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How do you auto-forward all IMAP mail?

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app103:
I don't need any type of webmail extensions to get my mail from my IMAP accounts, or send mail from them. They will work in any email client that can handle IMAP.

The problem I have is automatically forwarding everything that comes in to another email address. I tried it with OE and it didn't work because the stuff from the IMAP accounts don't end up in the main inbox. They end up in 4 seperate IMAP folders (1 for each account), which each have their own inbox subfolder.

OE can't apply rules to those other inbox folders, just the main one, which my email never hits. I have even tried manually dragging & dropping them to the main inbox folder, and then applying rules, but it did nothing. No mail was sent out.

Does Thunderbird handle IMAP folders differently?

Carol Haynes:
How does your mail get to the IMAP accounts (are they fixed email addresses that you must use or are they associated with you web hosting account?). If they are related to your webhosting account you could perhaps redirect the mail by changing the mail server you use.

Another method would be to use Yahoo mail which includes email forwarding. You could use the web based email as your IMAP style access from anywhere and have all your mail forwarded to one central mailbox which you can collect in your mail app via POP mail.

Works well for me - I have 4 Yahoo email address - 3 feed into the fourth - so I never have to look at those 3 at all - just the fourth which has all my mail. I then use POP to grab that mail into my mail client (you can choose to leave a copy of the mail on the Yahoo server when you download via POP if you want to keep you mail in both places).

Yahoo mail also has the advantage of providing "Address Guard" disposable addresses the hide your proper email address when you want to register somewhere but either don't want to receive emails from them (in which case you can delete the email address when you no longer want to receive mail on it) or monitor the source to see if they send out spam - works great and means you can limit access to your main account for websites that behave badly without screwing up all your other contacts.

app103:
How does your mail get to the IMAP accounts (are they fixed email addresses that you must use or are they associated with you web hosting account?). If they are related to your webhosting account you could perhaps redirect the mail by changing the mail server you use.
-Carol Haynes (May 24, 2007, 07:30 PM)
--- End quote ---

Fixed email addresses. I can't change the mail server I use.

Another method would be to use Yahoo mail which includes email forwarding. You could use the web based email as your IMAP style access from anywhere and have all your mail forwarded to one central mailbox which you can collect in your mail app via POP mail.

--- End quote ---

Yahoo is not an option. These are email addresses that I have had for about 8 years. I can't just dump them in favor of something else, which is why I need to forward the mail.

Your ideas on how useful Yahoo can be, expresses my feelings towards gmail, and the reason why I want to forward this stuff to my gmail account if possible. (I use only the webmail though)

Carol Haynes:
How does your mail get to the IMAP accounts (are they fixed email addresses that you must use or are they associated with you web hosting account?). If they are related to your webhosting account you could perhaps redirect the mail by changing the mail server you use.
-Carol Haynes (May 24, 2007, 07:30 PM)
--- End quote ---

Fixed email addresses. I can't change the mail server I use.
-app103 (May 24, 2007, 11:49 PM)
--- End quote ---

Are the email addresses based on your domain name or totally separate?

My domain name management company has the option of web forwarding so that I can redirect my emails anywhere I want.

If they are totally tied to a domain that you have no control over then I am not sure there is any easy way to do it if the company doesn't support forwarding.

There are a number of companies that will collect email from your email accounts and forward them to another account. I looked at this a while ago (before I had a domain name) but can't remember the company names I considered. They weren't free though.

One last thought is can you access this mail via a POP server as well as IMAP - in which case you can set up you gmail account to collect the email from your other accounts automatically. Just go to Settings link and the Accounts tab. You can then set up POP collection addresses. See http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=%67mail&hl=en_GB&answer=21288 for details.

app103:
I have no control over the domain...can't set up any sort of forwarding there.

I have IMAP but no POP. Until Gmail supports fetching mail from IMAP accounts, it's not an option to let them handle it for me. I wish it was an option. :(

If there is some sort of email client that can handle IMAP, grab my mail, and forward it to another email address, and do this automatically through some sort of rules I can set up, this would be fine with me.

But I don't want to go trying a million email clients just to find out they work as ineffectively as OE. That's why I am asking here.

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