Leaving Email on the Internet

Most email users move their email from the email server and store it locally on their PC.

However, leaving the email on the email server has several advantages:

• You can access it using multiple clients from multiple locations.

• If you decide to change email clients then you don't need to extract email from your local mailbox.

• You don't need to worry about backing up your email as there is always a copy on the email server (may be awkward to get at).

• If you have a complete disaster and need to re-install your PC you can still get your old email.

With so many advantages you may be wondering why most people don't do it? The simple answer is that most people are unaware that they can, and Email providers, up until recently, didn't encourage them to do it.

Google Gmail has changed that! Google Gmail now offers users 2GB of email space. This is /was massive in comparison to what other providers normally provided (approx 25-100MB). The result is, that with such massive storage space you shouldn't run out of space, and hence, you wont need to delete/archive old email.

Other email providers have followed suit, and mailbox storage limits have dramatically increased. Therefore it is feasible to leave the email on the email server, (Internet) and never worry about deleting it.

Accessing with POP3 Email Clients

POP3 Email Clients (by default) delete email from the email server, after first downloading it to the client machine. This means that when you have finished only one copy of the message remains, and it is stored on your local PC.

You can change this default behaviour, and leave a copy of the message on the email server. This means that you now have two copies of the message. One stored in your mailbox on the email server, and one stored in your local mailbox on your PC.

Both Outlook Express and Incredimail can be configured to do this. The setting is on the advance tab of the account properties under delivery.

 If you do this you have the option of deleting the message after a period of days or when deleted from the deleted items.

Leaving a copy on the server can serve as a useful backup and providing you have plenty of space it is ok to do this.

However it can cause problems if you decide to configure a new email client to access the mailbox as you have to wait a very long time while it downloads all the old emails.

Access Using Imap4

With Imap4 the email remains on the email server and so it is accessible from any location. If you travel or use multiple machines to access your email then you should use IMAP4 to access your email and not POP3.

You must ensure that both your email client and email host support this protocol (most do).

Related articles:

• Mailboxes and Mailbox Locations
• Remote Email Access- How to Access Email From Another Location/computer
• Mobile phone email
• Web based Email
• Access  POP3 Email/Multiple Accounts Using Yahoo Webmail
• Transferring/Moving Email to a New Computer