POP: How do I read only the messages in the "Inbox" on GMail?

Question

Hi,

I'm busy evaluating the secure mail component and so far I've found it very easy to use so first of all thank you!

I'm trying to build a component that can listen to several types of mail box using mapi or POP3. During testing of my POP connection I've noticed that the get _client.GetMessageList(Pop3ListFields.Fast) function returns 100's of messages in my gmail account even though GMail reports only a handful in the actual Inbox.

Is it possible to restrict the POP client to read just those in the inbox?

Thanks for any help,

Paul.

Answer 1

It doesn't seem to be possible to restrict the POP3 client to read just the messages in Inbox. The POP3 protocol lacks capabilities to do that and we are not aware of any extension in GMail's POP3 protocol implementation that would enable this.

In GMail account settings, you can choose between "Enable POP for all mail" and "Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on", but this is almost certainly something else.

However, why not simply use the IMAP protocol to access GMail instead of POP3? IMAP is a more powerful protocol that understands multiple folders, so it is quite likely it won't suffer from the problem you describe.

Comments

Thanks - I suspected as much but I needed to check. We will also use the IMAP protocol, however I needed to confirm that we had made the most of the POP3 connection too. Thanks for the speed reply!