Converting Mac Mail Accounts from POP to IMAP?

I'm just discovering IMAP for keeping my email synced. Is it possible to convert my 5 Mac Mail accounts from POP to IMAP or do I really have to start 5 new accounts & then deal with importing all that email to the new ones somehow? I've tried experimenting with changing the incoming mail server manually form pop.gmail.com to imap.gmail.com to no avail. Any suggestions/instructs are appreciated. Also, seems that, at least for gmail, the recommended Apple Mail client pref settings aren't current with Mail 3.5. Any guide to where mailbox behaviors should be set to work correctly for gmail & other mail servers (I'm using gmail, comcast, godddy and a private mail server) would be great!

first you have to make sure that the email providers for those accounts offer IMAP. if they don't you can't do anything. gmail does as you mentioned but most email providers only offer one type of access. if an email provider supports IMAP then you have to create a new account for IMAP for the email address. there is no way to change the type of an existing account. once you do set it up it will sync with the server so if your mail was kept on server (that's the default for gmail POP I think) you don't have to do anything. It will sync automatically. If you remove POP mail from server (default for most POP providers) then you'll have to move your messages from the existing local POP mailbox to the imap mailbox. It will sync with the server and upload all those emails back to the server. That might take a long time and a lot of bandwidth if you have a lot of stuff so it's up to you if you want to do this. You can simply move that mail to a local mailbox in "on my mac" section. after your imap account is set and has all the mail you need, you can delete the POP account.
Lastly see this link for gmail imap setup (also check out the link to recommended client settings)
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=81379&topic=12814

Similar Messages

Is there a way to change a Mail account from POP to IMAP?

Greetings,
Is there a way to change a Mail account from POP to IMAP so as not to have to create a new account?
Thanks

GMail offers both without you have to pick one or the other? If so, and changing the server doesn't work then you will need to re-establish the account in Mail. Don't delete the old account (or you will lose any downloaded messages) - there's no reason why you shouldn't have both available. You can move the messages from the POP account to another folder and then delete it.

Change the mail account from POP to IMAP

Hi All,
I have been looking around on how to switch a 10 years old email account from POP to IMAP for quite a while without success.
I've noticed that if I delete a POP account all emails are deleted, and despite all the backups I'm concerned even creating a new IMAP account and move back into all the emails.
What do you suggest?
If I move all the emails into a local folder, are these email "disconnected" from the POP account so would I be able to delete the POP account without incur in a mass mail deletion?
Thanks
Andrea

Having Mail automatically change account type from, say, POP3 to IMAP is not going to happen, in my opinion. With it would come great risk of losing existing data between the cracks, and I don't think Apple of other developers will do that. There would be no one size fits all in the IMAP server world, and communication to change On My Mac mailboxes to folders residing on the server needs forethought.
Looking at it another way, it would be like moving your bank account from one bank to the other, via only web access.
The headaches are not the product of Mail or other email clients, but rather understanding the difference between POP and IMAP, and that many people do not understand those differences is demonstrated every day on this forum.
Ernie

10.5.8 Mac Mail switch from POP to IMAP

I have Mac Mail 3.6 on a 10.5.8 and was originally set up as a POP account pop.telus.net - so now trying to change to imap.telus.net and the outgoing mail was mail.telus.net and trying to switch to smtp.telus.net. Was on the phone for 2 hours with telus and now I can't get any emails at all and the only thing I can see that they were able to change was the outgoing server on my existing POP account to smtp.telus.net and now it is offline. And I can't send or receive emails at all. They want me to uninstall mac mail - but everything I search is telling me I have to have the original DVD to re-install..... PROBLEM is that everything was installed on the computer before I even got it from the apple.com SO now what do I do? I know I have to upgrade to 10.6.8 Snow Leopard before I can get OS X Mavericks - so wondering in what order should all this be done.

Not all email servers are equal. Some are best with POP. There are other free accounts you can get that will work great with IMAP. Once you get to Snow Leopard you can get a free iCloud email account but contacts and calendars won't sync in Snow Leopard. Gmail might be a better option until you move to Mavericks.
You can try this to reset Mail to defaults.
Quit Mail
Go to you User's Library and find the Mail folder.
Name it MailXX
Next in the User's Library, go to Preferences folder.
Drag the com.apple.mail.plist file to the Desktop.
Log out under the Apple in the Menu bar.
Log in
Open Mail
You can put the original files back if the new Mail does not work correctly.
While your computer might meet the requirements, also check your applications for Mavericks compatibility here: http://roaringapps.com/ AppleWorks and Microsoft Office 2004 are two that do not work on Lion and higher.
How much RAM? Apple says 2GB RAM but your computer will be slooooow. Moving to Snow Leopard and sticking there might be the best option for your 2009 Mac.

