IMAP - how to delete messages during multiple devices access

[Rigo]

Hi folks,
With the advent of multiple devices accessing email accounts, a question I have been getting from customers of which my personal experience is not giving me a clear answer relates to the deletion of especially incoming junk mail.
Would deleting messages from one device remove them from the new message list so for other devices accessing the account there would not be any need to go through dealing with them again?
Whether I misconfigured something on my own devices settings, not sure but I personally seem to have to deal with the same messages from all the devices I use.
Have I missed something on how to do it?

 

[britechguy]

Would deleting messages from one device remove them from the new message list so for other devices accessing the account there would not be any need to go through dealing with them again?

Simple answer: Yes.

Somewhat more accurate answer: If you're running between devices before they've done their own next sync cycle (or you force one) you will certainly keep seeing messages deleted elsewhere until a sync cycle occurs.

Everything is kept seamlessly in sync, but sync is not instantaneous. And, these days, Outlook having a default sync interval of 30 minutes (which I always reduce) can make it seem as though deletions you've done ages ago haven't happened.

 

[Rigo]

Outlook having a default sync interval of 30 minutes

Yes, I had left on default timing on my computers
I've always turned it down to 5 minutes on customers' computers but somehow haven't done it for myself
Thx man

 

[Rigo]

to think of IMAP as a way of manipulating the message store on the server

Yeah, that's what I understood as well, as compared to POP3 settings which are local to the device

 

[Markverhyden]

If this isn't happening then it's very likely that something's wrong, and the joker in the pack is usually some half-forgotten mobile device that's been "automatically" configured to use POP3 (and often to remove messages from the server either immediately or several days after they've been retrieved).

And it's not just some old device. It can be the email provider/server causing an issue. I run my own email server using Axigen, IMAP. I also have an email account with Earthlink. During setup the clients generally see my Axigen as IMAP but always autodetects Earthlink as POP. So if they do the auto detect thing they may not know it's auto config'd to POP instead of IMAP

 

[HCHTech]

Plus, if there is a HUGE message store, you can run into the problem where a short sync interval doesn't allow enough time for a sync to complete before the next one starts, leading to corruption or aberrant behavior.