Okay, I made my Apple (Mac) mail the default by going into my mail program. Whew! I wish my mail would go into both programs at once, though. I guess maybe that's not possible. I can't understand why an Apple Mail tech expert would tell me that it would.
The tech told you that because if you have a
properly behaving IMAP account and your client application(s) are properly configured for IMAP you should see all the emails on any number of email client applications on any number of computers and/or devices. I can even delete the account in Mail on OS X or iOS and when I set the account up again, voilá there are all the messages and folders just as they had been before I deleted the account. They are not stored on the computer rather they are resident on the IMAP server.
I have both Apple Mail and Airmail on my Mac as well as Apple Mail on my iPhone and my iPad. I can open all of these clients on all of my devices simultaneously and see my entire email stream on each and every one of them. If I delete a message on say my iPad, after a few seconds to a few minutes the deleted message will disappear on all of the other devices and clients. Conversely if I send a message from say Airmail on my Mac within a few seconds to minutes it will appear in the Sent mailbox in Apple Mail on the Mac and on both the iPad and iPhone. The length of time it takes for a given status change to propagate to all the clients and devices depends on the refresh rate set in the various clients.
If Thunderbird, which is a well known and very reputable email client, is actually capturing all the messages to the exclusion of Mail I can only surmise one of two things is true…
- ...either the account is setup in Thunderbird as a POP account
- ...or the host is a POP server and not IMAP.
