Deleting emails from MWP 7

[garyasta]

I have just set up a new ISP connection and use Thunderbird email client to process my emails. My ISP suggested an IMAP setup.
However, after using MWP to delete and then download the acceptable emails from the server to TB, I find that the emails are still in MWP.
How do I automatically delete these emails. I can delete them manually, but would prefer to have MWP do it automatically.

[rusticdog]

This is the nature of IMAP, it's designed for online storage of email. For example, messages you see in your ThunderBird Inbox would also show when other programs access the same Inbox, your webmail etc..

If you delete a message, either from the MailWasher or ThunderBird Inbox, it will remove it from the email server. So delete an email in MailWasher, it also deletes from ThunderBird...

By default, MailWasher only loads the Inbox folder (as IMAP supports subfolders) and also loads Unread messages.

Options could be :
Ignore ISP advice, go back to using POP instead of IMAP.
It sounds like that's the setup you are used to. Disadvantages being that once an email is downloaded in ThunderBird, it will be removed from server, making that copy on your computer the only copy. No fancy storage etc..

Move (or delete) emails you no longer immediately need from your ThunderBird Inbox to subfolders which you create.
This is how I manage my email. My Inbox is more of a stuff to do...and I have subfolders based on content where I move messages into once I no longer need them directly.

Flag messages as Read in ThunderBird.
As above, if MailWasher is also using IMAP to access the account, by default it won't retrieve the read messages.

[Digerati]

For the record, I use only POP on all my accounts (I have 7) and IMO, that is much better. When I delete an email through MW, it is gone and that is exactly what I want.

However, if you need to access your email from 2 or more different devices (phone or work computer, as examples) IMAP may be better for you. I can easily get around that, however, simply by not deleting emails I think I might need on another device. Or, I can always forward it to my account and pick it up with the other computer. But that is very rare for me.

BTW I believe ISPs suggest IMAP solely because they don't want to deal with customers who seek help to recover deleted emails. It is NOT because IMAP is more secure, faster, or some how better.