All my friends are pretty tech savvy but no one seems to know the answer to this question.. Using the IPhone when you select show me (for example) 25 email messages - you get the last 25 messages in your inbox.. Now in comes three new emails what happens to emails 23,24,25 that are no longer shown? Are they still being saved off somewhere taking up space?? And if so, how do you delete them??
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Can anyone explain how emails are stored? (only 25 or all?)
- Thread starter ggarriso
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They are saved on Apple's MobileMe servers (or whatever e-mail service you are using). The iPhone just displays the 25 most recent to save bandwidth. To delete the rest you'd need to display more on your iPhone and delete them or log in to their web interface and delete them there (or use Mail.app or whatever).
The answer is also the same if you don't use MobileMe -- the iPhone doesn't send a delete request to the server (IMAP, POP, Exchange) unless you actually delete the message manually, AFAIK. There is a "remove after xxx days" option, but I don't think that deletes the server copy either.
The net result is that if you're using your iPhone as your only device to check mail, your mailboxes on your servers will slowly fill up. If, like most of us, for your accounts with mailbox quotas, you're reading them quickly on the iPhone and then dealing with them in detail (including disposing of them) on your main account (e.g. I read them on my iPhone, but I move them out of my inbox to my saved mail folders in my work Outlook), then you'll be fine. For accounts like GMail where you have large amounts of space, it isn't worth worrying about.
