IMAP settings for gmail.

[george57l]

I went to my VM webmail today for the first time in years.

(I had suddenly stopped getting some emails I subscribe to and the provider suggested VM might have decided they were spam and sent an automatic unsubscribe - as my settings on that site for 7 different threads I subscribe to were all reset to 'not send'. I find the provider's explanation implausible to say the least, especially as VM recommends not replying to or unsubscribing from spam so as not to confirm a valid email address - so I came to see what was in the spam folder here. More on that below.)

Firstly, I saw I had 999+ emails in my inbox despite gmail being told to delete mails from server once fetched.

So after much searching I find there's this wonderfully pointless post from 6 years ago telling us VM can't make POP work properly and saying to use IMAP. But the author didn't have the wit to think that a link to the required IMAP settings might be helpful.

Yes, I still use POP settings on gmail.

I've searched the forum extensively. Can't see the IMAP settings. 

Eventually, I managed to find a VM page about how to set up various mail clients but of course gmail is not mentioned as one of the mail clients a user might want to set up. Just the usual offline software suspects such as Apple, Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.  Ok, I can use one of those to extract the necessary IMAP settings information and then update my gmail account to IMAP. 

Or, seeing as VM seems not to give a hoot about taking any action to try to fix the inability to provide a proper POP service, or about having thousands of emails (and growing) stuck on its servers, I could just ignore it.

If anyone reads this and is from, or has lines into, VM, perhaps suggest that

a) gmail needs to be listed as a mail client and configuration instructions given, or there needs to be a generic page with plain IMAP settings to use (i.e. one that is not full of detailed instructions as to how to go through a process with a named proprietary offline client)

b) someone needs to go the the post linked earlier above about how POP on VM is broken and add a link to something like a) above.

So - back to spam. Has anyone ever experienced VM's spam filter auto-unsubscribing from things it thinks are spam?

Worse, I now note there are 7 emails in my VM webmail spam folder. They have not been pulled by gmail to either my gmail inbox or put in gmail's spam folder. At least 4 of them ARE NOT SPAM!

1. How do I set up VM webmail to bypass its spam folder and let such spam be pulled by gmail anyway? I'd rather let gmail filter spam seeing as VM's filter is clearly not as good. I check my gmail spam box regularly so can rescue anything it misfiles.

2. How long does VM keep things it has decided to put in its spam folder and not let POP pull across? I now suspect that it has been shoving stuff in its spam folder, stopping gmail from pulling them across and then deleting them - i.e. I never saw any of them - for a long time.

Have I somehow misunderstood what is going on here? 

[Sololobo · Accepted solution]

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@george57l wrote:

I went to my VM webmail today for the first time in years.

(I had suddenly stopped getting some emails I subscribe to and the provider suggested VM might have decided they were spam and sent an automatic unsubscribe - as my settings on that site for 7 different threads I subscribe to were all reset to 'not send'. I find the provider's explanation implausible to say the least, especially as VM recommends not replying to or unsubscribing from spam so as not to confirm a valid email address - so I came to see what was in the spam folder here. More on that below.)

If you're predominantly using gmail why not change your subscription email address to your gmail one in favour of your VM one, and ignore VM email altogether?

Firstly, I saw I had 999+ emails in my inbox despite gmail being told to delete mails from server once fetched.

So after much searching I find there's this wonderfully pointless post from 6 years ago telling us VM can't make POP work properly and saying to use IMAP. But the author didn't have the wit to think that a link to the required IMAP settings might be helpful.

Yes, I still use POP settings on gmail.

I've searched the forum extensively. Can't see the IMAP settings. 

The VM email server settings (for all Virgin Media domains) are as noted below:-

POP Access (Incoming)

• Server Name: pop3.virginmedia.com
• User Name: Your full email address
• Connection Security: SSL/TLS
• Authentication: Normal password
• Port: 995

Or

IMAP Access (Incoming)

• Server Name: imap.virginmedia.com
• User Name: Your full email address
• Connection Security: SSL/TLS
• Authentication method: Normal password
• Port: 993

Outgoing Server (SMTP)

• Server Name: smtp.virginmedia.com
• Connection security: SSL/TLS
• Authentication method: Normal password
• User Name: Your full email address
• Port: 465

These settings can be used for all email clients.

Eventually, I managed to find a VM page about how to set up various mail clients but of course gmail is not mentioned as one of the mail clients a user might want to set up. Just the usual offline software suspects such as Apple, Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.  Ok, I can use one of those to extract the necessary IMAP settings information and then update my gmail account to IMAP. 

