Notices

I have the application running just fine and it is pulling mail just fine. But I have a wrinkle. There is about 12000 messages on the server, and I can't seem to find a way to avoid downloading them all. Failing that, I could simply let them download (and set an attachement limit) then just delete them, but I am not sure this wont delete them from the server.

Surely there is a way to set a "don;t download older than" flag.

Any suggestions?

Have you thought about using IMAP instead of POP3?

Tim

imap would be great, but this particular account does not support it

In the receive options in account configuration there is an option for "remove messages from server when reading". Make sure it is unchecked. The act of deleting the messages from Claws-mail will not cause deletion from the server, since POP3 is used for downloading messages, not synchronizing folders.

Surely there is a way to set a "don't download older than" flag.

No, there's not, because there's no date indication in the server replies to LIST or STAT. "Don't download older than" would mean TOP for each mail, then RETR for each matching mail and is rather useless from a bandwidth point of view.

Matan's right, deleting from Claws doesn't delete from the server.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll just download them all and delete.

So is there a way to overcome this with pop3 mail with any email app?

I can't believe that my Palm Centro does this with the default email client but the n810 can't do it.

I too am momentarily stuck with pop mail until I decide that this is all going to work and spring for a $30 mail upgrade with my service to go IMAP.

Any other suggestions or workarounds?

Not really.

You can RETR the last n messages listed in a LIST or UIDL response, but there is no guarantee that these are presented in chronological (or any other) order and depending on server implementation you may be getting a different set of n messages every time and still miss the latest ones. You could also issue a TOP for each message as colinreloy mentioned, but at that point you might as well download the whole thing.

That sounds a bit extortionate :-( You don't have to get email service from your connectivity provider however. There are lots of decent third-party IMAP services around (eg fastmail.fm which also lets you pull in email from external POP-only accounts), or if you feel up to it you could run your own mail server and never look back.