All About Symbian
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Why do email messages appear downloaded and then disappear?

01 February 2006 · by Steve Litchfield
Applications, Miscellaneous, Communications Series 60, Series 80, Series 90, UIQ, General, N-Gage

Q. Messaging shows up my POP3 Inbox emails properly at first but then the next day I find most of them have been lost. Is email syncing broken?

A. Messaging, on all Symbian-powered devices (but perhaps most of all on UIQ smartphones like the P900), seems to be one of the most misunderstood of the built-in applications. When you 'Get and Send', it's not exactly the same as on your desktop PC. All emails are left on the POP3 server, for you to pick up on a desktop at a later date, to fill in your message base. Your smartphone simply tries to show you the contents of your POP3 mailbox in as efficient a way as possible. If you retrieve a message body, it's only for your temporary use in order to act on its contents or to reply. And if you delete a message on your handheld, it also gets deleted on the mail server. The next time you 'Get and Send' - you're not deleting just your local copy and there's usually no point deleting items from Messaging's email views. They're only there because they're there on the server as well.

Hopefully, you'll soon see that the system works very well, letting you stay on top of your email when miles away from home without burdening you with having to deal with absolutely everything on the smartphone.