How do I stop auto-purging?
 

I tried to find this answer online so I wouldn't embarrass myself with a stupid question, but alas, here is my stupid question:

I had problems a while back with FastMail purging the trash on my tablet. Y'all helped me fix that, but now it's started doing it on my PC. I don't want it to do that. It only started doing it recently, and I didn't set it up to auto-purge. If I had, I'd know how to make it stop.Online, I am told to go to advanced settings. I can't even find that! :rolleyes:

So, how do I get FM to stop auto-purging my trash?

Hi Noclue!

First, please have a look at Settings > Folders. Is there auto-purging set for your folder? If so, it would be shown below the folder name.

If there's no auto-purging set in your FastMail settings, it is most likely that one of your IMAP email clients like Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, etc. is emptying your folder. In that case you'd have to check your mail client settings.

If you're talking about your inbox that gets purged, then it also could be that you've set up POP retrieval to delete mails from the server on download.

Hope this could help you solve your problem?

Cheers,
Michael

All I see when that can be customized in my trash folder is whether or not I want it to be visible. Nothing about discarding, purging, etc. I must be looking in the wrong place?

I do not have any email clients. I'm set up with IMAP, not POP.

It's a mystery to me.

There should be "Show advanced settings" under the visibility options. There you'll find the auto-purging.

Oh, DUH! I am always afraid to click on anything. I fear I will mess something up and never find my way home again...

OK, auto-purge was NOT checked. All that was checked is something about duplicates.

Okay, then please give me one last try: Go to Settings > Password & Security. There you'll find a section called "App Passwords". Do you see any entries there? For example like this:

No passwords were entered anywhere, but I did find an ancient recovery email address that I can't remove. The "remove" button is grayed out. You may be onto something!

Okay, so then I can't tell you why your folder gets auto-purged. That shouldn't happen according to your setup you described.

The other thing, if you want to remove or change your recovery email address, you simply have to enter your FM password on top of that page. After that, the 'Remove' button will be clickable.

OK, thanks for helping me out. At least I can get that old email off of my account. All was not wasted! I think I'll treat this like a kid or pet with minor illness symptoms: Wait three days, and see if it clears up. :D It really doesn't make sense, though. Not a huge worry.