thanks for the clarity on the benefits of IMAP. hoever i do have one question, in the event i dont have connectivity to the internet i would like to have my emails on my local hardrive as well, can this be done with IMAP?

It looks like Opera’s mail client has a global inbox. The downside to Opera is that it currently doesn’t allow you to create HTML or RTF formatted messages…oh well, I can live with that.

Thanks for the response, eventually I am going to make the jump back to a Mac, but for now I am stuck in the Linux/Windows world. Unless I am not understanding the search folder functionality correctly I don’t think you can search across inboxes and the global inbox doesn’t work for IMAP. If anyone knows how to do this, please let me know. Thanks.

Jeff

I was pretty sure there was a way to do this in Thunderbird as well. If not you should be able to get the same thing by using a search folder that shows everything from all the mailboxes (or just new items, or whatever you like). There is a global inbox setting in Thunderbird, but I’m not clear if that works with IMAP.

Great article and I agree wholeheartedly with using IMAP protocol for email, but I am going to pose a question because I miss one piece of POP3 functionality.

Has anyone found a good way to get a consolidated view of multiple IMAP inboxes? When I used POP3 all my emails came into one folder, but now that I use IMAP with several inboxes I have to check a bunch of different inboxes where if I could have a consolidated view of them it would be nice.

I currently use Thunderbird on Linux as my main email client but would be willing to switch email clients if needed to get a consolidated view. I have used Evolution in the past but preferred Thunderbird’s functionality.

As for another reader’s question about calendar, I use Google Calendar which is nice now that they sync over the air with iPhones because I can share my calendar with my wife and she with me so that we can always see each other’s calendars on our iPhones all the time.

Anyway, I truly believe there is a way to get this working yet I have been unable to find anyone who understands Mac and PC. I have either found people who know one real well and the other not so well.

Thank you for your help and support.

Here is what I found on Lifehacker. IMAP over Gmail. Now is that cool or what ?

http://lifehacker.com/software/how-to/use-gmail-over-imap-277178.php

.Mac will also keep track of how your email is setup, so if you connect with a different Mac, it will restore all of your email accounts instead of having to add them one at a time.

@Ed – If you have an exchange server, you already have MAPI access which makes it really easy to keep a bunch of Microsoft devices synched with your message store. The idea of downloading POP accounts and sticking them in your Exchange message store as a way to keep things synched is interesting but are you sure those don’t get put in a .pst file anyway? I thought the .ost file only kept a copy of the Exchange mailboxes, contacts, etc.

Are you saying that it will actually put the POP3 mail into the .ost file which then gets synched with your Exchange Mailbox? I thought Exchange will treat the POP account as a new mailbox backed by a .PST file.

I’ve setup a lot of Exchange servers, but usually it is for businesses, so I don’t have to worry about setting up other external accounts. Normally we don’t want people checking email that doesn’t come through our anti virus filters on Exchange.

Now, exchange can be configured to download all your mail and the such via pop3, imap, or others. I leave all this stuff OFF. Instead, I use my local outlook client to do the pop3 download. I could have many pop3 accounts – they would all come to outlook (this is no different than the regular non-exchange mode). All your mail gets stored to your local .ost file. When you are away, you are out of sync with your exchange server and are effectively just running a local copy. when you return to the office (or whereever your exchange server is), your email you got while away will sync to exchange — so you’ve effectively backed up your mailbox. since exchange nevers downloads mail in this scenario, you will only push mail to it.

Now say my desktop is also connected to exchange and I took my laptop on a business trip for 5 days. my desktop (and exchange) is out of sync with exchange – when i return however my laptop syncs and my desktop auto syncs too (via updating exchange which happens automatically). say i lose my laptop, if i plug in another laptop, join the domain with my credentials, outlook will copy the whole exchange mailbox to my laptop – and i’ll have a recrteated mailbox within minutes (or so). at any point, your maximum loss will the time away you last sync’d from the exchange server. note i can send emails from my desktop or my laptop and they remain identical copies of each other while on the domain.

this method doesn’t work if you dont get back to your exchange box very often. you could use an rpc over http to accomplish this (though this method is not idea for that either) its great for me as i have a desktop and laptop and server all of which i want to use my mail client on.

imap is a nicer solution but this might work for some. email me with more details (of course you can take advantage of all other other exchange features if you so choose)

ed.mundo

I have never looked at .Mac calendars before, but glad to hear that is what works for you.

I am a recent convert over to IMAP and so far have liked it. I will need to do my homework to find a solution that works for me, as far as getting my contacts and calendar in sync, especially to my mobile device.