Delete mail on old iPhone without loosing it on new iPhone

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
My wife has updated her iPhone and we are preparing the old one (6s) for resale.

She does not use iCloud mail, but instead uses Telus mail. She is NOT logged into iCloud on the old iPhone.

If she deletes an item of mail from her (Telus) inbox on the 6s, it immediately disappears from the new iPhone as well. I can't recall where you set the choice that deleting mail from a device does NOT delete it from the (IMAP) server (and hence the new iPhone and MacBook Pro.)

Help please? How is Telus mail being synced between devices?

Dave
 

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
Further to my query I did a lot of searching on the web, and the standard answer seemed to be "that is just the way IMAP works", but I was not convinced. I seem to recall having more control than this, in macOS at least.

So off to my iMac, Mail and clicked on Preferences . Accounts > Mailbox Behaviours where I found "Erase deleted messages" and a pulldown where I had it set to "After one month". Then into my mail for that account, found an old piece of email that wasn't critical and deleted it from the iMac inbox. On Telus webmail it moved from the inbox there to Trash (but not yet really gone.)
I was able to drag it from there back to the inbox and it showed up again in my iMac's inbox.

So for the problem at hand, I hoped to take my wife's old iPhone 6s and delete all the mail and shut off that Mail account. Then go to her webmail and move all the mail in Trash back to the inbox there and it would be available again on the new iPhone (and her MacBook Pro).

What I was hoping for was the same sort of setting in iOS (delete Trashed mail after 1 month) to allow the same steps.

What we actually did was go to her MacBook Pro, create a new mailbox "On My Mac" and then drag all the emails from her inbox there to that new mailbox, removing them from the "care" of Telus. We could then delete all the emails on her 6s, (which deleted them everywhere and shut off her Mail account there. Finally my wife has the option of dragging all those old emails from the newly created mailbox back to her inbox (on the MacBook Pro) if she wants to work with then there (and get then back onto the new iPhone) but for now she is happy to just have the old email safe in the new mailbox. (and do away with the old stuff on her new iPhone altogether.)

But if anyone knows if iOS can offer up the same setting "delete after one month) that macOS offers, I would love to hear about it.
 

chas_m

Well-Known Member
A simpler solution would have been to simply erase the iPhone 6s (which are going to have to do anyway to prepare for sale). This would’ve prevented any email from being deleted off Telus’ server. She could have then managed her email from the new phone.

On iOS there is no option to preserve IMAP email. As you’ve discovered, the way IMAP works is that email is in sync across all devices — so if you delete an email off one device, it’s deleted off all the others.

When working with Mac and iOS devices, and the notion that you want to keep some emails but not others, consider the Mac to be “home base“ for your email, and set up filters or rules that “file“ the wanted email, either manually or automatically, into a mailbox created “on your Mac“ to preserve them. In short, don’t delete emails on iOS devices unless you intend for them to be gone from all devices.
 

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
A simpler solution would have been to simply erase the iPhone 6s (which are going to have to do anyway to prepare for sale). This would’ve prevented any email from being deleted off Telus’ server. She could have then managed her email from the new phone.

I considered that but wasn't sure if erasing the phone (and getting rid of all the emails off it that way) would have the same result as erasing all the emails off it. I didn't want to risk "going for broke" and played with the other methods one email at a time to see the result. I got there in the end, it appears.

Thanks for clarifying what happens when you simple erase the phone (with the appropriate reset).
 
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