Manually Delete POP3 Emails Without Accessing Webmail or Using Email Client

If you have an internet account with your ISP, chances are you already have POP3 email account and you check your emails using Outlook Express, Windows Mail or Microsoft Outlook. It is definitely convenient using an email client to download all emails but it pisses me off when someone forward an email containing a huge attachment which takes very long to download. It is even worst when I am at my mum’s place where the connection is slow and unstable… If the connection breaks or time out, I’ll have to redownload all the emails again including the attachments.

If the POP3 email account has a webmail service, I could just log in to the webmail and delete the email message containing big sized attachment. When I delete an email from webmail, I am actually deleting it from my server. So when I run Outlook Express, it will no longer download the deleted email. What if your POP3 email account doesn’t have a webmail service?

Here is a fast and easy tip on how to manually delete an email from your POP3 email account without using any software.

All Windows computer has a Telnet client. I am going to show you how to delete POP3 e-mail using Telnet. Sounds tough right? You won’t think so after you’ve finished reading this article.

1. Go to Start > Run.

2. Type telnet mail.yourserver.com 110. If your POP3 port is different from the default 110, please change accordingly.

3. Telnet would connect to your mailserver at port 110. Once connected, it will show the message +OK Hello there.

4. Now you’ll have to login using the user command. Some pop3 username requires full email address as login and some only username.
Type user username@domain.com
You will now see the message +OK Password required.

5. Type pass yourpassword
If you’ve entered a correct password for the user, you will get the message +OK logged in.

6. You can now type the command list to list all the messages on the server and their sizes in bytes.
You should see a message that says +OK POP3 clients that break here, they violate STD53.
1 2243
2 2841
3 1241188
4 4932
The above image shows that you have 4 emails on the server, they are listed in order from oldest first to newest last.

7. To view any of the email message, use the retr command followed by the message number that you see in the list command. It will return the whole message including all headers. Example, retr 3.

8. To delete a message, use the dele command followed by the message number. Example, delete 3

9. Type quit to end the session.

Tip: If you accidentally deleted a wrong email message, quickly type rset. It will resurrect the email message. When you use the dele command, the message is only marked for deletion and will only permanently delete the messages once you quit the session.

In Windows Vista, if you type telnet in run, you will get the error message “Windows cannot find ‘telnet’. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again.” To enable Telnet in Windows Vista, go to Control Panel, Programs, Programs and Features, and then click Turn Windows Features on or off. In the list, scroll down and select Telnet Client. Click OK to start the installation.

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