UKC

My mum has had an iPad for a few years now, and has used the standard email client to access her hotmail account.

She's recently been given a handmedown iPhone, which she couldn't get working, so I was called to do IT support. I connected the email client to her hotmail account, whereupon her inbox started filling up with hundreds of old emails that she's deleted on the iPad.

So it looks like there's an issue with emails being stored on a server, and not being synchronised between her inbox and the server. I can't say I'm too happy about this silent caching of emails; if i delete an email, I expect it to be deleted from the server, too.

As an android user, I've not seen this problem; my inbox looks the same whether I use an email client (android, Outlook), or a web interface. Admittedly, im not using hotmail.

I foolishly went into the Genius Bar at an apple store and asked, but there was a very long wait to see a 'genius'. I've tried googling, but my foo is weak, and encounter the needle/haystack/rumour/random nonsense problem.

I'm sure there must be a simple setting somewhere to make the server sync to the inbox/local mail store on the iPad (ideally, automatically deleting the cruft from the server, rather than filling her inbox with shit again). Any suggestions?

Thanks.

In reply to captain paranoia:

I think it's an IMAP issue at the Microsoft end - best bet if she has any "IT plasticity" is to get her to use Outlook for iOS on the iPhone, which seems fine (just replace the icon for Mail on her iPhone and tell her it's an upgrade!). I can't get mum's email to sync on iPhone either, but can on the iPad - go figure!

Good luck

b

In reply to captain paranoia:

You can often choose whether deleting emails on a client device also deletes them on the server as a setting on either client or server.

Depending on how many years she's had the iPad, it may have synced with Hotmail using the old fashioned POP3 protocol which is only really designed for using a single email client to access your mail. By default, it normally deletes mail from the server when the client downloads it. This can be overridden but it still doesn't tend to propagate changes on the client back to the server. It's mostly a one-way system which makes it a pain to use with multiple clients or, as you're discovering, to switch to a new one.

As far as I'm aware, there's no easy way to now get all the changes and deletions she's made on the iPad to transfer to the server.

Moving forward, you should probably make sure that both iPad and iPhone use the more modern IMAP protocol to communicate with the server. That's designed to be used with multiple clients so changes like deletions or read messages are propagated both ways between clients and server.

Microsoft will have the details you need on their help site.

In reply to captain paranoia:
There is a option under setting and then mail, under advanced in your account settings, where you can select deletion on server when removed from inbox, after seven days or as I have ticked, never.

I don't use it, so don't really know if it works, but it's there! Personally I go to online account and delete there for safety so that I don't accidentally delete something important in error.

In reply to captain paranoia:

Thanks for the replies. I'll have a check to see if she's connected via POP3 or IMAP.

I'll have to be careful, because I don't fancy deleting everything on the server, and then having the usual sync problem, where the other end deletes to match... There are emails I'm sure she will want to keep. Maybe I'll connect via Outlook, and save everything to a pst file before I give it all the heave-ho.