Deleting emails from phone, but not from server!

[kareemowheat]

Precisely. If anyone knows of a 3rd party email app that can do these specialized deletes (from device-only or device-and-server), definitely post. This is one feature I greatly miss from my old Blackberry!

 

[rag99]

I agree. I currently use a Blackberry, and am all set to switch over to an S3, however the one thing that's holding me back is losing the ability to choose, on an email by email basis, whether to delete from both the server and the device or just the server. Too bad this is not a standard feature with Android. Please advise if there are any 3rd party apps that can facilitate this. Thanks.

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

I agree. I currently use a Blackberry, and am all set to switch over to an S3, however the one thing that's holding me back is losing the ability to choose, on an email by email basis, whether to delete from both the server and the device or just the server. Too bad this is not a standard feature with Android. Please advise if there are any 3rd party apps that can facilitate this. Thanks.

A while ago, I was also fearful of leaving BB because of their great email management. I will say for me, however, I've never looked back. BB may still do email better, but pretty much every other feature of Android outweighs that in my mind.

I'm also primarily a Gmail user and now work for a company that uses Google Apps...so I could now care less about that as Android does handle gmail accounts awesomely.

 

[snowtree]

When you set up the email account on the S3, choose the "other" option and you can do the setup manually. You will then see the "don't delete from server" option when you select the POP3 format.

 

[kareemowheat]

But I would like to have the option -per/by message- to either delete from device only or device and server.....like the Blackberry devices/servers offer.

 

[Jeannie Erling]

I don't see any setting that says "incoming server", but my problem is that I delete most off of my computer, but then they are still on my phone. Is it the same process? I have everything set to sync as far as I can tell?

 

[Liliane Klein]

I just downloaded MailDroid to my tablet and it works like a CHARM! Just like my blackberry! When you go to delete is offers: "device" or "device + server". I am also going to try aquamail and see which I like better, but I am LOVING MailDroid!

Update: tried aquamail, but it didn't give me the same delete options... But MailDroid is still working great!

 

[armygirl461]

THANK YOU!!!!

 

[slsmoot123]

When you set up the email account on the S3, choose the "other" option and you can do the setup manually. You will then see the "don't delete from server" option when you select the POP3 format.

Works on the Samsung Note too. Best answer from 2 pages of non-answers!

 

[Trees]

I think there are good answers here. I have a RoadRunner account and access via POP3/SMTP. When I setup the account, was careful to choose the "When I delete from Inbox" setting in the "Incoming settings" for POP3.

Have had this phone since last summer, and have never seen what I delete from the phone reflect back to my mailbox on the RoadRunner server. I don't get that much traffic on this particular account, but would like it if I only had to delete once on the phone, rather than have to repeat, delete, and then clean up on my home system. I'm careful to flush out deleted items on the phone right after deleting. This triggers a resynch back to the RoadRunner mail server.

So, am I missing anything with the default mail client, or do I have to go to something like MailDroid?

 

[Chrome69]

Ok i was a BlackBerry user as well now with S4.. Now they way to setup your Gmail so its not deleting from the server is as follows. You must setup the account in email not google(gmail) and when your setting up the account choose manual so you have the choice of POP3 or IMAP. You chose POP3 and it does the rest for you and you will see in one screen to for incoming "Delete email from server" and chose Never! Now make sure in your gmail account (on computer) go into settings and under POP3/IMAP change the POP download to "enable POP for mail that arrives now" other wise it will download every email on that account from god knows when.. When your doing the manual setup it pretty much puts everything in where it needs to be just choose next except the inbox setting at the bottem you need to chose the "Never" Hope this helps...

 

[mrots161085]

Hi,

I know how to do this with a pop account but does anyone know how to do this with an exchange account?

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

Hi,

I know how to do this with a pop account but does anyone know how to do this with an exchange account?

With traditional POP3, each client you check your mail from downloads the messages from the server to your client. This is why you need specify actions on the server when mail is downloaded or deleted from the client (because technically, all you're really doing is modifying an offline copy of your message, and thus those modifications don't sync across to the server or other devices).

