Emails Disappearing

[PaulP]

Hi!
I am having a problem with emails disappearing from both my Samsung Galaxy S111Mini and my Samsung Galaxy Tab e tablet.
Both of these devices and my laptop use IMAP
On the laptop the emails remain in the inbox but on the 2 android devices the emails disappear. Any ideas?

[ReuvenNY]

First, this posting belongs in Email Help section.
Second, in order to help you, please specify which email service you are using.

Moderator's Comment:

I am moving the thread to the appropriate sub forum.

[PaulP]

Thanks for your reply and sorry that I posted in the wrong place!!

I am using Thunderbird.

[janusz]

Thunderbird is not an email service, it's an email client.
Examples of services: live.com, yahoo.com, google.com, hotmail.com. In practical terms: it's what's to right of "@" in the email address.

[ReuvenNY]

Also what email client you are using on your Samsung (Android) devices.

[n5bb]

Are the messages disappearing quickly (within minutes or hours) or after a longer interval such as days or weeks? Many mobile devices only show recent messages (such as those received in the past few days or month).The time interval for display of messages and discarding old trash or spam messages can usually be changed by the user in a setup menu for that app on the device. For example, for the default email client on the Galaxy S III this is set up as follows:

Period to sync Email: Choose a period of time to maintain synchronization between your phone and email account.
http://eguides.sprint.com/support/eg..._settings.html

Bill

[PaulP]

My email address is paul@padmore.info

How do I find out which email client I am using on my Samsung Android devices? Presumably Thunderbird.

Hi Bill – the emails disappear almost as soon as I receive them. I have looked at your link but that does not seem to help. I have temporarily solved the problem by moving the emails into a dedicated folder as soon as I get them but this is not very satisfactory. Many thanks for your help. Paul

[janusz]

Originally Posted by PaulP

How do I find out which email client I am using on my Samsung Android devices? Presumably Thunderbird.

There is a name below the icon you use to access your email. Unless you installed a 3-party email application (most likely from Google Play), you run the default client Samsung installs on its Android devices.

[PaulP]

It just says 'Email' under the icon

[janusz]

Originally Posted by PaulP

It just says 'Email' under the icon

That's the default Android client.

[n5bb]

Originally Posted by PaulP

My email address is paul@padmore.info
Hi Bill – the emails disappear almost as soon as I receive them. I have looked at your link but that does not seem to help. I have temporarily solved the problem by moving the emails into a dedicated folder as soon as I get them but this is not very satisfactory. Many thanks for your help. Paul

Then some email client program is probably using POP3 to remove the messages. My guess is that Thunderbird is set up for POP3 rather than IMAP. If you are using multiple devices to view your email, you need to only use IMAP on each one.

Bill

[PaulP]

Laptop, tablet & phone all IMAP!!

[n5bb]

Originally Posted by PaulP

Laptop, tablet & phone all IMAP!!

You didn't tell us which email provider you are using, but I'm guessing from your email address it's email from the hosting company clook.net. If that is true, then you should have access to webmail, and this can help troubleshooting your problem. We still don't know how fast the messages are disappearing. You say "the emails disappear almost as soon as I receive them" but "I have temporarily solved the problem by moving the emails into a dedicated folder as soon as I get them...". This implies that the messages are gone within a minute or so, but you must have several seconds to move them. This is one of the most confusing things about your report, as well as the messages remaining on your Thunderbird email client even though they disappear quickly from both mobile devices.

There are a few things which might be happening:

• It's possible you have a filter set up on the Thunderbird email client which moves incoming messages or marks them as read or in some way which causes the other clients to then ignore the message. I recommend temporarily disabling any Message Filters you see in the Tools>Message Filters setup page in Thunderbird.
• Your Samsung Galaxy mobile device email clients might be set up to only display unread messages. The moment the message is read by any client or webmail it would then disappear. It's hard for me to tell from the online manuals if the standard email client in these devices has this feature. Be sure your mobile devices are set up to read all messages and not just ones you have not read. There might be a tool on the email reading page which applies an unread filter. For example, my iPhone has such a feature, and if I activate it all previously read messages are invisible, although they are still in the Inbox folder.

Here is what I recommend to troubleshoot your problem if my suggestions above don't work:

• Log into your email account via webmail using a browser.
• Set up both Android devices where the email reading page is visible and Thunderbird on the PC (in a different window from the webmail). So if a new email arrives you should see it in four places (although this might require refreshing some of these).
• Send yourself an email using Thunderbird or webmail. If your email services blocks emails from you to yourself, you will have to use another email service or get a friend to send you an email.
• The email should quickly appear in the webmail (although this might require using the refresh feature) and the three email clients. Watch and see what happens. Does the email disappear from webmail when it disappears from the Android devices?
• Next close Thunderbird. Be sure it's not running in the background. Then run the test again, sending an email to your account and watching what happens using webmail and on the Android clients.
• If new messages remain in the webmail display (after refreshing) but are still disappearing rapidly (in less than a minute) from only the Android devices, it would appear that something is set up on those mobile devices incorrectly.
• If new messages disappear from the webmail display, then it's likely that some POP device is logging into your account. For example, you can set up POP retrieval in a different email account which will remove new messages from your account. That's why POP is only recommended if you only use one email client -- by default POP removes new messages from the server, which means other clients (and webmail) won't be able to see new messages after the POP client does it's retrieval. The POP service doing this might be a web service which lets you read your emails in another service. 4
• The only way to know for sure that some device or service you have forgotten is using POP to remove messages is to change your email account password. If there is a special password for POP, you need to change that password. You should suspect this is the cause of your difficulty if you completely turn off both Android devices and Thunderbird and you still find that new messages are disappearing when you look at your account via webmail.

Bill

[PaulP]

Thanks for all the detailed instructions. I have done all you suggest and everything seems to be OK now - nothing has disappeared (yet!)

Thanks again - we will see what happens from now on.

Paul