You have a phone. You have a computer. You have email. So how can you best coordinate your email between your phone and your computer without having to keep reading the same messages over and over?
The answer comes in a feature called Delete From Server. It’s an option in just about every email program, including both the programs on your phone and on your computer.
Some email background junk:
There are two types of email popular today: Web-based email like Yahoo! Mail and Gmail. That type of email is known as MAPI email, for Messaging Application Program Interface. Do not memorize that!
The second type of email is the traditional type of Internet email, which is probably provided by your organization or ISP. That’s the email you need to configure with the SMTP and POP3 servers, which is a pain but you have to do it only once.
For Web-based email, there’s really nothing to configure: If you read a message either on your phone or computer, it’s marked as read. Because your ISP mail uses a different protocol, there is the Delete From Server option.
When you get standard email, your email program checks in with the ISP’s mail server. Messages are retrieved and then, traditionally, deleted from the server. They don’t have to be deleted, though: When that happens, your email program retrieves the same messages over and over. (Well, unless your email program is smart enough to know what it’s already downloaded.) So deleting the messages makes sense.
In my For Dummies Android phone books, I recommend that you not delete the email retrieved by the phone. That way you can get the same messages again on your computer. A new option available with the latest release of the Android operating system makes me change that opinion.
The option is titled ‘Remove manually deleted emails from the server.’ When you choose that option, the phone still retrieves all your new messages. You can read the messages, but only those you delete are removed from the server. That way you won’t get those messages again on your computer.
To set the option, follow these steps on your Android phone:
- Open the My Accounts app, or whichever app keeps your ISP mail account information.
- Choose your ISP email account.
- Choose ‘Other Settings’
- Touch the gray box to place a check mark by the option ‘Remove manually deleted emails from the server’
Remember: Only those emails you’ve deleted on your phone are removed from the server, and not picked up again my your computer’s email program. The rule doesn’t apply to messages that you’ve read, replied to, or forwarded.