How do I Change my cox incoming mail server from pop to imap

I Have a macbook pro with OS X Yosemite. I want to change the incoming cox mail server from pop to imap. I did it on my ipad and iphone but I can't do it on the mac pro. Do I need to delete the existing account and do it as a new account or can I edit the server?

It depends on what Cox has set up. Usually, you need to create a new account using IMAP. You don't want to delete the POP accounts because all your old mail is stored on your computer. You'll want to import that using Mail's Import option.

HT201320 How do I change an iphone email account from POP to IMAP

I just open an email acoutn with Blue host with an IMAP setting. Now I am trying to put the new email and servers on my Iphone3. All was going well till the POP acccount problem came up at the end. How do I change an iphone email account from POP to IMAP? or do I?
Please go step by step if possible. Thank you,
Irene
PS If I cannot use Imap setting on my Iphone, how do I return the settings to the original for POP?

Hello Willon63,
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
For more information, take a look at:
iOS: Troubleshooting Mail
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts3899
Delete the affected email account from your device.
Tap Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
Choose the affected email account, then tap Delete Account.
Add your account again.
Have a nice day,
Mario

Accessing my .mac mail account from 3 different ways. What stays on server?

I access the mail on my .mac mail account (on the .mac mail server) three different ways.
My laptop uses the Mail application and downloads new messages that are not filtered out as spam. Downloaded messages should not be automatically deleted from the server - at least I don't think they are. They were all erased at one point. Maybe my error. But not now. at least since 4/2/08.
Why?
Because later in the day I may want to access my account email from a remote computer via the .mac account page on any browser I might be using. I'd want it all to be there.
Or I may want to download my email to my Palm Treo 700P using Versamail and read and respond to my email that way. I certainly would not want email downloaded to my Treo erased from the server because I would want to access that same email to store on my Mail account on my laptop when I return to the office.
How do I coordinate among all 3?
I think I would like all mail put in the trash via my Mail application on my desktop to be erased from the server after - say - 2 weeks. That's it. Only via the Mail application.
Never via the Treo and Versamail.
Never via my .mac account email application via a browser on another computer.
Steve

You can access a .Mac account as an IMAP or POP account.
If you access your .Mac account as an IMAP account with the Mail.app on your Mac, and as an IMAP account with your Palm Treo, all server stored mailboxes will be kept synchronized with the server automatically with both email clients used, and when accessing the account via webmail using a browser.
You can store the account's Drafts, Sent, Trash and Junk mailboxes on the server with the Mail.app, and you should be able to do the same with the Palm Treo's email client.
Send a message via the account with the Palm Treo, and the sent message will be available in the account's Sent mailbox automatically when checking the account with the Mail.app on your Mac, and when checking the account via webmail using a browser, and vice-versa.
An IMAP account is designed to be accessed with an email client on multiple computers or devices. A POP account is designed to be accessed with a single email client on one computer or device.
With an IMAP account, messages in all server stored mailboxes remain on the server until deleted, or until moved to a mailbox stored locally on your computer. All received messages will remain on the server in the account's Inbox mailbox - available when checking the account with the Mail.app, and when checking the account with your Palm Treo, and when checking the account via webmail. Read a received message with the Mail.app that is not deleted, and the message will be marked as read when checking the account with your Palm Treo, and vice-versa.

Migrating gmail account from POP to IMAP in Apple Mail - avoid duplicates?

I have a massive gmail account full of three years or more of messages. On OS X Mail I have a POP account that I have been using since the beginning, and I have always left a copy of messages on the gmail server, so it has three years worth on there.
So my question is, I want to disable the POP account and add an IMAP account for gmail, but how can I do this without the IMAP downloading allllll of my messages over again? Because I literally do not want to have TWO copies of each message from the past three years... oh heck no.
There has to be a solution to this. I don't know if the new version of Mail is smart enough to see that a copy of a message already exists, and not download it again -- somehow I doubt it's that smart. Is there a way on gmail to mark all of the mail that's on the server currently as being "not-for-download"?
I'm being forced into this because for whatever reason, one of my two Macs decided it's not going to download POP messages that the other one has already downloaded, even though the messages are still on the server!!

I found this great set of mail AppleScripts:
http://homepage.mac.com/aamann/Mail_Scripts.html
It includes one script to delete duplicate messages. So if we can't find a way to do this right, then I'll just download all the duplicates then delete them. Of course I don't want to actually do that, lets call this the nuclear option.
So can anyone think of a way to make an IMAP account for my gmail without it downloading all the messages again that I have already downloaded?

4.2.1 changed my mail type from POP to IMAP. How to fix?

