Switchen an IMAP account in M3 to POP3
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Hi all,
I have set up Vivaldi M3 using the IMAP protocol for an email account with a long history. I have imported a large number of emails from Opera M2, so I have >20GB of mails in vivaldi/profilename/Mail/.
Now I would like to stop using IMAP for this account and instead use POP3. What is the easiest way to do this? (For example, I would rather not set up a new account with POP3 because I would rather not migrate the large email archive, as I don't know if this will cause double copies of emails.)
I'm also open to suggestions of other ways that allow me to delete mails from the server but still keep a local copy forever.
Cheers, kai
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I would expect you to need to set up a new account and just leave it running for a while to fetch all the messages again.
You could just change the server details in the settings and hope that Vivaldi automatically identifies that it's now POP3, but I expect (although I don't know) that there is another flag to say if an account should behave as POP or IMAP.
I'm curious to know the answer myself (hence my response - to fish for notifications if anyone else knows better!
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Regrettably there is no easy way to achieve what you want because:
- there is no mechanism within most email clients (AFAICS) to change an existing account's setting from one protocol to another, i.e. cannot change from IMAP to POP3 protocol or vice versa
- Vivaldi does not allow for creation of new account when there already exists another with the same email address, i.e. if there already exists an IMAP account 用心棒@vivaldi.net then it is not possible to create another albeit for another protocol.
What is your reason for wanting to move from IMAP to POP3?
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@yojimbo274064400 said in Switchen an IMAP account in M3 to POP3:
What is your reason for wanting to move from IMAP to POP3?
I need to delete mail from the email server because I have a quota. It's my work email, so I cannot buy additional space.
The only way I know to keep a local copy of my mails while deleting them from the server with IMAP is to manually create a local copy by moving mails to a different local folder. This (manually moving mails) is not something I would like to do. I am looking for something that just works.
So my idea is to set up one email client to POP my emails (I'll still be using IMAP on other devices to view mails).
I am open to suggestions though, because using POP is not ideal either. For example, once I POP the mails, deleting mails from the server (via IMAP) will not be synchronized to the client running the POP protocol.
This seems to be a standard problem, so I'm curious: how do people handle limited server space?
cheers, kai
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@mossman said in Switchen an IMAP account in M3 to POP3:
I would expect you to need to set up a new account and just leave it running for a while to fetch all the messages again.
If it has to be done, it has to be done. But this will only fetch mails that are still on the server. More than half of my mails were imported from Opera M2. Is there a safe way to migrate these emails to a new account?
Should I try to use the Import feature? This might have the advantage that Vivaldi M3 is checking for duplicates when importing. I also seems to be the default way.
Or should I better copy the mails locally to the new account and ask Vivaldi to rebuild the database?
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@lesk said in Switchen an IMAP account in M3 to POP3:
@yojimbo274064400 said in Switchen an IMAP account in M3 to POP3:
I need to delete mail from the email server because I have a quota. It's my work email, so I cannot buy additional space.
Ahh yes. This is exactly the reason I stuck with POP3 while everyone was shouting "IMAP! IMAP!" in the late nineties... a time when mailboxes had obvious quotas - usually a few megabytes - but Hotmail, Yahoo! and then especially GMail users were being convinced by the big webmail sites that they would never run out of space.
So my idea is to set up one email client to POP my emails (I'll still be using IMAP on other devices to view mails).
[...]
This seems to be a standard problem, so I'm curious: how do people handle limited server space?In my case - just like you suggested - I have one old desktop PC (backed-up monthly) which POPs my main account while everything else uses IMAP. As quota is not such a problem these days, I set the PC to delete server messages after six months - that means I have enough history on my phone and laptops for most puposes.
The only annoyance is getting mail sent from other devices onto the PC before a backup. I move old sent mail to the inbox on the webmail site, POP it to Vivaldi, then move it to sent (by filitering/exporting/reimporting). Perhaps there's a smarter way of doing it but this is what I came up with years ago.
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@lesk said in Switchen an IMAP account in M3 to POP3:
@mossman said in Switchen an IMAP account in M3 to POP3:
I would expect you to need to set up a new account and just leave it running for a while to fetch all the messages again.
If it has to be done, it has to be done. But this will only fetch mails that are still on the server. More than half of my mails were imported from Opera M2. Is there a safe way to migrate these emails to a new account?
Should I try to use the Import feature? This might have the advantage that Vivaldi M3 is checking for duplicates when importing. I also seems to be the default way.
Or should I better copy the mails locally to the new account and ask Vivaldi to rebuild the database?
I would definitely use import. The steps I would take:
- back up your Vivaldi user profile
- as @yojimbo274064400 suggests you can't have two identical mail addresses, delete the IMAP account
- set up POP3 account (without delete from server)
- once all the mail has been POPped, import from the IMAP backup
- if all has gone well, you can now set the POP3 account to delete after X months and delete all your sent/drafts/etc. on the server
You'll now be in the same position as me. Assuming you mostly use the machine with the POP3 account, then you'll only have the occasional mail sent from another device to deal with by import/export.
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Thanks @mossman This is very helpful. Thanks also @yojimbo274064400 Much appreciated!
It still seems crazy that there would be no easier way to handle such a standard problem but this seems to be a workable solution.
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If you're not too bothered, you can just move remotely sent mail to the inbox and forget about it - it will be retrieved. I'm just a bit more anal about it and prefer mail I sent to show up as sent rather than received...
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@lesk said in Switchen an IMAP account in M3 to POP3:
Thanks @mossman This is very helpful. Thanks also @yojimbo274064400 Much appreciated!
It still seems crazy that there would be no easier way to handle such a standard problem but this seems to be a workable solution.
Agreed. A smart mail client{*} could basically reproduce automatically what I have to do manually: use IMAP to synchronise all folders on the server, but delete everything older than X on the server while keeping a local copy.
(*) "coincidentally", I remember suggesting Vivaldi do something like this back when we waited for the mail module to be made public beta...
Edit: I might have made a feature request - can't remember now
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@mossman said in Switchen an IMAP account in M3 to POP3:
Ahh yes. This is exactly the reason I stuck with POP3 while everyone was shouting "IMAP! IMAP!" in the late nineties... a time when mailboxes had obvious quotas - usually a few megabytes - but Hotmail, Yahoo! and then especially GMail users were being convinced by the big webmail sites that they would never run out of space.
I also recall when Gmail Beta was first launched, they advertised the user had unlimited storage: https://support.google.com/mail/thread/140465038/when-i-first-signed-up-for-gmail-beta-it-said-there-was-unlimited-storage-what-should-i-do-now?hl=en
Today? 15Gb.
