hstein
New Member
- Outlook version
- Outlook 365 32 bit
- Email Account
- POP3
I have a foo@verizon.net account that I have configured for POP3 (I prefer not to use IMAP for now). with Outlook. When I look at the account in the Chrome browser, I can see I have 90,000 messages in the Inbox. When I create a new Outlook Profile and a new mailbox I do so with the option to leave messages on the server but delete them after 21 days there. I have zero confidence that this actually works because this is the 3rd time this year I have created a new profile and new mailbox (same account, foo@verizon.net). I have zero confidence because of the following:
[1] verizon is handled by aol behind the scenes and aol is ultimately, I do believe, being managed by yahoo servers. I feel as though multiple servers are passing the work along in a path different than if I had an aol account or a yahoo account. In other words, I feel as though verizon accounts are treated as second-class citizens -- this is based on experience with 100s of customers with sbcglobal, verizon, aol, etc. accounts.
[2] I can't prove anything but the standard for how POP3 should be handled is not well documented. If mail were flowing from an Outlook client to an Exchange Mail Server, we might know more about how that server handles POP3 but since it's yahoo servers in behalf of verizon accounts, we are left to guess (I assume these are proprietary mail servers). Calling aol suppport (since they manage verizon by way of yahoo), even paid support, will not get any answers to this or the questions below. I feel as though aol/yahoo focus (support-wise) on the more popular sync-centric IMAP protocol and with good reason, it's saner, better, more consistent and less problematic when reading emails on multiple "modern" devices. But Outlook is not a modern application and it is insecure (albeit it's corporate America's darling and necessary application)
So I take the zero confidence and I make observations. Note these concerns could easily apply to a gmail account where the POP3 server behaviors will yet-again be different and not well documented. As I watch Outlook slowly but surely pull down those 90,000 messages over the course of perhaps a couple of days, I think to myself -- it's never a good idea to have so many messages (90,000) in a PST Inbox for a variety of reasons related to the risk of corrupting the PST and having to repair it or worse, rebuild it (pull down 90K messages yet again).
But when the download of 90,000 messages is finished, I dare not move say 80,000 messages into some archive data folder because I don't know how this will impact Outlook and verizon/aol/yahoo with respect to POP3. I don't know if I should have just archived them to the same PST but as Inbox subfolders. To learn more about servers and POP3 I googled but found very little. For example, you will read smattering of technical articles from Microsoft itself, about the download history for POP3 and why one should get it here:
where it wisely states:
The Post Office Protocol (POP) provider for Outlook allows users to retrieve and download new email messages on their local device, and subsequently to leave or delete these email messages on the mail server. When the mail client checks for new messages to download, it has to be able to identify and download only the new messages for that Inbox. The mail client does this by first using the UIDL (Unique ID Listing) command, which obtains a map of each message that has ever been delivered to that Inbox to a unique identifier (UID). The client also gets the message download history for messages that have been downloaded or deleted for the Inbox on that client. Using the message UID map and download history, the client can then identify those messages that are absent in the history as new and, hence, should be downloaded.
We can trust the Outlook mail client to do it's part, but can we trust the mail server (yahoo, for verizon/aol) to do *it's* part? And just what *is* it's part?
My hope is that once the download is finished, the date and time of the newest *AND* oldest email downloaded will be always communicated to the server and only new emails will come in after that (or older emails if I exited Outlook before it could finish all 90,000 messages).. I don't know it it tracks that somewhere separately. I hope so. If Outlook sends that to the server by simply looking at it's oldest and newest dated email (and UIDLs), the my moving old 80,000 messages to an archive could cause all 80,000 messages to be re-downloaded. If it just keeps track of oldest and newest, then I can freely move messages to Inbox subfolders I create or to another separate archive.
So the above is to help me keep my inbox small on the client side.
I have no idea how the "delete" after 21 days will work -- in fact I am going to turn that off and let verizon/aol/yahoo just treat the entire cloud server as a permanent ever-growing repository.
Thoughts anyone?
Harry
[1] verizon is handled by aol behind the scenes and aol is ultimately, I do believe, being managed by yahoo servers. I feel as though multiple servers are passing the work along in a path different than if I had an aol account or a yahoo account. In other words, I feel as though verizon accounts are treated as second-class citizens -- this is based on experience with 100s of customers with sbcglobal, verizon, aol, etc. accounts.
[2] I can't prove anything but the standard for how POP3 should be handled is not well documented. If mail were flowing from an Outlook client to an Exchange Mail Server, we might know more about how that server handles POP3 but since it's yahoo servers in behalf of verizon accounts, we are left to guess (I assume these are proprietary mail servers). Calling aol suppport (since they manage verizon by way of yahoo), even paid support, will not get any answers to this or the questions below. I feel as though aol/yahoo focus (support-wise) on the more popular sync-centric IMAP protocol and with good reason, it's saner, better, more consistent and less problematic when reading emails on multiple "modern" devices. But Outlook is not a modern application and it is insecure (albeit it's corporate America's darling and necessary application)
So I take the zero confidence and I make observations. Note these concerns could easily apply to a gmail account where the POP3 server behaviors will yet-again be different and not well documented. As I watch Outlook slowly but surely pull down those 90,000 messages over the course of perhaps a couple of days, I think to myself -- it's never a good idea to have so many messages (90,000) in a PST Inbox for a variety of reasons related to the risk of corrupting the PST and having to repair it or worse, rebuild it (pull down 90K messages yet again).
But when the download of 90,000 messages is finished, I dare not move say 80,000 messages into some archive data folder because I don't know how this will impact Outlook and verizon/aol/yahoo with respect to POP3. I don't know if I should have just archived them to the same PST but as Inbox subfolders. To learn more about servers and POP3 I googled but found very little. For example, you will read smattering of technical articles from Microsoft itself, about the download history for POP3 and why one should get it here:
Locating the message download history for a POP3 account
This topic describes how a mail client can access the PidTagAttachDataBinary property to get the message download history for a POP3 account.
docs.microsoft.com
where it wisely states:
The Post Office Protocol (POP) provider for Outlook allows users to retrieve and download new email messages on their local device, and subsequently to leave or delete these email messages on the mail server. When the mail client checks for new messages to download, it has to be able to identify and download only the new messages for that Inbox. The mail client does this by first using the UIDL (Unique ID Listing) command, which obtains a map of each message that has ever been delivered to that Inbox to a unique identifier (UID). The client also gets the message download history for messages that have been downloaded or deleted for the Inbox on that client. Using the message UID map and download history, the client can then identify those messages that are absent in the history as new and, hence, should be downloaded.
We can trust the Outlook mail client to do it's part, but can we trust the mail server (yahoo, for verizon/aol) to do *it's* part? And just what *is* it's part?
My hope is that once the download is finished, the date and time of the newest *AND* oldest email downloaded will be always communicated to the server and only new emails will come in after that (or older emails if I exited Outlook before it could finish all 90,000 messages).. I don't know it it tracks that somewhere separately. I hope so. If Outlook sends that to the server by simply looking at it's oldest and newest dated email (and UIDLs), the my moving old 80,000 messages to an archive could cause all 80,000 messages to be re-downloaded. If it just keeps track of oldest and newest, then I can freely move messages to Inbox subfolders I create or to another separate archive.
So the above is to help me keep my inbox small on the client side.
I have no idea how the "delete" after 21 days will work -- in fact I am going to turn that off and let verizon/aol/yahoo just treat the entire cloud server as a permanent ever-growing repository.
Thoughts anyone?
Harry
