Which email client can handle large move/delete IMAP operations without glitching?

[Ichinisan]

It doesn't seem to matter which email client I'm using (Outlook Express, various versions of Outlook, Windows Mail, Windows Live Mail, etc): Trying to move large amounts of messages will always generate errors. Sometimes it takes a while (and a few more error messages) before it realizes which messages really exist and in which folder they exist. Sometimes messages get duplicated when a move operation fails, which is just miserable.

Whether I only work with headers, or allow the client to cache all content before attempting anything; email clients always fail when I select thousands of messages to move or delete. It doesn't seem to matter who the email host is either.

A simple task becomes EXTREMELY tedious because I have to select a few dozen email messages at a time. When I'm doing this, I'm often assisting someone with hundreds of thousands of messages. Trying to clean/organize something could result in a bigger mess due to these problems.

Does any IMAP client ever get this right? I can't recall trying it with Thunderbird, but I don't want to even try unless someone can tell me if it does a better job.

 

[Ketchup]

I've done it with Thunderbird and Outlook (Office Outlook, not some freebie version) without too much headache. All my mail accounts are IMAP.

 

[mikeymikec]

Who is the mail provider? In my experience, at least in the UK, some are problematic.

 

[Ichinisan]

Who is the mail provider? In my experience, at least in the UK, some are problematic.

Tucows

Pretty sure I've experienced this with Google's IMAP support too. Move too many messages at once and the client throws an error message, takes a while to settle down, and you find messages duplicated between the source folder and the destination.

 

[mikeymikec]

I've never encountered tucows for mail provision, so no idea.

Google's mail support is a bit weird all-round IMO: For example on POP3 (when set up for the first time, so thousands of messages may be in the mailbox) it often does things like having the client download a load of messages, and when it finishes one might think that the entire mailbox has been downloaded; however if you 'get mail' again, another lot comes in.

 

[jkauff]

Just an uneducated guess, but the server might have an easier time of it if you move all the messages to the Inbox, then run rules/filters to re-assign messages to their proper folders. I think that would essentially delete the folder data from the message records and allow the server to create new folder data.