Yesterday, I wrote about how POP was better than IMAP in at least some circumstances. Today, I will outline the steps to setup POP access to email on Mavericks Mail. I was surprised when I found that there was no straightforward option to do this. Mail assumed you would use IMAP!
I tried multiple things. I setup the IMAP account and then changed the incoming mail server to pop.gmail.com. This was suggested by someone on the internet. This did not work. The syncing continued. Also, mail did not get deleted on the server after downloading. That meant that the account was still behaving like an IMAP account! Then I found this link on the internet which had the trick! Here, I outline the steps to do this.
So, navigate to Mail Accounts. It should open up the Internet Accounts section of System Preferences. In the right panel, click on "Add Other Account...".
Make sure "Add a Mail account" is chosen in the next screen. Now click on "Create...".
The nest screen is the tricky part. This is where Apple hid the feature that allows you to be able to go to the screen that lets you set the account type. If you enter your correct email address and password here, Apple cleverly, rather too cleverly, figures out that you are setting up a Google account and assumes it is IMAP and goes ahead without bothering to check with you. Arrrggghhh!
So, what you do here is enter some wrong email address and some wrong password and then hold down the Option key!
The "Create" button magically changes to a "Next" button! Click on "Next" and you are shown the screen that allows you to specify whether you want the account to be POP or IMAP!
In this screen, you click on POP and then enter pop.gmail.com for the Mail Server, your full email address for the User Name and your password. Click on Next.
In the Outgoing Mail Server Info screen, enter smtp.gmail.com for the SMTP server and your full email address for the User Name and then your password. Click on Create.
Your account should be created as a POP account! In the Internet Account screen, the account description will show up with the wrong address you entered in the initial part of the setup. You can easily change that by clicking on the Details button on the right when the account is selected on the left and editing the Description field in the resultant screen.
I am now comfortably using my POP account and hopefully my email issues would be a thing of the past. I make sure I regularly backup my computer to prevent losing all my email in the event of a mishap. Yes, this problem is not there on IMAP. But then the other limitations make it worthwhile for me to take the risk!
I tried multiple things. I setup the IMAP account and then changed the incoming mail server to pop.gmail.com. This was suggested by someone on the internet. This did not work. The syncing continued. Also, mail did not get deleted on the server after downloading. That meant that the account was still behaving like an IMAP account! Then I found this link on the internet which had the trick! Here, I outline the steps to do this.
Make sure "Add a Mail account" is chosen in the next screen. Now click on "Create...".
The nest screen is the tricky part. This is where Apple hid the feature that allows you to be able to go to the screen that lets you set the account type. If you enter your correct email address and password here, Apple cleverly, rather too cleverly, figures out that you are setting up a Google account and assumes it is IMAP and goes ahead without bothering to check with you. Arrrggghhh!
So, what you do here is enter some wrong email address and some wrong password and then hold down the Option key!
The "Create" button magically changes to a "Next" button! Click on "Next" and you are shown the screen that allows you to specify whether you want the account to be POP or IMAP!
In this screen, you click on POP and then enter pop.gmail.com for the Mail Server, your full email address for the User Name and your password. Click on Next.
Your account should be created as a POP account! In the Internet Account screen, the account description will show up with the wrong address you entered in the initial part of the setup. You can easily change that by clicking on the Details button on the right when the account is selected on the left and editing the Description field in the resultant screen.
I am now comfortably using my POP account and hopefully my email issues would be a thing of the past. I make sure I regularly backup my computer to prevent losing all my email in the event of a mishap. Yes, this problem is not there on IMAP. But then the other limitations make it worthwhile for me to take the risk!
Comments
Now you can add, edit, or delete your email accounts the same way you always did (including POP accounts).
Thanks!!
Dan