Going from IMAP back to POP3 - what will happen to my folders?

[Marts]

I was using POP3 style email accounts for years. Recently I discovered that my
ISP's email server supports IMAP and I swapped to that.

It's been good. Have been able to log into any computer where I run Outlook 2003
or 2007 and the same emails will be there. But I have a problem that not all the
Sent items are shown.

However, more recently I've been using the one PC and with IMAP it means that I
think all the emails are stored on the server, so Outlook is acting more like a
conduit to the web based email rather than something like Exchange, particularly
as I cannot see the Sent Items or the Deleted Items on all of the PCs, and in
some cases the main PC that I use the Deleted Items disappear after I do a
purge.

I'm looking at going back to POP3 and using the one PC. I'm using my Android
based email client on my phone to retrieve emails but it "leaves email on
server". So at least I can check emails and reply then or later as I wish.

If I go back to POP3 how do I copy all of my saved emails and the folders that
they reside in back into Outlook under Personal Folders?

I have quite a few emails that I want to retain.

Thanks.

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

Outlook 2003 and 2007 don't support storing Deleted and Sent items on the
IMAP server easily, so the behavior you see is expected. If you go back to
POP3 and one copy of Outlook, you'll need to copy the sent items from all
the computers to one. I'd probably make a new folder on the IMAP server
called My Sent (it might not allow you to make one called Sent Items) and
copy the sent items to it, then copy them from the computer you plan to use
and put them into a local pst before you remove the account from Outlook.

 

[Marts]

Diane Poremsky [MVP] wrote...

Outlook 2003 and 2007 don't support storing Deleted and Sent items on the
IMAP server easily, so the behavior you see is expected. If you go back to
POP3 and one copy of Outlook, you'll need to copy the sent items from all
the computers to one. I'd probably make a new folder on the IMAP server
called My Sent (it might not allow you to make one called Sent Items) and
copy the sent items to it, then copy them from the computer you plan to use
and put them into a local pst before you remove the account from Outlook.

Thanks for the tip, Diane.

Unfortunately it appears that I accidentally blew all of the Sent Items away
when I reverted.

What I did was to copy the IMAP folders from under the email address for the
IMAP account back to the tree under Personal Folders.

That, at least, retained all of the important emails that I wish to keep.