Or, seeing as VM seems not to give a hoot about taking any action to try to fix the inability to provide a proper POP service, or about having thousands of emails (and growing) stuck on its servers, I could just ignore it.

If anyone reads this and is from, or has lines into, VM, perhaps suggest that

a) gmail needs to be listed as a mail client and configuration instructions given, or there needs to be a generic page with plain IMAP settings to use (i.e. one that is not full of detailed instructions as to how to go through a process with a named proprietary offline client)

Gmail can only import mail that is in the inbox of your 3rd party account. If you want to import mail from folders you have to gradually move the messages to the inbox of your 3rd party account and, if you really need to, label them as they arrive in your Gmail account. 

To add a third-party email account to Gmail, follow these steps:

1. In Gmail, go to Settings > Accounts and Import.
2. Under Check mail from other accounts, click Add a mail account.
3. Once you enter the email address, Gmail will probably pre-fill some information; supplement the password and select your preferred settings. Check the pre-filled information (if any) is in line with the details provided above.

b) someone needs to go the the post linked earlier above about how POP on VM is broken and add a link to something like a) above.

So - back to spam. Has anyone ever experienced VM's spam filter auto-unsubscribing from things it thinks are spam?

Worse, I now note there are 7 emails in my VM webmail spam folder. They have not been pulled by gmail to either my gmail inbox or put in gmail's spam folder. At least 4 of them ARE NOT SPAM!

1. How do I set up VM webmail to bypass its spam folder and let such spam be pulled by gmail anyway? I'd rather let gmail filter spam seeing as VM's filter is clearly not as good. I check my gmail spam box regularly so can rescue anything it misfiles.

Log into your VM webmail and under Spam settings change the radio button to Flag a message as SPAM but deliver to inbox.

You'll still have to delete unwanted messages manually though.

https://www.virginmedia.com/help/virgin-media-mail-email-spam-settings

2. How long does VM keep things it has decided to put in its spam folder and not let POP pull across? I now suspect that it has been shoving stuff in its spam folder, stopping gmail from pulling them across and then deleting them - i.e. I never saw any of them - for a long time.

From the above link:-

Deleting SPAM from the SPAM folder

• On the first of each month, any messages in the SPAM over 30 days old are automatically deleted.
• If you manually delete messages from the SPAM folder, they are moved to the Trash folder.
• Any messages in the Trash folder that are over 7 days old are automatically deleted.
• To immediately delete messages, empty the Trash folder.

Have I somehow misunderstood what is going on here? 

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[george57l]

Thanks for all that Sololobo - most helpful, indeed.

In answer to some questions you posed in passing:

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@Sololobo wrote:

If you're predominantly using gmail why not change your subscription email address to your gmail one in favour of your VM one, and ignore VM email altogether?

Because my ntlworld address (for it is one of those!) goes back many years and I use it for many services/purposes where I choose not to reveal my uncommon surname (which is part of my gmail address) as well as some very long-standing purposes I have no wish to alter. If I had to stop using the ntlworld address it would be a mammoth task to figure out everywhere it was in use and I'd be bound to miss some. Yeah, I could wait till they arrive in my gmail inbox and go find the source and switch them to a gmail address individually as they arise but that is not always going to be convenient - and I should not have to!

Gmail can only import mail that is in the inbox of your 3rd party account. If you want to import mail from folders you have to gradually move the messages to the inbox of your 3rd party account and, if you really need to, label them as they arrive in your Gmail account. 

To add a third-party email account to Gmail, follow these steps:

1. In Gmail, go to Settings > Accounts and Import.
2. Under Check mail from other accounts, click Add a mail account.
3. Once you enter the email address, Gmail will probably pre-fill some information; supplement the password and select your preferred settings. Check the pre-filled information (if any) is in line with the details provided above.

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This confused me slightly. I am already pulling VM (ntlworld) mails to gmail so I know how to set all that up (the points 1-3 above). I guess it makes sense gmail only pulls from the inbox, though. I'd never even considered VM was flagging stuff (however erroneously or accurately) and moving it from the inbox. I seem to recall that part of my decision to get gmail to pull VM mail was the amount of spam I was seeing from the ntlworld address, and that gmail would actually deal with it. (But that was a very long time ago. I wouldn't be surprised if when I started with ntlworld it didn't even have a spam folder to move things to!)

I'm certainly not going to manually move mails to the VM inbox from other webmail folders here to enable them to get them pulled by gmail.

Log into your VM webmail and under Spam settings change the radio button to Flag a message as SPAM but deliver to inbox.

