleted across all your devices then IMAP is best for you.

If you do not want that you will have to delete the email accounts from your devices and re-set them up as POP3 accounts.

See links about IMAP ad POP3

What are IMAP and POP? - Microsoft Support

Differences between POP3 and IMAP - GeeksforGeeks

[queby3]

Many thanks for the prompt reply. I've always had them set up as IMAP but this problem has only started occurring since my husband bought a new Motorola phone a few weeks ago. I wonder if that is part of the problem? 

[gg30340]

If you had all your devices set up as IMAP they would have performed as I have explained. There is no other way to set up IMAP other than depending on what email app you were using you might have been able to exclude the delete from synchronising although I have never come across that. 

It may be that he previously had his "old" phone set up as a POP3 account so what he did on that phone did not synchronise with all your other devices.

If you check his phone, which presumably is the only device "new" to your set up, you will probably find it is set up as an IMAP account.