topic POP3 Download of Sent Mail ? in Email

POP3 Download of Sent Mail ?

MRChambers — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 16:59:46 GMT

I mostly now use IMAP and the Gmail client on my phone for email needs, though periodically fire up Thunderbird on my laptop to download emails as a long-term archive. Which I have just done in preparation for the Greenby migration due tomorrow.

My question is whether there is a mechanism to download items via POP3 from the sent mail folder on the force9/plusnet servers which have been sent originally via an IMAP client ?

Thanks in advance for any insights on this subject.

Re: POP3 Download of Sent Mail ?

stuck — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 18:22:29 GMT

You might want to investigate 'MailStore Home' to back up your email. It's free:

https://www.mailstore.com/en/products/mailstore-home/

Re: POP3 Download of Sent Mail ?

stuck — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 18:29:39 GMT

@MRChambers wrote:
...mechanism to download items via POP3 from the sent mail folder on the force9/plusnet servers which have been sent originally via an IMAP client ?

If I ever use the webmail client to send messages, I download those sent messages to my desktop PC by moving the messages from the sent folder to the Inbox. When I then check for mail my POP client on my desktop PC those 'new' messages download to my Inbox. From there, I either move them directly to whatever folder I want to file them in, or move them into the sent folder (for filing later).

Re: POP3 Download of Sent Mail ?

MRChambers — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 19:15:06 GMT

Brilliant thanks! Yes, I can see all emails sent via any IMAP client in Plusnet webmail so it's just a matter of dragging them across to the inbox (times out when all 800 selected, but doing it in pages of 40 works fine).

In Thunderbird there is an option to sort by receipt order (rather than date order) so can easily pickup the block of 800 to move to the sent mail folder.

Re: POP3 Download of Sent Mail ?

Townman — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 23:23:07 GMT

Your experience points starkly at the fallacy of using POP3 for archiving email in place of a proper archiving strategy. POP3 does not look at anything other than the inbox. If you’ve put mail into folders, they will not be downloaded by a POP3 client.

Most IMAP clients have arching tools which few people seem to utilise.

Re: POP3 Download of Sent Mail ?

jab1 — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 08:05:56 GMT

I don't know about other mail clients, but Thunderbird allows you to 'archive' any folder, or selected items from them, to external devices, and has done for as long as I have been using it. Admittedly, until a couple of years ago (a guess) this needed an extension, but it now supports the function natively.

Re: POP3 Download of Sent Mail ?

stuck — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 17:30:47 GMT

I use MailStore Home to archive my e9mail. Once click and it backs up everything in Outlook. Painless.