POP3 mail client redownloading old emails from plusnet mail servers

[#1]

It's a numbering/indexing thing. And, tbh, it isn't the first time I've seen this happen.

A long time ago, in the dim and distant past, I used to speak command-line POP3.

[#2]

The reason I use POP3 and leave the messages on the server is for additional backup

On my PC I have it set to remove emails from the server once I delete it from my deleted items on my email client, while the ones I wish to keep, I don't delete, so there is a backup on the server. I do also run a nightly PC backup, to NAS.

I also like to access my emails on my phone, with important ones for travel, accessible while offline, but having the freedom to delete the rest locally on the phone, without this resulting in the deletion of these emails from the server or my PC email client.

I'm just not sure how I get IMAP to keep just a small amount of travel-related emails on my phone and a larger amount of emails on my PC client, without having to manually copy emails I wish to keep into storage folders, remembering which I have done this with before deleting from the phone. 99+% of the time the POP solution works, but just not on this occasion when something clearly went wrong.

[#3]

I still find it strange not everyone is reporting this error - it certainly hasn't happened to me.

[#4]

John,

The answer is that not everyone uses POP3. Of those who do, few will be using retain on server at all, let alone for ever.

[#5]

@JaBe  what ever happened on the Plusnet mail box end has not affected all of our mail accounts, In our case of 4 mail accounts only 1 has been affected and it had 1000+ (over 300mb) of messages and attachments that were redelivered to all the POP3 clients of that mail box.   MS Outlook manages this mail box and it retains 60 days of messages of messages on the server.

Mail accounts will not be affected if these situations apply:-

1. the mailbox was not affected by the recent glitch

2. you use POP3 and collect / delete all messages from the server

3. you are using IMAP

[#6]

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@Townman wrote:
John,

The answer is that not everyone uses POP3. Of those who do, few will be using retain on server at all, let alone for ever.

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OK @Townman Understood. I use POP3, but delete from server on download, and any email I think I may need for ever is copied to an external drive. Others are deleted from the inbox, and then from the 'deleted' box after two to three weeks, keeping everything reasonably tidy.

[#7]

I use Outlook from Office 2019, it is set to POP3 and delete from server after 14 days. This gives me plenty of time to look at them on a different machine within 2 weeks after they are downloaded (and backed up on a NAS), if I so wish.

I have not had the last 14 days emails download more than once, so it's working correctly for me.

Whether it's just old stuff or the amount that's being stored by Plusnet that's triggering this behaviour? I can undestand programmers in the distant past might see this weird use on POP3 needing an end stop, which has suddenly got triggered.

[#8]

Thanks to your contributions, I was able to locate various things in my Outlook settings which has helped to explain some of what's been happening and I have a better idea of what I need to do. Tony at Plusnet responded to my earlier Tweet this morning. I referred him to this forum discussion:

"Thanks for getting back to me Alan and I'm glad to hear you've been able to get support through our forum. I'm hoping we can get this under control soon and we can get things back to normal. I'm really sorry for the hassle it's been causing you all. -Tony Plusnet Sheffield"

[#9]

I've just had another thought. How does POP3 work in as far as knowing that a message has been downloaded?

I ask because, from memory, I can download my emails onto my PC then go to my back up laptop and download them again on to another verson of Outlook, running under Office 2010. This suggests to me that my email client is setting a computer specific flag indicating that emails have been downloaded to the one machine but not downloaded to the other. If I have time I will check this again later in case this is just a mental block on my part.

If this is the case it makes me question whether this is a problem with email clients, not Plusnet, or that some third party clients are not setting a flag correctly at one end or the other.,

[#10]

I do not know for sure, but I believe each client holds an index to the server content with an indication of what’s downloaded. I suspect that the index is predicated on file attributes so some change to file attributes might cause duplicate downloads.

You’ll be aware that I’ve asked questions around this on the SU boards.

[#11]

Messages will flagged as downloaded, indexes will be updated, but things can, and do, go wrong.........

[#12]

earlier in this thread there was a copy of info from Plusnet support that said

As our database was reset

 ..  that'll probably have updated the message ids so when the client checks with the server it finds an id it doesn't have locally and so goes ahead and downloads it. However that's not an issue with the client settings as another part of that message claims, just POP doing what POP does.

The fact there was no explanation or reason why the database was reset is the more concerning one. i.e. changes being made with no advance warning or consideration of potential impact.

[#13]

We need to be aware that the email service is comprised of multiple servers. It is conceivable that one being out of sync with the rest might have given rise to the in consistent experiences.

[#14]

As with you, I'm not experiencing problems with having to download old e-mails.

I suspect that our experiences are but a small part.

[#15]

Here we go again!