GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 227972
Delete mail after x days from POP3 server
Last modified: 2002-07-18 19:49:46 UTC
Description of Problem: In prerelease versions, there was a grayed-out option on POP3 accounts to leave mail on server but delete after (fill in) days. This is a feature of Outlook that Evolution lacks. This was not implemented, and the gray was dropped. I suggest it is important to restore. Rationale: While IMAP gives good control over server files, POP3 is far more common in the ISP world. POP3's usual model is "fetch and delete". But this does not work well when the user maintains more than one computer; e.g., home and office. If mail is deleted before being picked up by the second computer, that computer won't have access to the deleted mail. POP3's common extensions (I presume based on UIDL) make it feasible for multiple computers to sync their mail, each fetching only mail that it has never seen before. Microsoft Outlook and Qualcomm Eudora, among others, both provide the "delete after _ days" option. This can be set, for example, to 3 days. Thus mail retrieved on one computer (say, home) on Friday evening won't be deleted until Monday, after the other computer (say, office) has had a three-day window to also retrieve it. Voila, instant synchronization, with none of the awfulness associated with, say, the Notes style of replication. For some odd reason none of the common Linux GUI mailers (Evolution, Kmail, Sylpheed, Balsa) have this; I find that it's a show-stopper for not giving up Windows as a primary mail client system right now. (If I've got Linux running, I have to boot back to Windows every few days to sync the mail archive.) I can't imagine that it's all that difficult, since there's a POP3 extension function designed to support it.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 201824 ***