[MlMt] Probable New User with POP Question

[Jack Stewart]

Hi,

I have been using email for many, many years but always with the
same client app which only handles POP - no IMAP capability. I
have about 100,000 emails archived over the years in 6 different
POP email accounts and 500 mail boxes, which I want to retain.
The accounts can be changed from POP to IMAP.

I'm liking most of what I have read about Mailmate and want to
use it but I am completely inexperienced with IMAP, have no good
friends who use it, and am wondering:
1) What transition problems from POP to IMAP will I encounter?
2) What is not to like about IMAP compared to POP?

Sounds simplistic I know, but I do not want to risk regretting
the change and the Mailmate manual says nothing about POP or
transitioning from it. (e.g. Will I be able to easily retain my
existing 500 mailboxes with their present contents?)

I Would very much appreciate any references, thoughts or comments.

Thanks in advance,

Jack

[Jan Erik Moström]

I'm liking most of what I have read about Mailmate and want to use it
but I am completely inexperienced with IMAP, have no good friends who
1) What transition problems from POP to IMAP will I encounter?

Since you have used POP I assume that you have your emails stored
locally, IMAP (usually) stores your messages on the server. So you will
probably have to export your emails from your POP client to mbox files
and then import them into MailMate. If the messages imported are stored
on the server (if you use MailMate they are unless you install a mail
server locally on you Mac) then you need to have the storage on your
server to do this.

2) What is not to like about IMAP compared to POP?

Probably several things but there are also things to like (simple
migration between clients for example).

(e.g. Will I be able to easily retain my existing 500 mailboxes with
their present contents?)

If they live locally (unless you have set some "leave on server" flag in
your mail client) you probably need to do some manual work.

= jem

[Benny Kjær Nielsen]

Post by Jan Erik Moström

I'm liking most of what I have read about Mailmate and want to use it
but I am completely inexperienced with IMAP, have no good friends who
1) What transition problems from POP to IMAP will I encounter?

Since you have used POP I assume that you have your emails stored
locally, IMAP (usually) stores your messages on the server. So you
will probably have to export your emails from your POP client to mbox
files and then import them into MailMate. If the messages imported are
stored on the server (if you use MailMate they are unless you install
a mail server locally on you Mac) then you need to have the storage on
your server to do this.

Alternatively, if your current email client supports IMAP then the
safest migration path is to add an IMAP account to this client and then
move your mailboxes into this account. This should make the email client
upload them to the server making it easy for MailMate (or any other IMAP
email client) to download them.

I would just do it with a few mailboxes at first to make sure it works
as expected. If you rely on read-state or maybe flags then migrating via
IMAP would likely keep this metadata. That won't happen with the mbox
file.