For the most part, POP is a ONE-WAY transmission -- your client (whether it be Outlook on your computer or the mail app on your phone) only pulls information FROM the server -- all it really does is check the server at regular intervals for new messages, and if any are present, it downloads them. Once that happens, you are merely working with a local copy. On the server, you can set messages to be deleted either after downloading (which isn't good if you check your mail from more than 1 device), or some clients also support the option to tell the server to delete a message once you delete from your client, which will prevent any other mail clients from downloading the message.

POP3 is pretty basic, and in today's age of multiple devices and much more robust email account types, it really lacks the features to keep up with many people's setups...but it does get the job done if that's all that's available to you.

With most other newer protocols (IMAP, Exchange ActiveSync, etc), the client regularly syncs with the server. You are not in this case working with an offline copy, but rather seeing a real-time view of your mailbox on the server. These modern protocols support a full sync of not just your inbox, but also other folders as well, including sent items and any custom organizational folders you may have created. It doesn't matter if you're checking your mail using Outlook on your laptop, or using the mail client on your phone or tablet or even viewing webmail from a hotel kiosk...you're going to see the exact same content regardless of which device you use. For the most part, this is advantageous to the old POP3 method of simply grabbing copies of messages from a server...but it also means that there really is no way to do what you're asking if you're using Exchange protocols to access your mail. When synced, you can't delete a message from your phone and still have it on your desktop. Of course, there really shouldn't be a reason to anyway, because you're usually not downloading the full message anyway (generally just the header info), so it's not as if it's consuming a ton of space on your device, assuming it's working as intended.

In some cases, if you REALLY want to be able to do this, Exchange does still support using POP, but your Exchange admins would have to have the feature enabled on the server and/or your account, and you'd have to use a manual setup for your mail client.

 

[keleraba]

For Gmail, set the server to POP and incoming user name to "recent:whatever@email.com". Than, in the settings make sure that "leave on server" is checked. This way, you can read email on the phone (or any device), delete it and are still be able to download it from any other device.
Wait... here is the link on reading emails on multiple devices: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/47948?hl=en#

 

[John Fullington]

Found a fix for "deleting email on phone, deletes it on computer". I use Yahoo mail, removed my yahoo account from the email app on my Galaxy s3 phone. Installed the Yahoo mail app on my phone. Now when I move a email to a folder on my computer, I can delete it from my inbox on my phone and the email in the folder remains on my computer.
(This didn't work with the standard email app on the phone, it would still delete the email no matter where you moved it to on your computer).

Hope this helps,

JF

 

[MrDoh]

For my gmail account, I originally set it up to use POP3, and noticed later that google had converted it to IMAP. That's okay with me, but if you think that your gmail account uses POP3 because you set it up that way originally, it may have been changed to IMAP without you noticing.

 

[Marilyn 1]

I have a new Samsung Galaxy S4 mini phone and a Samsung Galaxy Note 5 tablet. I got the tablet first. Whenever I deleted email messages, they reloaded. Someone helped me set it up so this would not happen. It is on "Sync" and to "Never" remove emails from the POP3 server. Now it works the way I want. I can delete emails from the tablet, and this doesn't delete them from the server so that I can access them on my desktop when I get home. I just got the S4 cell. I have it on "Sync" and to "Never" remove the emails from the POP3 server, but it keeps reloading the emails just like the tablet did in the beginning. There is no option to "leave it on the server". The only choices are "Never" to delete from the server, or to delete from the server when I delete from my Inbox. But these are the same choices that are on the tablet. Samsung tells me I can't set it up so that I can delete from the phone and not from the server because it is a POP3 server, but it is doing it on the tablet. Anybody got a clue?????

 

[darkhorse321]

I have a Note 5 and am finding this a problem with my AOL account --which is IMAP. But, on my other phone, I was able to choose an option to delete from both or just the phone. Odd that we don't have this option with the Note 5?