IMAP brings many benefits over POP3 not least of which is that emails only exist in one location; the server. This avoids the problem POP3 can bring where downloaded or sent emails don't always appear on every device you use to access your emails. Many people use desktop PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones interchangeably and IMAP inherently keeps emails tidy.
Sadly however, using IMAP with BT Connect is not straightforward. Firstly, it's not a standard offering like with Google or Live Mail. You have to pay extra for it but, fortunately, at just under a fiver a month it's not a budget buster; just really, really annoying.
Anyway, pay up and you'll get IMAP and some additional email mailboxes but be prepared, BT Connect Support will deny all knowledge of IMAP and will steadfastly refuse to admit that you've got it or that BT Connect supply it. So you're on your own when it comes to setting it up.
Why this is the case only those responsible for staff training at BT could ever explain.
Putting all that to one side, to set-up an IMAP account on your Windows Mobile once you've sourced IMAP proceed as follows.
Touch Settings
Touch email + accounts
Touch add an account
Touch other account
enter your email address and password for the IMAP account you're trying to setup.
Touch sign in
when you get the "can't find details" message touch try again then touch advanced.
Touch Internet Email
Choose an account name (this is what will identify the email account on your start screen tile and other places) and enter your name (which will identify your emails to recipients).
Enter the incoming email server name; "imap.btconnect.com" (without the quotes) worked for me.
Select IMAP4 for account type
Enter the prefix part of the email address (the bit before the @) into username. Password should be repeated/carried down from the top otherwise re-enter it.
Enter the name of the server you will use to send out emails. (Not commonly realised but this can be any mail server you have credentials for; ie it doesn't have to be the one operated by whoever it is operates your Inbox server). For BT Connect I think "smtp.btconnect.com" (again without the quotes) might work. You can change this choice later and separately from your choice of email Inbox server provider.
If the smtp server you choose doesn't require additional authentication remember to turn it off. This might cause a problem for people using different operators/servers for in mail and out mail where the credentials (username and password) are different as there doesn't seem to be any way to set them. Make sure they are the same would seem to be the answer here.
Hopefully saving all the above will see your IMAP email account synchronise and then go about its business. You can check that you've got IMAP up and running by opening the account, touching the three dots, touching folders and touching show all folders. You should see the expected folder structure.
I sense that BT Connect are up to something involving Microsoft Office 365 but I am not sure what it is or what they have in mind. I expect explanatory emails will arrive eventually letting us know what they intend.
Clearly, for the future, we need email address portability in the same way that we have it for (mobile) telephone numbers. None of the email service providers give much in the way of service and they have all had their major outages/security problems and so on. But being able to avoid having anything to do with BT would be one major advantage moving to gmail or outlook.com would bring and, at the same time, would make it possible to move away altogether from BT Connect as broadband provider. This, given BT's appalling service, poor product knowledge/support and excessive pricing would be a triple win.
At the moment the hassle of changing email address means I am forced to stay with them. It would be nice to have a free choice between Virgin and BT; even nicer were there, one day, 3 or more operators to choose from.
