After a new install of Leap 15.0(from 13.2) I restored my home directory that included my Mail file. Thanks to posts on these forums I was able to get KMail to recognize the file instead of the default in .local, and I have access to all my mail. But at the step of setting my Receiving(and Sending) configurations, I find myself with choices that I don’t really understand anymore. I have used KMail since 1998, and always used the POP protocol (as far as I know). Download the mail, delete it from the server, do any composition or replies in KMail and upload them back to the server for delivery. Now when I go to the Receiving configuration I am no longer offered a POP3 alternative, it is just IMAP. This is Gmail… My understanding of IMAP is that the mail remains on the server, and is thus accessible from a variety of devices. The only other device I have is an Android smartphone I acquired sometime in 2015. Naturally it carries Gmail, and I have occasionally used it to read/delete my mail while traveling (but never any composition, I hate phone keyboards). If I go to my Gmail account settings, it says that ‘Pop is enabled’ for all mail since July 2015, which I believe corresponds to my acquisition of the smartphone. So if my email is accessible from multiple/two devices, should not IMAP be enabled? I am still interested in the old model of download, delete, compose, upload that I have used for years. Do I give this up, somehow, by going to the IMAP protocol for Receiving in KMail? And why doesn’t KMail offer me POP3 anymore?
Reading the KMail documentation did not reduce my mystification much on these questions.
While I appreciate both your replies, I really didn’t understand what they were suggesting. However, I seem to have stumbled my way to a working configuration. My initial configuration involves one (default)identity and one account ‘Local Folders’ . The Local Folders account connects to/accesses my old Mail(maildir) file, which contains existing inbox/outbox/trash/sent/drafts/etc… folders in addition to the many folders I have created over the years. By explicitly creating an additional account under my gmail login, and defaulting to allow KMail to find settings on the Internet, it automatically found the appropriate servers at Gmail (offering me either IMAP or POP3 for receiving, SMTP for sending) and created an account. This account now successfully receives and sends emails from/through my gmail account as I expect, although I still get the orange banner in the Composer window.
I really haven’t a clue why this works, and why the additional account does make use of my old Mail file(as I wanted!), even though I can see of no reason for it to be connected to it. I feel uncomfortable with this, but I imagine that feeling will pass rather quickly.
It does, offer POP3 but, no longer by default – IMAP is currently the “preferred” e-Mail protocol – also for my ISP, even though, they still offer POP3, which I prefer to use …
Therefore, the clue is to use “User Defined” …
[HR][/HR]The real point of this addition to your question is, why do you believe that, you have to use Google’s Gmail as your default e-Mail account?
You seem to have a long standing ISP who presumably provides an e-Mail Server as part of you ISP connection fees. Or, have you been using another e-Mail Server over the years?
The point is, why move your e-Mail over to another Server when the Server you’ve been using over the years is part of your monthly household payments?
Especially as, the other Server is something which is only part of the Mobile Telephone’s Operating System’s licensing agreement …
[HR][/HR]The same thing applies to folks who use the Redmond products and believe that, as part of the Redmond licensing agreement, they have to move all their e-Mail over to “outlook.com” (or in my case “outlook.de”).
[HR][/HR]The wonderful thing about KMail and my (German) ISP is that, I can easily manage many e-Mail accounts – my ISP allows up to 100 e-Mail accounts as part of my DSL and VoIP telephone bill – yes, I have a Gmail account for my Android Mobile Telephone and, a Redmond account for the Windows running in a Virtual Machine but, they’re both auto-forwarded to same “Google/Redmond user name” e-Mail accounts located at my ISP … >:)
Also, the e-Mail account for my KDE Bug Reports and for the openSUSE Bug Reports and this Forum and, LinkedIn and whatever, is not the same as my private “normal” e-Mail account …