Quickly check mails without downloading them

Retrieving all mail headers from emails that are currently stored on the mail server can be useful for several reasons. The first is that it is possible to delete mails without having to retrieve them completely.
This can come in handy if mails with huge attachments are blocking the retrieval of other emails, or if you are victim of a mail attack and notice that hundreds of thousands of emails arrive in your mailbox per hour.
The option to retrieve all mail headers can be useful to speed up the retrieval of important messages. Very helpful if you use your mobile phone to go online with your notebook and pay by the amount of Kilobytes that have been downloaded.
A second use is to fight spam before it is retrieved and downloaded to the local computer system.
Basically, it gives you control over all emails that have not yet been downloaded to your local system. You can delete mails that you do not want to download to speed up the transfer for mails that you want to download.
Pal Mail is a tiny secure application that can retrieve the mail headers of an unlimited number of accounts. Its main feature is the ability to delete mails right on the mail server. Retrieved are the mail headers and the messages but not the attachments of mails.
Every mail can be marked for deletion which effectively deletes it from the provider's mail server. The consequence is that your primary mail client will not retrieve the messages that have been deleted before.
Pal Mail is a standalone application that does not require any dlls or other files to run. This makes it an idea software for a portable device.
Update: The program has not been updated since 2002. While it may still work on some systems, it is likely not working on newer versions of Windows. What you can use instead is a portable version of Thunderbird if you like to use a portable email client.
Another interesting option is to sign in to the web mail client if available, and either access messages directly using it, or delete messages that you do not want your desktop mail program to download.
There is also an option to configure Thunderbird to only retrieve headers and not full mails. This can be useful as it offers the same advantages as the Pal Mail software: select the mails that you want downloaded, and delete the rest.
Please note that this only works for POP accounts and not IMAP.
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You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!