Imap or pop3? meaning and configuration

It is possible to unify the administration of your email account through IMAP, which allows synchronizing the emails seen on the PC and on other mobile devices, in the past this synchronization was not necessary, since you only checked email accounts at through the computer at that moment.

The POP3 protocol works wonderfully, however, technological advances have opened the access roads to these accounts and now it is possible to view them from other sources and if you still have POP3, you surely have problems in account administration.

Replace POP3 with IMAP to synchronize your email accounts

Unfortunately, the default POP3 protocol has a small but important problem, since if you carry out any activity from a computer, you will not be able to see it on a mobile device, for example.

It is a configuration that has become obsolete with the high possibilities of connection from different access points and opens the doors to IMAP, a configuration that allows synchronization through a server, so when you delete a message from your PC, this configuration It does the same on the server and when reviewing from a mobile device it will also appear as deleted.

If you are not one of those who need to check your email from various points, you can continue with POP3, but if you require synchronization, we will leave you a few simple steps to re-configure your accounts and eliminate this annoying protocol once and for all.

We recommend reading our guide: How to configure mail in Windows 10

For Outlook 2016 accounts, the POP3 configuration comes as a certain protocol and cannot be modified directly, for this you must open a new account and delete the old one:

1. Open Outlook and go to "File", then "Account Settings" and again "Account Settings".

   

   When you open the settings window, select "New." In the new accounts wizard, select the option "Manual configuration or additional server types" in the lower left corner.

   

   In the next box, the POP3 or IMAP options will appear, select "IMAP". Now you will return to the new accounts window where you must fill in the corresponding boxes, verify that the account is of the IMAP type. old account to new account.Finally go back to account settings and remove POP3 rendering.

From now on, your account will be synchronized every time changes are made and thus you will have the same information about emails, from any additional device or equipment.

On the other hand, if you manage a mail account based on a web service, either by entering through an application downloaded to the PC or directly accessing the Internet, these are the steps to follow for Gmail accounts:

1. Access your Gmail account, in the upper right corner select "settings". Select "Accounts and import tab". In the next window select "Add another email address", in the "Send message as" option, later click next and follow the steps in the wizard. Select “Check email from other accounts”, then click “Add a POP3 email account” and continue with the wizard.

   

Unlike the accounts determined on the computer, as in the case of Outlook, the web-based accounts with their POP3 configuration allow immediate synchronization regardless of the access point to the account.

Other email web accounts like Yahoo! or Hotmail, they also have POP3 protocol that act as servers, however if you handle emails through the account application it will only be synchronized when connecting to a data service. In the same way, the configuration for these accounts is similar to that of Gmail that you should modify if you have this type of problem.

As always, we recommend reading our tutorials for Windows and computing.