Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Tired of reviewing the same email message on your laptop, iPhone and iPad? Here are some strategies to think about that might make managing your email a little easier.
Email accounts are of two general types:
• IMAP - email is stored on an email server. When you access email with Outlook or any other email application, the email you are reading is NOT downloaded to your PC or smartphone. When you delete the email, it is removed from the email server. Access your email again from another device and notice that the email is gone. Email is synchronized across all the devices you use to access your email. Email is not stored on your computer or smartphone. All email is stored on the email server. This is how an Apple MobileMe email account works. (MobileMe will soon be replaced by iCloud, due this Fall. http://www.apple.com/icloud/). Gmail can also be set up as an IMAP account. Unfortunately, most email accounts, by default, are not set up this way, and need to be reconfigured to work as an IMAP account. Some email servers may not support this type of email access.
• POP3 - in this model, email is downloaded to each device that accesses the email. The email server keeps track if a particular email has been downloaded before to the device accessing the email message. If you delete an email, in general, only your copy of that email is deleted from your device. It is still downloaded to all other email devices.
Therefore, the easiest way to synchronize your email – if you use multiple devices – would be to configure your email accounts for IMAP.
What if your email account cannot be configured for IMAP access? There are some settings you can change to make managing your POP3 email accounts easier:
• On a Windows PC running Outlook, on the advanced tab for your email account, make sure Leave a Copy on the Server is checked. This same feature is available for the Apple Mail program and for Microsoft's Office for Mac Entourage and Outlook programs.
• In addition to the Leave a Copy option, you can select Remove From Server When Deleted from "Deleted Items". Delete a message, empty your Deleted Items and the message will not be downloaded again. I empty my Deleted Itemsconstantly. I set Outlook to Delete Items when I exit Outlook. I have many clients who seem to never empty Deleted Items and have 1000's of messages there.
• Many email accounts have the ability to be forwarded to another email account. You could forward all your email from a POP3 server account to an IMAP server account. If you did not access your POP3 emails other than through the forwarded copies to the IMAP account, your emails would be synchronized, but this will make the process of replying to emails complicated. To reply to a message, you would have to edit out the forwarded part of the text to make the reply look normal.
• The settings for email on an iPhone and iPad are minimal. If you use your iPhone or iPad to review the bulk of your emails, there is no easy way of deleting an email from your iPhone and have that deletion synced with your other email devices.
Coming up with a strategy to manage your emails is a workflow issue that you will need to resolve based on your particular work style and email device circumstances.