[Evolution-users] convert from POPj to IMAP

[Milan Crha]

On Tue, 2026-02-24 at 17:03 +0100, Reid Vail via evolution-users wrote:
> if she wants her IMAP mail to match her existing laptop contents,
> don't we need to clean up the server side? 

	Hi,
it depends what you consider the source of the truth, it can be the
current content you see in the web interface, or it can be what you see
in On This Computer/Inbox (the default folder where all POP3 mails are
added), or it can be something in between (as if there are messages you
want to retain from both server side and locally).

When you add the IMAP account, you'll see "<IMAP-account-name>/Inbox"
in the folder tree on the left, just below the On This Computer folders
(and not only Inbox, but any which the server advertises). Then you can
look side by side into the list of the messages and clean up the
content as you wish, directly in Evolution.

By the way, could it be that some of the POP3 messages in the Evolution
could be marked as spam or even deleted, thus they are not visible in
Evolution, but they are left on the server? They can be left in the
Evolution too, only in the Trash or Junk folders, not in the Inbox.
The POP3 account has a setting to leave the messages or delete them
from the server, no idea what you have there, but as you said there are
some messages on the server it's likely you have set to leave the
messages on the server. Evolution does not delete messages on the POP3
server after deleting it locally, unless it set to do it. The messages
marked as Junk are not modified on the server, that can do IMAP.

You can always File->"Back up Evolution data" and then add the IMAP
account and if anything bad happens with the messages under the On This
Computer you can restore the state from the time of the backup
creation. It does not apply to the server-side content, that is not
backed up by the Evolution.

I hope I did not confuse things even more. 

	Bye,
	Milan