Download headers and messages for POP3 accounts

When working with your POP3 e-mail account, you can choose to download message headers or complete messages, including attachments. Once a message is downloaded from your e-mail server, the default setting is to delete the message from the e-mail server to free up space in your e-mail account with your Internet service provider (ISP).

Downloading headers from your POP3 server can be useful if you receive large e-mail messages and you want to selectively download those items. For example, when traveling with a laptop computer, you may be using a slower connection and not want to download large messages or attachments.

Show Manually download headers

If you have not already added the POP3 account to the Microsoft Outlook profile, add it now.
How?
1. On the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts.
2. Select Add a new e-mail account, and then click Next.
3. Select POP3, and then click Next.
4. In the appropriate boxes, type the information given to you by your ISP or e-mail administrator.
On the Tools menu, point to Send/Receive, point to the account, and then click Download Inbox Headers.

Show Automatically download headers

If you have not already added the POP3 account to the Outlook profile, add it now.
How?
1. On the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts.
2. Select Add a new e-mail account, and then click Next.
3. Select POP3, and then click Next.
4. In the appropriate boxes, type the information given to you by your ISP or e-mail administrator.
On the Tools menu, point to Send/Receive, point to Send/Receive Settings, and then click Define Send/Receive Groups.
Under Group Name, select a group that contains your POP3 account.
Note If you have not created any custom Send/Receive groups, select the All Accounts group.
Click Edit.
Under Folder Options, select Download headers only.

Note If you have more than one account in a Send/Receive group, and you want full items for some accounts and headers for others, create another Send/Receive group. In one of the Send/Receive groups, put all of the accounts where you want to download headers only. In the other, place the accounts where you want all items.

If you have not already added the POP3 account to the Microsoft Outlook profile, add it now.
How?
1. On the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts.
2. Select Add a new e-mail account, and then click Next.
3. Select POP3, and then click Next.
4. In the appropriate boxes, type the information given to you by your ISP or e-mail administrator.
By default, when you add a POP3 account, Outlook downloads full items, including attachments, and then deletes the item from the server. If you changed this setting to retrieve headers only, you can switch back to full items.
How?
1. On the Tools menu, point to Send/Receive, point to Send/Receive Settings, and then click Define Send/Receive Groups.
2. Under Group Name, select a group that contains your POP3 account.
  Note If you have not created any custom Send/Receive groups, select the All Accounts group.
3. Click Edit.
4. Under Folder Options, select Download complete item including attachments.
Do one of the following:
Manually get new messages
- On the Tools menu, point to Send/Receive, point to the account, and then click Inbox.
Automatically get new messages
1. On the Tools menu, point to Send/Receive, point to Send/Receive Settings, and then click Define Send/Receive Groups.
2. Under Group Name, select a group that contains your POP3 account, and then under Setting for group name, select the Schedule an automatic send/receive every x minutes check box, and then enter a number between 1 and 1440.
  Note If you have not created any custom Send/Receive groups, select the All Accounts group.
  Your POP3 e-mail server will be checked and new messages downloaded according to the schedule you specified.

After you have manually or automatically downloaded headers, you can mark items to be downloaded from the e-mail server.

In your Inbox, right-click the header, and then click Mark to Download Message(s) on the shortcut menu.
You can select multiple items by holding down CTRL while clicking the messages.
On the Tools menu, point to Send/Receive, point to the account, and then click Process Marked Headers.

When you download messages, they are deleted from the server; therefore, any other computer or profile you use will not be able to retrieve them from the server.

Note If you move a header to another folder (for example, by moving it manually or as the result of using a rule), and then mark the header, the header won't be processed when you click Process Marked Headers. Only headers in the Inbox are processed.