My friend uses PMail for about 18years, as a mere user .
She gets her mail using POP3 to Pegasus, using the setting "leave on server", to also enable reading her mail from the smartphone. Worked for many years.

Now somehow Pegasus seem to "have lost" the "last read counter value", meaning, when she calls for new headers, it grinds through > 5k mails. The latter is no problem in it self, but these mails represent about 8GB of data, so my suggestion, simply let it read all these mails new and delete the "unread", to get the counter right, is really only a last resort.

TL,DR: Can i, and how, set the value for POP3 last read message #?

I'm no expert in using POP3 these days, but I once found that my ISP deliberately reset my mailbox if I left too much mail on the server.

You don't say what ISP/Mailserver is involved, but I would check if their rules may have something to do with this issue.

I have had this happen numerous times in the 20+ years of using Pegasus Mail. I assume it is caused by corruption of a .PM3 file which keeps track of downloaded messages (one .PM3 file for each POP3 host). I don't know the exact cause nor do I know of a way to avoid allowing all messages to download and then cleaning up afterwards (I download all unread mail and also leave it on the server).

On one occasion, a download of all messages occurred on three subsequent POP cycles before Pegasus Mail settled into normalcy. After that, I started routinely (about every 3 months) using the web interface of each mail hosts to empty the inbox into a different folder.

Brian,
thx for this. In the meanwhile she managed to get all mails down (again) and clean up
But now there's a new problem: way down in the folder list there are two folders with names in some asiatic charset and a negative value for # of messages! Trying to open one, PM simply dissappears.
Looking from explorer, the files are more than 2GB - so i suspect this to be the culprit. (BTW, PM runs from a 16GB stick...)

She doesn't care for the content of these files, so wants me to remove them - but i'm by no means Pegasus literate, so: Is there a recommended way to get them away, without producing new problems?

Or, alternatively, as she is still with 4.7, if i install a new 4.8 to another stick, how do i copy the folders whe wants to keep to the installation?
Had a look to the new help file but didn't find at first glance usable directions.
Many thx in advance!

If she doesn't care about the contents of those two folders then I would first try to delete them from within Pegasus Mail.
If she is running Pegasus Mail in List mode then select one of those folders (single click) in the Folder list and click the Delete button in the toolbar of the Folder list window. If that works, do the same for the other one.
If she is running Pegasus Mail in Preview mode then first switch to List mode and then follow the steps above. Once done, change back to Preview mode.

Post back if that doesn't work. Deleting the folder files using a file explorer is the other option but I hope it won't come to that.

FWIW, doing a new install and then trying to copy folders and other data to it would be tedious so is a last resort.

Hi Brian,
thx for ultrafast response.
After she removed the preview, deleting the folder still wasn't working - but right click and re-index worked, throwing a ton of messages re "message seems not to be an email" - but she could mark the entries in the right pane, delete these, and finally remove the folders.

Now her PM starts and stops as fast as it used to be

Next time i see here we'll let the 4.8 update run and then hopefully all is "up2date" again.
Have a fine weekend - and thx again for your help!

I wasn't much help on this one. You guys figured it out on your own. Glad you did. I would hold off on updating to 4.8 though. There are a few bugs in it will be fixed in 4.81 to be released soon we hope. I recommend waiting for it.

You gave "the" hint, which led to success

Re 4.8, ok, then we will wait a bit - no hurry.

BTW, i had a go in the (new) help and wondered a bit: is "search" really not implemented?

No search. The closest you get is the alphabetized index. The manual is a pdf so is searchable. Both sources are excellent but can be slightly different so whenever I feel the need to research something I look in both place. Sometimes you will find a tidbit in one that is not in the other.

Ah, ok - so it's not my stupidity
Will follow your advice re both sources...