POP or Post Office Protocol is how most of us check and send our email. The problem with the POP standard occurs when we use more than one computer. You can easily set both computers to sync all of your incoming mail by setting the preferences to leave mail on the server for a certain length of time. Doing so allows time for both computers to get copies of the new incoming emails. But after that specified length of time expires, the messages are deleted from the server forever.

But what do you do if you want to sync all of your sent messages on more than one computer?

I used to run into this problem all the time. I’d want a document that was on my office computer. I’d remember that I had attached that document to an email and sent it to a client. If only I could get to that sent email, I’d have the attachment as well.

Finally I switched over to the IMAP protocol (Internet Message Access Protocol). This protocol keeps all of your emails on the server. When you set up a computer to use the IMAP protocol, it pulls all of your emails from the server. If you have more than one computer, both computers will mirror the emails on the server. If you get a new computer, there’s no need to try to copy your old email files from your old computer to the new one. You just enter the IMAP preferences into the email client, and the email client syncs up with the emails on the server (received and sent messages and attachments).

IMAP also syncs up the status of the emails. So if you’ve flagged messages, replied to some, or not opened others on your work computer, that same status will show up on your home computer.

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