Webmail and Your Mail Program Show Different Emails or Folders Print

The symptom

Webmail shows messages your phone or Outlook doesn't have, or the other way around. A folder exists in one place and not the other. Something deleted on one device is still sitting there on another, or read messages show as unread elsewhere. It feels like the mailbox is splitting into versions of itself.

None of this means mail has been lost. It means the copies are not synchronising, and the cause is almost always one of the settings below.

First, understand the baseline

Webmail always shows the truth. Roundcube works directly on the server copy of your mailbox, so whatever webmail shows is what actually exists on the server, right now. Your devices show their own synchronised copy, so every mismatch is a device lagging behind the server or configured not to follow it. That single fact does most of the diagnosis: when in doubt, webmail is the reference.

The usual causes

• The device uses POP3 instead of IMAP. The most common and most drastic cause. POP3 downloads mail to one device and, by default, deletes it from the server, so webmail empties out while the POP3 device holds everything, and nothing that happens on the device reflects anywhere else. Check the account type in the device's settings, our email settings and ports quick reference explains the difference and why IMAP is the right choice for anyone on more than one device.
• Sync is stale or stuck. An IMAP device that has been offline, asleep, or throttled by battery-saving settings simply hasn't caught up yet. Phones in particular delay mail sync aggressively to save power.
• Folders aren't subscribed. IMAP lets a program choose which folders it displays. A folder that exists on the server, and in webmail, may be unticked in the program's folder subscription list, common after creating a folder in webmail and expecting it to appear in Outlook.
• Special folders are mapped differently. If Sent or Trash was configured differently across devices, each device files its sent and deleted mail into its own folder, and you end up with duplicates like Sent and Sent Items existing side by side, each visible in only some places.
• The mailbox is over quota. A full mailbox can fail sync operations in odd, partial ways before it fails loudly, if webmail is warning about quota, fix that first via our article on full mailboxes and the mismatch often resolves itself.

How to fix it

1. Confirm the account type on every device: anything set to POP3 that shares the mailbox with other devices should be removed and re-added as IMAP, using the settings in our quick reference. Mail stored only in the POP3 program should be kept or exported before removing the account.
2. Force a sync on the lagging device: open the mail app, pull to refresh or press send/receive, and give a large mailbox time to catch up on Wi-Fi and power if it has been offline a while.
3. Check folder subscriptions in the program showing missing folders. In Outlook this is under folder view, IMAP Folders; in Thunderbird, right-click the account and choose Subscribe. Tick the missing folders.
4. Align the special folders. In each program's account settings, point Sent, Drafts, Trash, and Spam at the same server folders that webmail uses, then merge and delete any duplicate folders left over.
5. If one device still refuses to match webmail, the clean fix is removing the account from that device and adding it back via IMAP, which rebuilds its copy from the server. If the mismatch survives even that, open a support ticket and tell us which mailbox, which device, and what differs.

Good to know

Because webmail is the server copy, it is also your safest vantage point during any email problem: before assuming mail is missing, check webmail. If it is there, the mail is safe and the problem is a device. If it is not there, the mail never arrived or was removed, and the investigation starts at the server, which is where our other articles, and our support, take over.