How does Pop3 for multiple locations work? (Fetchmail)

Question

I use POP3 and Fetchmail to download my gmail at home and on my work machine. But I've noticed that, although I'm using --keep to prevent it being deleted on the server, usually the messages I download at work will not show up at home. This leads me to a question I've been searching out for a while: how does POP3 "mark" a message so that, while left on the server, it isn't downloaded multiple times on one computer, and how can I download all my new gmails (or whatever other email pop3) for the day at home after having downloaded them at work?

Answer 1

You have to specify in gmail settings that you do not want your emails to be deleted. If this option hasn't been set, gmail sees that a message has been pop'ed and will remove it. Gmail's pop implementation is a little bit different from the standard pop email servers.

UPDATE: According to Gmail's instructions(https://support.google.com/mail/answer/47948?hl=en), if you want to download your email with POP3 on multiple clients, you have to change some more settings:

Setting up 'recent mode'

In your POP client settings, replace '[e-mail]' in the 'Username' or 'Email' field with 'recent:[e-mail]'

Once you enable recent mode, please be sure to configure your POP client to leave messages on the server according to the instructions below:

Outlook or Outlook Express: on the Advanced tab, check the box next to 'Leave a copy of messages on the server.' Apple Mail: on the Advanced tab, remove the check next to 'Remove copy from server after retrieving a message.' Thunderbird: on the Server Settings tab, check the box next to 'Leave messages on server.'