Continuous downloading

[steveob]

Hi

I am using Windows Live Mail in Win 7 on three machines, main desktop, laptop and netbook. Using IMAP and not POP3. The laptop and netbook keep on wanting to download everything, literally thousands of messages every time I open Live Mail. It takes hours!! and presumably eats in to my base 2gb allowance. The messages are already there so why does it do this? Is there some setting I have missed? I don't want to uncheck "leave a message on the server" as that would stop me from seeing older emails if I log in using webmail on a different PC.

Any suggestions gratefully received.

[Isitme]

I don't want to uncheck "leave a message on the server"

I think this is your problem. If the message is left on the server it will download each time you log on if you have deleted it from your local PC.
Do you have any particular reason for using IMAP? This is really only useful if you are accessing the mail server from different PCs. It does not look like you are doing that.

[steveob]

Thnks for the reply Isitme. Am using IMAP as it was recommended when I changed to Sky to keep different PCs in synch. What I don't understand is why it wants to download every email again to the laptop and the netbook each time I log in to Live Mail. It downloads every email, not just those I have deleted but they only appear once. I have three email addresses with Sky and two old ntlworld addresses and it seems to download the lot. One of the pains with this is that if I want to send a reply, the Outbox waits until everything has been downloaded before sending. Aagh

[PaulSky]

IMAP will do that to sync what is on the server to what is on the PC, it should only have to do it once and then just track changes. This may also be the reason why you are using more bandwidth than you thought to be honest.

[Isitme]

It downloads every email, not just those I have deleted

It will not be downloading the email if it is present on your PC. What it is doing is downloading the headers and comparing them to what you have. If any particular email is present on your PC it will do no more, if it is not, it will download it, even if you have had it and deleted it. Have a look here for some ideas on how to configure your email. - http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ou...706811033.aspx

[steveob]

Thanks again for the replies. It may be getting clearer but why does sky mail not know that I have already downloaded them?!? Checking several thousand each time seems like a waste. Can I safely just abort it? Will read the ms link when I have time.

Thanks again