You'll still have to delete unwanted messages manually though.

https://www.virginmedia.com/help/virgin-media-mail-email-spam-settings

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Thanks - that is the key info I needed (apart from the IMAP settings). This way I don't have to manually come to VM and check spam and manually move it to inbox for gmail to deal with. It will all be in inbox and gmail can deal with it. I will be interested to see if gmail takes note of the VM spam flag or not. Hopefully not and will put them in my inbox unless it thinks it needs to apply its own mostly correct filtering. If it does, and sends VM flagged spam to my gmail spam folder, well I check gmail's spam folder very day or two, so at least I'll have it in gmail and can mark it as not spam (and maybe gmail can be trained re these emails - who knows?) 😉

Thanks again. I'll mark your post as a solution

(PS I wish this forum software had the ability to selectively quote. To much editing needed to wrangle that here - every time I used the quote tag on an extract of your reply, the darn thing added the entire post again.)

PPS So I eventually found the slightly unintuitively signposted spam settings panel and decided to take the option to just turn off all spam filtering. That way it all goes to my VM inbox and on to gmail, and I don't have to worry about whether VM's spam flag will or will not be actioned by gmail. I can just let gmail do its thing. 🙂

[george57l]

Well, this is depressing.
Edited gmail's settings for my ntlworld address so as to use IMAP, edited port number as above, everything else was double-checked (no username or password typos), ticked the use SSL box
and this is what I got

Hey-ho  Back to POP for me until I get to the bottom of this...

[Sololobo]

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@george57l wrote:

Well, this is depressing.
Edited gmail's settings for my ntlworld address so as to use IMAP, edited port number as above, everything else was double-checked (no username or password typos), ticked the use SSL box
and this is what I got

Hey-ho  Back to POP for me until I get to the bottom of this...

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https://www.howtogeek.com/school/gmail-guide/lesson9/
From the above link: Gmail can act as an email client and allow you to get email from other email accounts as long as they support POP access.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/import-manage-multiple-email-accounts-gmail/
From the above link: Much like a desktop client, Gmail can handle multiple email accounts. Moreover, it makes importing mail from POP3 accounts fairly easy, by automatically filling in the required POP server information for you.

IMAP access to third party accounts is currently not supported by gmail, only POP access is.

However the gmail app for mobile devices apparently does support IMAP access. When on a computer you would more than likely use the web based interface or another email client. There is therefore little or no motivation for Google to create "just another email client".

Apologies for not making this clear in my earlier reply.

[george57l]

Ah - thanks. So no IMAP on gmail and VM still can't provide a proper POP service. So all those old emails will have to stay on VM's servers.

Do I care? 

🤔

[jpeg1]

Why not use a proper email client like Thunderbird?  That way you have IMAP access to Virgin mail, Gmail and any others, all in one place and with safe offline copies of all messages.  

[george57l]

How do you know I don't? 

FYI (not that you really need to know this) I do use a 'proper' email client and it contains a full offline backup of all my email, pulled from gmail, which in turn pulls mail from several other email services I use (in addition to VM) as well as, of course, containing all my gmail address emails.

I use gmail as the consolidation service and main receive/compose/send facility because I can access it immediately on any of the 5 different devices I may find myself using - fully synchronised, down to the half-written draft I had to leave on one device and pick up later on another - without missing a heartbeat, and without worrying about access to my offline client or having to access/juggle multiple webmail locations.

But thanks for the suggestion.

[jpeg1]

Good morning george571. 

Like you I have multiple accounts.  With Outlook, Gmail,  yahoo as well as my own domain.  And like you I have a number of devices that access email.  Each device has its IMAP client and when I pick it up it shows me the current state of all my messages. 

Can you tell me what advantage is there in passing all emails through a third party, particularly one like Gmail that I must pay for by allowing it to record all my contacts?

[george57l]

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@jpeg1 wrote:

Good morning george571. 

Like you I have multiple accounts.  With Outlook, Gmail,  yahoo as well as my own domain.  And like you I have a number of devices that access email.  Each device has its IMAP client and when I pick it up it shows me the current state of all my messages. 

Can you tell me what advantage is there in passing all emails through a third party, particularly one like Gmail that I must pay for by allowing it to record all my contacts?

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It is george57l not george571

One advantage is not having to set up and manage separate IMAP clients - one for each device (whether or not they are the same client platform in each case). Another is that I can create drafts on gmail and later access them on any device and complete and send them from another device. Even if I do not have access to my devices I know I can get to gmail to see all my email easily enough on other devices I may temporarily have access to. I do not regard gmail keeping a copy of all my contacts as a burdensome 'cost'. I also find using the same interface everywhere (gmail) advantageous over having different email client software platforms to deal with.

My use case is mine and yours is yours. Advice to alter my use case is not really relevant to the original problem posted.