Since upgrade, Mail says my Yahoo account is an IMAP account and can't get my mail. My other POP account works fine. How do I tell my iPhone to make the account a POP account again?

If the email is still stored on the Server, it you don't need to. However, that is normally not how POP works.
Make new Mailboxes in the On My Mac section and move the emails from the POP folders into those.
That will move all your email out of the POP account. You can move it to the new IMAP account after you set it up, if you want.

Changing Mail Account from POP3 to IMAP

I have to change hosts for my domain and primary e-mail address, and as long as I need to recreate my account, I’d like to change it from POP3 to IMAP. How would I change the account settings in Mail so that all my previous e-mails aren’t deleted when I change protocols? Thanks.

As I don't know whether what you want to do is possible or not, I would rather create a new account with the new settings and copy the emails from the old one to the new one (I think this will keep email dates correct). Then, after verifying that the new one works OK, I would delete the old one.

Change Account from POP to IMAP

Is this possible? I tried to in Mail -> Accounts but does not appear to be possible.

you can not change the type of an existing account. you'll have to make a new account. also, your email provider has to provide support for IMAP. if it doesn't, you can't do it at all.

Moving user from POP to IMAP

Hello
I'm switching all of my mail users from POP to IMAP. In most cases, I set up their IMAP setting in there mail client. Then I drag there POP messages (stored on their local machines) to the IMAP account. That has worked for most users. I have three users with a lot of local mail messages - about 10 gb. When I try to drag the mail folder over in Apple Mail, it starts to copy them. After a while, it just stops. The messages never get over to the IMAP server. (Their names are on the door, so I can't tell them to trim down their messages.)
My next thought was to convert the messages from Mail.app, copy them into the mailstore on the IMAP server, then reconstruct the mailbox. I have an app, Emailchemy, that converts Mail.app to following formats:
RFC-2822 mailboxes ("mbox" format or "UNIX-style")
Folders of individual RFC-2822 email files (.txt or .eml files)
Comma-separated value files (.csv files)
Maildir (qmail)
Maildir++ (Courier IMAP)
In a test account, I'v tried converting a single message to RFC-2822 format. After I reconstruct the mailbox, I see the header info, but the body of the message is blank.
Is there something that I am missing? Is there a better way to move those messages.
Thanks,
Henry
MacBook Pro 2.0 GHz 1 GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.6)

I've switched many users from Eudora - pop and Mail - pop to imap.
it's very easy. - just change the client setting.
we chose Thunderbird because it worked the same on both PC and MAC, and came with just enough options to make everyone happy.
if all the users are set to either pop/imap combo then only the clients have to make any significant changes.
having the pop option is great if you want your users to flush their mailbox and keep a local copy while you do updates.
I frown upon alternate imap boxes other than defaults. if the user needs more mailboxes they can create them on their local machine. That way we don't have to deal with long reconstructs for an individual user. -lots of small files in those maildirs.

Converting my Mail from POP to IMAP

I am considering converting my ISP email account in Apple Mail from POP to IMAP. I had never given this much (any) thought until I recently got an iPhone and noticed that the email account that it setup for my ISP email (Charter) was an IMAP one. This has created a little bit of a conflict and has sometimes resulted in my inbox or get mail on my desktop Apple Mail being "locked up" for a while when I have just previously read the mail on my iPhone. (I get the message on my iMac that my ISP email is currently in use by another mail client). I had never run into this problem before and I've read that it does happen and happens more often when you have both POP and IMAP clients trying to access the same mail server.
One question is do I just go into the accounts settings on Mail on my iMac and change the incoming and outgoing servers to the appropriated IMAP ones? Or should I create a whole new account in Mail and use the IMAP settings from the start? What will happen to the folders and subfolders I already have in my Mail program? Going forward with IMAP, will I be able to download the emails from the server like I have always done and categorize them into folders using Mail?
This is all kind of confusing right now. Thanks.
Steve M.

