Archive for the 'Explanations' Category
How Email is Sent and Received on The Internet
Sunday, February 7th, 2010What’s the difference between Save and Save As?
Friday, November 27th, 2009Understanding the Difference between a Website and a Blog
Sunday, November 1st, 2009Email Addresses-An Overview Video-part1
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009Email addresses Overview video part 2
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009Find your computer IP Address
Thursday, October 8th, 2009Bring back the old menu with file, edit, and view in Windows Vista.
Thursday, September 10th, 2009What is a forum and how do you join to chat and ask questions?
Saturday, August 29th, 2009Should I choose IMAP or Pop3
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009When choosing settings for an email account the choice of whether to choose IMAP or Pop3 comes up. The basic difference between the two in practical terms is that Pop3 generally deletes the email on the server when it has downloaded to your email client ( such as Outlook or Windows Mail) while IMAP leaves a copy on the server until you delete it.
First off, lets explain the process.
Someone send you an email. Although the address belongs to you, this email goes into a place that is similar to a P O Box, but on your server.
The server in this case is the website from the company that you signed up with to give you your internet connection. The email address shows this as the site after the @ sign in the email address. The “number” of the P O Box is the bit before, that you chose. For an email address such as janedoe@internetprovider.com – janedoe is equivalent of a P O Box number – and internetprovider.com is the internet providers website.
You can visit the website and view the email online. Or you can set up an email client program to download the email to your computer.
So the process looks like this…
email sent – email stored on server – email downloaded to your computer.
Obviously, you need an internet connection to do this.
Most internet providers use a pop3 connection. Their settings will be viewable on their website so that you can check how to setup their account. If it is only Pop3 then once the download to your email client has taken place, the P O Box is empty.
Why IMAP has more functionality
If you have your own website you can choose to make your server an IMAP server. This is especially useful if you travel or if several people such as a business may need to access this email from different places. IMAP will download the emails to your computer, but it keeps a copy of the emails in the P O Box on the server.
This means a colleague can also download it to their computer ( while the copy still remains there) or if you are travelling, you can refer to this email again on a laptop even though you have already downloaded it to your home computer.
IMAP will also set up individual folders for different email addresses making it easy to categorize and separate emails if you have different businesses or services.
If your internet provider gives you a choice between Pop3 and IMAP and you will need to check their terms to see if they do, this may be a useful tool for you. To find out, look for email set up FAQs on the sites sitemap.
If your internet provider does not give you this option but you would like to have the option and do not have your own website then choosing a free service such as gmail is the way to go.
Gmail is an IMAP server.
By having a Gmail email address, you can download the emails to your computer but they remain on the Gmail server until you delete them. You can also choose to archive them so the mail box does not become too massive and hard to navigate but the old emails remain there as a record if you wish to retrieve information from them at a later date.
Synchronization
Your client generally synchronises the PO Box on the server with your interface inside the client. Therefore if you delete an email on your computer it deletes the copy on the server. To remove but not delete emails, you can create a new folder and move old emails into it for archiving. This is the best way to keep important emails but not have them keep cluttering up your inbox.
If multiple people access an email inbox and there is a risk that an email may be deleted by someone accidentaly you can set permissions for people so they are either allowed to delete emails or not allowed.