Can Gmail delete the trash on my POP account?

April 20, 2007 9:45 AM

Gmail appears to have failed me. AskMe, show me the light. I use Gmail to retrieve my email from my vanity domain via POP. All is good, except for it appears that Gmail does not actually delete emails on the POP account when you delete and trash it in Gmail. Now my vanity domain email account is maxed out with several months worth of deleted email & spam clogging it.

Am I missing something here with Gmail? Do I have it set wrong?

I like leaving my email on my server, so letting Gmail be the only location for my email storage is not a solution for me.

I've considered setting the MX record and letting Google host the mail itself, but since the vanity domain is a family name, it involves changing the account info for other people besides myself.

Should I simply go back to Thunderbird/IMAP? Thanks in advance for your ideas.

posted by Argyle to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

you can either have gmail delete the email when it nabs it or leave it. there is no in-between so you can't syncronize your mailboxes.

your suggestion of changing the MX record to google would eliminate the email being on your server (which you said you like), so rather than going through the hassle of moving everyone why not just let gmail delete it from your server?
posted by noloveforned at 9:55 AM on April 20, 2007

to extend it a little further - you might be able to set up a separate account on your server (or just set up thunderbird) and have it poll your gmail account via POP for messages once a week... assuming you regularly clean up your gmail, this should archive the messages you haven't deleted (and a few that you haven't read yet that you might delete)
posted by noloveforned at 9:59 AM on April 20, 2007

Response by poster: I guess the question is really whether I can commit to Gmail holding my mail and not having it actually on my own hosted server.

Thanks for the ideas. Now I just need to RE-delete a few months worth of spam.
posted by Argyle at 10:07 AM on April 20, 2007

If you were using Thunderbird you have a mac, right? Have you tried apple's Mail that comes with your iLife? I've been using it with 3 different POP accounts (school, yahoo, vanity) for several years and haven't had any problems. The mailboxes DO sync, so whenever i save or delete mail, that is reflected in the various mailboxes of the original accounts. I strongly recommend.
posted by LizardOfDoom at 10:21 AM on April 20, 2007

Response by poster: Lizard, thanks for the suggestion, and I have used Thunderbird in the past. Thunderbird is multi-OS and I use Windows.

I've been looking for a way to get Ajax-sexy style webmail for my personal email.
posted by Argyle at 10:34 AM on April 20, 2007

I set up my personal domain mail using google apps: https://www.google.com/a/

so now they are my primary MX provider. I have the google-mailhosted personal domain email forward to my main @gmail.com address but keep my reply-to @mydomain.com.

A similar drawback to your problem applies, however: every so often the google-hosted @mydomain.com account fills up (no autodelete in gmail, boo hiss) and email stops getting forwarded. An added bonus is that the messages get passed through two layers of gmail spam filtering.

Good luck!
posted by mwhybark at 4:00 PM on April 20, 2007

Am I missing something here with Gmail?

Sounds like you have a misunderstanding of how POP works. When Gmail grabs the mail from your vanity domain, then and only then do you have the option to leave or delete the mail on the vanity domain server. Once the mail is on the Gmail servers, deleting it there will have no effect on the state of your vanity domain server. POP does not do mailbox synchronization. Fo that you need IMAP.
posted by oncogenesis at 5:14 PM on April 20, 2007

Sadly gmail does not support IMAP.

Maybe within your domain option there is the provision to forward the mail instead. I do the same thing, and there is an option within my domain mail that says delete mail after forwarding or some such. So when people mail the domain it gets forwarded to my gmail, and deleted from the domain.

Perhaps this is an option?
posted by oxford blue at 7:22 PM on April 20, 2007