Help with email on iphone, mac, ipad... multiple POP3 email accounts?

Parent Cafe
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<p>Hey- any Mac people out there? There HAS to be an easy way to do this… I am so frustrated! I just got my first iphone and am trying to set it up to check my email. I’ve spent all day and a long time with Apple tech support and still can’t make it work properly, because I have multiple POP3 email addresses for business, personal, etc.</p>

<p>Since they’re POP3, not IMAP, they won’t sync across devices. I use Mac Mail on my iMac, with 5 different mailboxes showing me three Roadrunner (POP3) addresses, one private domain name that’s forwarded to Roadrunner, and one Gmail address. So, for example, I sit at my desk and check email, deleting messages after reading them. Then when I check email on the iphone, those 20 message show up again, and I have to go through and trash them all over again.</p>

<p>I thought perhaps the thing to do was to forward each address to a new gmail address I created, and then configure the iphone (and Mail) to receive the gmail rather than the Roadrunner account. But that isn’t working either, and is ridiculously complicated.</p>

<p>How do other people do this? It can’t be that unusual of a situation? Any advice?</p>

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<p>I’m not sure I understand your problem. I have an aol email account that syncs across my iPad and iPhone with no problem.</p>

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<p>Unfortunately the only answer I ever got was keep repeating yourself. I do it across 3 devices so each one is done 3 times. </p>

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<p>It’s not a Mac issue at all. You’d have the same problem on PC or Android. </p>

<p>The issue is POP3. The behavior you describe is exactly how POP3 is supposed to work. In order to do what you want to do you need to have IMAP e-mail accounts. Can’t do it with POP3 like you want. </p>

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<p>My TWC mail server does support IMAP. I can’t find it listed in their documentation, but it’s there. For roadrunner.com addys the server was usually pop-server.roadrunner.com. For IMAP simply change first part to imap-server. Works fine for me.</p>

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<p>I have imap mail accts and dont have a problem.
<a href=“http://email.about.com/cs/standards/a/imap_basics.htm”>http://email.about.com/cs/standards/a/imap_basics.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>You have to configure the accounts so the messages are removed from the server when accessed. If they are left on the server, then any device that connects will see them again. To do this on your mac, open Mail’s Preferences and then the accounts tab and then advanced. You’ll see the box to remove messages from server immediately. To do this in iOS, try [url=&lt;a href=“http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3228]this[/url”&gt;http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3228]this[/url</a>].</p>

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<p>Thanks folks, yeah, I understand that I need IMAP. That’s why I was trying to forward all my roadrunner email addresses (which are POP3) through Gmail… so they’d all sync properly across devices. But it is VERY messy to do it that way. I was hoping someone had an easier, more straightforward, more elegant way to manage multiple email addresses (including POP3-based ones like Time Warner Roadrunner) across several devices.
@Iron_Maiden wow that would be great. I will call my TWC and see if that’s true here. My main personal and business email addresses -that are tied to my dozens of online accounts as well as clients- are all through Roadrunner POP3. Unless they actually do have IMAP, the only solution seems to be forwarding them through something that has IMAP. But Gmail is super ungainly!</p>

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<p>@Iron_Maiden Argh, I don’t think my TWC has IMAP. I tried changing the account to imap-server but it gets an error message.</p>

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<p>All you can do I guess is call TWC support. Bon chance. </p>

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<p>Update: Iron Maiden was correct, TWC did have an IMAP option. It was quite difficult to get it all swapped over, and my mail is MUCH slower to send/receive now, but I guess it’s a reasonable trade-off for having it sync properly between the phone and computer. Thanks!</p>