Virgin Media Community

[stevem999]

Hi there, would be really grateful for some help. I use Outlook 2016 using POP3 settings for my BY email. Having had a damaged laptop I have just set up my new laptop using all the same settings as before (I had photos of all the email account settings) but whenever I try to send/receive my email, it is trying to downloads tens of thousands of my old emails, many of them duplicate times. I already have them on my machine in a PST folder of course.

If I cancel the send/receive and delete duplicate/old unread emails that I don't need, then the next time I try to send/receive, Outlook just kind of sits there saying 'Preparing to send/receive'. If I hover my mouse over the taskbar that displays that message, another line pops up saying 'Outlook is sending or receiving information'. But nothing seems to happen.

My suspicion is that because I have deleted thousands of emails from my client, this is causing Outlook to send messages back to VM servers telling it which emails not to collect next time (albeit not true POP3 because VM ditched that a few years back) and then the VM servers are just not handling all the 'deletion' requests (to hide those emails, not delete them as per VM policy). Does that sound likely, and can anyone assist in how I can prevent Outlook trying to download thousands of emails OR is there a way to tag emails via VM webmail etc to tell my Outlook mail client not to download them please? Thank you.

[stevem999]

Just had a thought - if I archive all my BY emails in webmail, will that hide them from Outlook when it comes calling for new emails? I believe the archive automatically takes any emails older than 90 days and I only need about the last 6 weeks downloading to my Outlook, so would archiving solve my issue by 'hiding' anything older than 90 days please?

[用心棒 · Accepted solution]

Yes that would reduce the number of emails to download; POP3 only queries Inbox content.

FYI: whilst Virgin Media's non-standard POP3 implementation is an issue it is not the cause of why your newly setup account is trying to re-download emails. This is likely due to the email client's option to leave download emails on the server for N days and/or until deleted from client being set

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[stevem999]

Hi there, thanks for this. I did resolve it with the archive method, but I'm intrigued by your other comments about settings for leaving on the server for N days and/or deleted from client.

I do indeed have the latter setting enabled because in the past I have found that the only way to stop emails being consistently re-downloaded has been to put the setting to 'delete' (or in reality hide) emails when I delete them from my client. It has been a number of years since I tried without but are you saying that I don't need this setting and whenever my client downloads emails, then the VM server 'hides' them from my client anyway as soon as they are downloaded the first time?

Thanks

[用心棒]

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@stevem999 wrote:

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I do indeed have the latter setting enabled because in the past I have found that the only way to stop emails being consistently re-downloaded has been to put the setting to 'delete' (or in reality hide) emails when I delete them from my client. It has been a number of years since I tried without but are you saying that I don't need this setting and whenever my client downloads emails, then the VM server 'hides' them from my client anyway as soon as they are downloaded the first time?
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Yes that is correct; those setting suppress the delete that would have occurred after the email was downloaded.