droid incredible deleting pop3 e-mail messages on server when deleting trash

[Anglhrt]

I've had my Incredible for four months now and never had an issue until today. I have it set to leave messages on my server (I use Outlook) and I deleted the messages and then emptied the trash. It deleted my messages from the server also. If I just delete the messages and not the trash they stay on the server. It must be a bug I'm thinkin'

[alicia1234]

I have a Droid incredible with Android version 2.2 with the same issue. I've done some testing and, like Mattls and Sharky1226, I "know what I'm doing". I agree with them that the Droid is causing the messages on my POP server to be deleted when I empty trash on the Droid. Thanks for this post ... I don't like that the Droid is doing that, but at least I know what's going on and can work around it. I'll check out the Google issues list and contribute there if I can.

[jamesluk]

I realize this thread has grown cold, but I'm having this same issue with my Droid Incredible 2. I have Verizon.net, MSN, and Juno POP accounts set up and deleted some emails from the trash folder on my phone today. They were wiped off the server even though the delete mail on server option in send settings under Send & Receive was unchecked.

I called HTC and Verizon support and they claim to have no knowledge of this issue. What worries me is that my Verizon.net account has many important emails and I'm worried that when my trash gets full on my phone and has to be emptied I'll lose all these emails.

I'm contemplating deleting these POP accounts and switching to K9, but worried that this might also wipe the emails off the server when these accounts are deleted. Is there a way to back up all the emails sitting in folders on my web mail account, the Verizon.net one?

Appreciate your help!

[alicia1234]

For what it's worth: On my Droid incredible 2, I did find that when I emptied the deleted items folder, it did delete the messages on the Verizon server, too - just as you have found out. I am using POP3 email.

However, I have since also noticed that if I just leave the deleted items folder on the Droid alone - that is, I never empty it - it only keeps items up to 7 days old, and it has no affect on what's up on the Verizon server (now, on my PC with Outlook, I do download my mail at least once every seven days). I can live with this; so I've just stopped worrying about the deleted items folder and I'm letting it take care of itself. I don't know why, but it seems that the number of days that an item stays in the deleted items folder is tied to the setting for "Download options" (in Mail, hit the "menu" button, then "more", then "settings", then "send & Receive"; you'll find the "Download options" setting there). Mine is set to "By days: 7 days". It was previously set to 3 days, and with that setting, my deleted items folder only kept things around for three days. I wanted my deleted items to stick around longer, so on a hunch, I changed it to 7 days, and that had the desired effect.

Hope this helps.

[jamesluk]

Thank you. I checked into this and saw I had it set for 30 days. I took a chance and changed it to 7 days and the emails in my trash folder over 7 days old were cleaned off my phone but remained on the server. At least I don't have to worry about losing hundreds of emails from the last 30 days.

Any advice on backing up years of saved emails on my Verizon.net webmail account? If I install Outlook can I import and save all my old emails locally? I considered using mail fetcher with Gmail to import the Verizon.net email account though Google cautions that even if you specify that it leave a copy of saved messages on the server that some email services may delete your messages when Gmail fetches them.

Any advice is much appreciated.

[alicia1234]

I use Outlook 2007 on my PC to "download" my mail from the Verizon server (incoming mail server: incoming.verizon.net; outgoing server: outgoing.verizon.net), and I back up the "outlook.pst" file (it's in C:\Users\<myname>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook) .

In Outlook, I have set the email settings (Tools > Account Settings; double click the mail account; click button for "More Settings"; click "Advanced" tab) to "Leave a copy of messages on the server" but to also "Remove from server after 10 days" - because I do not depend upon storing my emails on the Verizon server. I look at the Verizon server as a "temporary" location until I download the stuff to my PC. To never have your email deleted from the Verizon server, I think you could just check "Leave a copy of messages on the server" and then NOT check the box to "Remove from server after ... days". But I'm not sure.

Backing up the outlook.pst file means that you could always retrieve your mail backup into any mail program that can read a .pst file. But this is an Outlook format, so it's not "universal" ... this might be locking you in to Outlook 'forever'.

That's about as much as I know about it, and this is way off topic for the Droid forum, but I thought I'd let you know what I know.

[jamesluk]

Thanks! For me this fits because it helps solve the issue of losing valuable emails because of this droid issue. Happy new year!