Mail washer is deleting the emails from the mail program

[MJM2020]

Have been using mail washer for years and have a lifetime subscription ver 7.12.38. My wife's computer recently updated to windows 10 so she lost the windows live mail. She upgraded to mail for windows now when she washes the mail in mail washer it deletes the checked items like normal and moves the allowed emails to pass to her mail program as it should but if she goes back into mail washer and goes check mail again when mail washer removes the old e mails it also deletes the emails from the mail program. We both use the same ver of mail washer and i have cross checked the settings and they are the same. Has anyone a suggestion?

[rusticdog]

Hi there

Just so I'm clear, is she deleting the unwanted old emails from MailWasher once they are in Mail for Win 10 ? Will refer to that program as MAIL for ease.


There are two ways to access your emails from an email client, being POP and IMAP. What you are describing seems to be a result of the account in MAIL being setup as IMAP.

With IMAP, programs like MAIL leave the messages on the server and interact with the server directly. Meaning, delete a message in MAIL, it then deletes from the server. Move a message from the Inbox folder to another folder, the message on the server moves to this folder also.
This way multiple clients can look at the email account and see all the same messages.


Previously it would have been using POP to access the account, which works a bit different in that the emails it retrieves are stored as copies on the computer, and it doesn't keep itself synchronised the same way.

There is a few options though, ultimately depends how she wants to use email.
Option 1 : Keep using IMAP in the MAIL and also in MailWasher.
In MailWasher under Settings >> Accounts >> Incoming >> you can set the account to IMAP at the top >> Save.
Then under the Advanced options, there are some options to Download Read Email, leaving this unchecked means MailWasher will only retrieve emails flagged as Unread, if you Read an email in the mail program, this flags it as Unread and will remove itself from view. You can also then set MailWasher to only retrieve emails from the last xx days.
Keep in mind, using IMAP will retain the behaviour you mention, deleting an email from one program will remove it from view in the other.
But knowing that MailWasher will only load Unread emails in the Inbox folder from the last xx days, gives you some manageability over what emails show.

Option 2 : Use POP to access the account in the email program.
What probably happened in the past, was Live Mail retrieved the emails using POP, then deleted the copy off the server once it downloaded. This would have meant after she downloaded the emails into Live Mail, the next time MailWasher checked it would see the messages gone and remove them from view. Unfortunately MAIL is a very basic program and has no nice options for this.
If she wanted to use POP to access the messages, then I would recommend switching to ThunderBird https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/
It's not that dissimilar to Windows Live Mail, has many more options and it's free.

By setting that up manually with the account to use POP, you can then tell it to delete emails off the server once they are downloaded, so they disappear from MailWasher, and once an email is downloaded it exists just in ThunderBird.
If you go with the second option, let me know, there's a few other options to be tweaked.

Any questions, just lemme know

Cheers

[MJM2020]

Thanks for the quick reply you are correct the mail washer is set up for pop but the MAIL is set up as IMAP. what would you recommend the easiest
to do? Maybe download thunderbird or work with MAIL changing to POP
Thanks very much the help is really appreciated.
Maurice

[rusticdog]

The easiest in the long term I think is trying out ThunderBird. This way she can keep using MAIL in the meantime, while that gets setup and altered to suit.

When setting up an account in ThunderBird, it will first ask for Name, Email address and Password, however it will also want to setup the account as IMAP by default. On the screen with the above there is a 'Configure Manually' option >> you need to click that change from IMAP to POP >> then enter the details for the account. Server etc..
You can copy what MailWasher has in it's account section.

Once the account is setup, in ThunderBird go Tools >> Account Settings >> on the left select Server Settings for the account >> then on the right uncheck these three options :
Check for new messages on startup
Check for new messages every xx minutes
Automatically download new messages

There is another option a touch lower 'Leave messages on server' >> uncheck this also.

This will prevent ThunderBird from automatically downloading email, and when you want ThunderBird to bring the messages in, just hit Get Messages from the main screen.
It also means when ThunderBird brings in the emails, it will delete the server copy of the message, meaning MailWasher will no longer have access to it, removing it from view.

One other thing I would recommend given you have MailWasher, in ThunderBird under Tools >> Options >> Privacy and Security >> scroll down to the Junk settings >> make sure all 3 Junk related options are unchecked.


I expect there will be some other things she might want to change in the look of ThunderBird, any questions feel free to pop them in here.

Cheers

[MJM2020]

Thanks again will let you know how it turns out
Maurice

[MJM2020]

Thanks for all your help we downloaded Thunderbird and set it up as you suggested and all is good
Maurice