How to Keep or Delete Mail From POP Servers
If you use POP and want to remove the deleted messages from the server, either delete those messages again from a computer or change the email settings so that the server deletes mail after it downloads to your phone. Here’s how to change those settings in the browser version of Gmail.
Delete Emails From All Devices at Once
When you access email from a POP server, the email app can’t make changes to the emails on the server. This is unlike IMAP, which controls the server emails from the device.
Keep Gmail’s copy in the Inbox: When an email is deleted from the phone, the message is removed from that device but remains in your account. The message stays on the server and can be accessed from any device.Mark Gmail’s copy as read: Deleted messages remain in your mail account, but the messages are marked as read. If you delete a message on your phone and then open Gmail on a PC, the message downloads to the PC and is marked to show that you read the message on another device.Archive Gmail’s copy: Emails remain in your account when you download or delete them from your device. Deleted emails are moved from the Inbox folder to an archive folder.Delete Gmail’s copy: Messages that download to your phone are deleted from the server. The mail remains on the device as long as it isn’t deleted. However, it won’t be available online when you log in to Gmail from a computer or another device. Use this option when you’re running out of available storage in your online account.
For example, if you use Gmail’s POP servers on your phone and you chose Keep Gmail’s copy in the Inbox, emails are downloaded to your phone and kept online. The messages are kept on your phone and on the server until you delete them. Even if you change Gmail’s settings to make the POP server delete Gmail’s copy from the server, the messages aren’t removed from your device. The only way to delete emails from all your devices at once is to set up each device with your provider’s IMAP server. That way, you can log in to any device that has direct server access via IMAP (your tablet, phone, or computer) and delete emails there. When messages are removed from the server, every device deletes the locally stored emails when the device requests an update from the IMAP server.
