POP3 Sources

POP3 sources download email messages from a POP3 server. Each attachment in a message is considered a distinct file. The body of a POP3 email message is not considered a file, so an email message with no attachments is considered to have no files.

The fact that an email message may have multiple attachments makes POP3 sources unique from the point of view of Collect Only New Files and Delete Original processing. For example, if an email message has two attachments:

• report1.txt
• fig1.gif

and a task specifies that only *.txt attachments be downloaded, then only report1.txt will be processed. MOVEit Automation will note (in the POP3 host’s corresponding State File) the fact that this report1.txt has been processed, and that fig1.gif has not been processed. Subsequent attempts to download *.txt files from this source will not collect report1.txt if Collect Only New Files is checked.

If Delete Original is checked, this message will not be deleted, because some other task may wish to download *.gif files. If some other task does download and successfully process fig1.gif, and Delete Original is marked for this task, then the task will see that all attachments for this message have now been processed, and the task will delete the message.

The ramifications of this processing are:

• Messages containing attachments with filenames that do not match any masks from any POP3 sources will never be deleted, even if Delete Original is checked in some or all sources.
• Messages containing no attachments will never be deleted, because they will never be processed.

It is therefore a good idea to periodically manually check the list of messages waiting on the server for this user, especially if the server is Internet accessible and therefore likely to receive unwanted bulk email.