Multiple email clients not in sync

[Marc Perkel]

On 7/9/2014 9:49 AM, Reindl Harald wrote:
> Am 09.07.2014 17:23, schrieb Marc Perkel:
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> I'm not sure if this is an issue with dovecot or my various email clients, or my settings.
>>
>> I'm running 2.2.13 and I have Thunderbird on my desktop and K at mail on my android phone. In theory if I delete email
>> on one it should delete it on the other. It does delete it on the server - but the other client isn't always
>> "aware" of it. Same thing sometimes with read messages. I read on one device but the other didn't know it's read
>> unless I shut down and restart the app.
>>
>> Not knowing the details of how this all works I'm assuming there is some form of notification that goes on in the
>> background so as to let other clients know what other clients do so they can sync up. And that where my setup isn't
>> working consistently.
>>
>> Maybe my expectations are just too high? Maybe I don't have things set up correctly?
>>
>> What am I missing? Thanks in advance
> * do you have imap idle enabled on the server
> * do you have imap idle enabled on all clients
> * if both is yes - in case of subfolders: make sure enough connections are allowed
> * thunderbird AFAIK needs some tweek to watch all folders for notifications
>    too lazy to dig in my configs
>
> however "imap idle" and your software on each end should be a good start for Google
>

Yes - server and all email clients do IDLE. And it does seem to work 
sometime. My real question is if it can work all the time or are my 
expectations too high?