I have been given an IMAP email account to share with one other person doing the same job as me by a company. I would expect us both to see all incoming emails and sent mails to/from either of us - isn't that what IMAP is for?

 

In my case I am noticing any emails older than 5 days are getting removed from server and no longer can be seen on my email app - I use Outlook but notice same on Windows Mail client or a generic web2mail interface where there are only newer emails in recent 5 days shown.

 

Is this something the client server is deleting as I cannot seeing any settings in the client email apps to delete emails - and how should I be saving all in and out emails so I don't miss any even when I am not looking at them for periods of more than 5 days?

Yes this must be an email client setting rather then the server deleting old messages on its own will.

You should check "another person"s email client settings, I believe their client does that.

 

Also you could try using POP3 protocol instead of IMAP, if your email server allows that. POP3 does not delete local messages on sync if they were deleted on server. Just make sure to setup downloading full message contents instead of header only.

Most IMAP/POP clients have settings whether to keep the email on the server, and if keep for how long.  The "other person" needs to reconfigure the client they use.

At the clients that I use you can define the sync period - 1 day, several days, 1 week,... So the client only shows emails for this period. Has nothing to do with the emails that are really on the server. 

Thanks guys. I am using Office Outlook LTSC 2021 ver and cannot see any option in settings for IMAP account where could define sync period or to remove emails off of server. From what I can see it should just sync with server 100% every time and I would expect all emails to stay on the server. I will check the other guys email client settings when I meet up again and maybe get to chat with the IT guy in charge of the server if I am really lucky.

16 hours ago, Hamus Yaigh said:

Thanks guys. I am using Office Outlook LTSC 2021 ver and cannot see any option in settings for IMAP account where could define sync period or to remove emails off of server. From what I can see it should just sync with server 100% every time and I would expect all emails to stay on the server. I will check the other guys email client settings when I meet up again and maybe get to chat with the IT guy in charge of the server if I am really lucky.

I don't use Outlook. But per this helps

 

https://help.protectedtrust.com/change-how-much-mail-to-keep-offline-in-outlook