1

Have a rebuilt IMAP mail server which is missing emails for a time period. I have tried to search but only found articles about migration. Question is, will outlook and thunderbird etc sync such that it deletes locally the mail which it no longer finds on IMAP server, or will it just ignore it?

wcndave
  • 115
  • 4
  • In Outlook in depends on the settings. look here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/restore-deleted-messages-when-using-an-imap-account-4559a297-4d46-47e7-bfbf-71287b1935ed – marsh-wiggle Nov 20 '18 at 07:19
  • But this is for when you delete on the client. When messages are deleted from server, the client then removes them. So if you restore a 48 hour old backup, mail on the client from the last 48 hours gets wiped by the client! That's what I want to avoid. – wcndave Nov 20 '18 at 08:07

1 Answers1

1

That's how imap works. The mails are stored on the server and the email client only shows a copy. (After deleting a mail on the server, caching mechnisms of the email clients may deleay that process for a while, until the mails are also deleted in the email client)

Outlook offers a backup mechanism where emails are archived in a separate PST file.

If you use the IMAP server of your ISP you may set up your own mailserver for backup purposes (look at hmailserver).

wcndave
  • 115
  • 4
marsh-wiggle
  • 2,075
  • 4
  • 26
  • 44
  • There is some extra behaviour which helped here. When exporting from Outlook to PST file, then syncing, emails were deleted on client as per the answer. However when importing the backup into Outlook, the data was copied to IMAP server. So it's not _just_ that client shows copy of IMAP server, IMAP server reflects changes / deletes / moving _and_ new mail on client side. This saved the day in my case. – wcndave Nov 21 '18 at 06:35