You're welcome.
Is there any harm in leaving my desktop Mail as is (POP account) and just realizing that I may experience an occasional "lock out"?
There is no harm with doing so, but I'm not sure why you would want to.
How do I release the email account from my iPhone?
There is no option for this.
I already have my data settings on the iPhone to "fetch" every hour--not to push. But does this apply to the IMAP account on the iPhone?
Push access for received messages applies to an email account that supports Push access. The following email accounts support Push access for received messages:
MobileMe
Exchange
A Yahoo account created with the Yahoo account preset.
"If" I decided to convert my desktop Mail account to IMAP, could I not just "add" the new account? Would I necessarily have to delete the POP account?
You don't have to delete the POP account, but you would want to make it inactive or disable the account with the Mail app - Mail > Settings > Accounts > Select the Account > Under the Advanced tab for the account settings deselect Enable this account.
If you want access to the locally stored messages in the POP account's Inbox and Sent mailbox with the iPhone's Mail app, you want want to copy the messages to a server stored mailbox or mailboxes after creating the account as an IMAP account.
Can I setup the account as POP on my iPhone and just keep it all POP? Or is this dependent on Charter's policies?
This depends on Charter, but I don't see why you wouldn't be able to access the account as a POP account with the iPhone's Mail app as well, but this will not get rid of the "locked out" problem on occasion.
A POP account is from the early dark ages of email account access with an email client on a computer when the overwhelming majority at the time had access to a single computer only - before there were laptops and laptops became mainstream, and before there were handheld cell phones much less cell phones in the smart phone category. Until the iPhone, phones in the smart phone category were primarily targeted and sold to the business/enterprise market, not to the consumer market. The iPhone changed all that - just look at all the copies and different phones in the smart phone category that surfaced after the original
Although it is possible to access a POP account with more than one email client, a POP account is designed to be accessed with a single email client only and includes a number of limitations that are not a problem with an IMAP account, which is specifically designed to be accessed with more than one email client.
There is no "locked out" problem with an IMAP account. You can store the account's Drafts, Sent, Trash, and Junk mailboxes on the server with the Mail app on your Mac, and the account's Drafts, Sent, and Trash mailboxes on the server with the iPhone's Mail app. The account's Junk mailbox stored on the server with the Mail app on your Mac will be available automatically when accessing the account with the iPhone's Mail app along with all other server stored mailboxes created for the account with the Mail app on your Mac or via webmail access for the account using a browser. You can transfer received and sent messages to additional server stored mailboxes by category with the Mail app on your Mac and with the iPhone's Mail app which will be reflected automatically with each email client. All server stored mailboxes are kept synchronized with the server automatically with each email client used to access the account. Sent a message with the iPhone's Mail app and the message will be available in the account's Sent mailbox with the Mail app on your Mac automatically and vice-versa. Read a new message with the Mail app on your Mac and the message will be marked as read automatically when accessing the account's Inbox mailbox with the Mail app on your Mac and vice-versa. Transfer a received message to a user created server stored mailbox with iPhone's Mail app and the message will be available in that server stored mailbox automatically when accessing the server stored mailbox with the Mail app on your Mac and vice-versa.
I keep the Mail app on my Mac launched and running 24/7 checking my IMAP account for new messages. I have the account's Junk mailbox stored on the server with the Mail app on my Mac, which is available automatically when accessing the account with the iPhone's Mail app and the same with my iPad 2. Any received message that is marked as junk and moved to the account's Junk mailbox stored on the server with the Mail app on my Mac is reflected automatically with the account's Inbox mailbox and Junk mailbox with the iPhone's Mail app and with the iPad's Mail app. The junk mail filter with the Mail app on my Mac is serving as the junk mail filter for the account with my iPhone and iPad as well - remotely since all server stored mailboxes with an IMAP account are kept synchronized with the server with each email client used to access the account.
NONE of this is available with a POP account.
If you have the option to access your email account as an IMAP account and you access the account with an email client on more than one computer or device, to me it is a no-brainer which way to go - IMAP, which is specially designed for this.

Mail: change Gmail from POP to IMAP without loosing old mail

My Gmail account setup in Mail is old enough to be POP. Want to change it to IMAP for easier syncing between Mail on Mac, iPhone and iPad. All instructions on Google site just say to delete the POP account in Mail and create a new Gmail IMAP account. Unfortunately, trying to delete the POP account immediately warns that all emails related to that account will be deleted if the account is deleted.
How do I make the change from POP to IMAP in Mail and still retain all my past emails on the Mac (most of them are long gone from Google servers)?
Thanks in advance.

The warning about the deletion of the mails of the account in question can only refer to the inbox. No email you have archived or put into a different folder will be deleted. If you're still worried back everything up before going ahead.

Changed email from pop to imap in entourage 2008 and apple mail and have lost a lot of messages

Changed email from pop to imap in entourage 2008 and apple mail and have lost a lot of messages. I am a rookie and don't know what to do to correct the situation

I found this great set of mail AppleScripts:
http://homepage.mac.com/aamann/Mail_Scripts.html
It includes one script to delete duplicate messages. So if we can't find a way to do this right, then I'll just download all the duplicates then delete them. Of course I don't want to actually do that, lets call this the nuclear option.
So can anyone think of a way to make an IMAP account for my gmail without it downloading all the messages again that I have already downloaded?

Converting Mac Mail Accounts from POP to IMAP?

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