Hide but keep on server

[someone]

How exactly does the "hide" portion of Hide but keep on server work?

I ask because I had an interesting experience.

I have my accounts set up as imap on my phone. I often use "Hide but keep on server" for messages I wish to download later and keep on my pc. I assumed that when they are later downloaded to the pc and therefore no longer exist on the server that they would also disappear from the hidden phone list. But that doesn't happen.

I recently selected to unhide my messages on the phone and found all these old messages still there even though they were long gone from the server.

Is that the way it should be? I know there is an option somewhere to delete messages from the phone when they are no longer on the server. I did not implement that because I sometimes want to keep a few read messages on the phone for future action. But an option to remove "hidden" messages when they no longer exist on the server would seem logical to me. Am I off track?

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Aqua being a mobile app -- and looking only at a limited number of recent messages -- the state or even existence (or disappearance) of messages beyond the "messages to sync" window won't be updated.

If you find this worrysome, you may want to increase the account's "messages to sync" setting, just be reasonable please (the default is 25, something like 100 is fine, but values like 1,000 are for those who check mail just a few times a day).

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Yes, you are right. All messages beyond the "message to cache" are erased from the device, hidden or not.

[someone]

Thank you. Those explanations help.

I will work with the sync numbers. I had left them on the default values.

For the hidden messages to be removed when they are no longer on the server I also need to select the "remove deleted messages" box, correct?

See image

[someone]

I unhid my messages purely out of curiosity to see what was still there. I was surprised to find so many still hidden on the phone long after they had been downloaded (removed) from the server to my pc. I had been under the impression that "hide but keep on server" meant "hide on the phone" - (so as not to clutter my message list) - but don't delete from the server so these messages can still be downloaded from the server to the pc.

My logical assumption was, once these hidden messages are no longer on the server, there is no need to hide them on the phone either !

I was cleaning up the phone of unnecessary data which is why I unhid the messages on it expecting to only find messages I hid which were *still on the server* because they had not yet been moved to the pc.

I get a lot of mail and manually download new messages to the phone several times a day, but I only download to my pc every one or two days. Trying to figure out the best settings.

On the phone I use :
1. "delete immediately" to get rid of messages I will not want to later download to my pc.

2. Hide, to remove messages from the phone message list that I will want to later download and keep on my pc.

3. Read but not delete on the phone for messages I read but want to keep on the phone because I need to do something more with them.

Does that make sense?

[someone]

Yes.

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Well, as I already tried to explain, the app doesn't look at messages beyond the "messages to sync" setting, and won't be be able to discover that some of them had been removed from the server.

Messages beyond the "messages to keep" setting are removed from the device, hidden or not.

"But desktop mail apps don't work this way, they work in a way that makes so much more sense"

Yes. They can afford to.

My Thunderbird profile (data directory) is ~500 megabytes. This is for an account with about 4,000 messages.

If Aqua did something like this, would I be burned at the stake or impaled?

[someone]

I understand. I'm just trying to make things work my way.
 
My phone is a fast quad core nexus 5 with 32 G of memory. I use imap on the phone with Aquamail and pop on my laptop with Thunderbird.

I use 5 accounts on the phone and I get about 300+ emails a day. Most are junk, automatically put in the spam folder on the server by filters on the server. I read the emails I want from the rest (in the smart folder) and then usually delete them permanently so they are no longer on the server.

I also have a unlimited download phone data, but the email boxes are on my own owned domains (I don't use Gmail) and have limited server space capacities. I therefore use my pc to keep emails I want to store.

Of the emails I read, I may "hide"  5-10 a day so they don't clutter my smart folder mail list. The idea is to leave them on the server so I can download them later to my laptop every 2-3 days.

I think most people do the same so far but I also download the spam folder to the phone spam folder to manually delete its contents so my mailboxes don't become full.

I hope this makes sense.

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Yes, I understand.

>> Messages beyond the "messages to keep" setting are removed from the device, hidden or not.