Windows sharing, (synchronising?), of email

There has to be a freebie ....

I know about MS Exchange of course, but no way!

Currently using Thunderbird, (on Vista), and just got a new laptop with Win 7.

What I want to do is have my email sitting on one and be able to access it from the other and also synchronise the "Sent" messages. Or something that achieves the same effect.

I'm using POP3 at the moment to access incoming mail from the remote server, with it held there for 30 days or until (finally) deleted here.

Is there anything any good? A more advanced consideration is if we get a tablet of some sort, and for anything sent from there to get into the main "Sent" folder. But that's way in the future.

I would just use a web based email for this.
imap is possible but always seems badly implemented.
if the two email machines are used at the same time, or the files are large dropbox wont help either.

edit: you may be able to set up a mail client to always 'forward' sent messages to yourself

Edited by ggremlin (Thu 21-Jul-11 19:35:40)

I use IMAP for this scenario. Let's me access my mail, and keep it in sync, from 3 computers and one iPad.

POP3 only looks at the Inbox of the mailbox. Any sent msgs are just held locally on the sending client.

Only IMAP will access all folders of the mailbox, incl. Sent Items, and keep them in step by holding the masters on the server. The clients then just provide a reflection of the server.

IMAP or webmail are the easiest options

One of the many reasons I use webmail

http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/sync.asp

Have I missed something?
All my e-mails are kept on a network drive and that is the folder everything is kept in.
I use several machines in different places depending on what I'm doing and all mail is available on all machines in real time.
I do use Seamonkey, though, but I used to do the same thing with outlook.

I'm not sure that would work with different clients. Can you keep an iPad and a Windows 7 client synchronised that way? (A rhetorical question - I know the answer.)

D'oh!

That of course would work as well

Wouldn't know - I don't do Apple

This is a Windows forum after all

I wonder if DropBox would work?

Believe it or not, Nicola, some Windows users are Apple users too (and even Linux users). A shared database is fine if all accesses to it come from the same client (although concurrent access could cause real problems) but IMAP is, IMO, more versatile as it allows disparate clients to remain synchronized. It also has the advantage that it is more disaster proof as the data is stored on a server that is probably better managed than the average home setup.

But if the access is always to be from the same client running on different PCs, and there is no possibility of 2 clients trying to access the data at the same time, putting the mailbox files on a network share is a reasonable solution.

I've supported networks wiyh shares with SMB support

Would not touch the Mac's though

Talk of me being provided with an iPhone at work led to me saying I wouldn't even switch it on and I would only use an Android phone

I wonder if DropBox would work?

it wont if both machines access the data at the same (or similar) time, it would just keep making files ' (so-and-sos conflicted copy and date)'.

edit: a combination of imap for send/receive and dropbox for archive could work

Edited by ggremlin (Thu 21-Jul-11 21:02:41)

I think you make a mistake to not even consider Macs. It's an interesting OS (as is Linux).

They're all just computers.

Have no issue with Linux (most flavours at least)

Just Macs - not challenging enough for me and far too expensive for something that is as you say just a computer.

I have used them and years ago was offered a job with ICL's Apple support team when I'd never used a Mac in my life and had a surprise technical test at interview for which I had the highest score amongst all candidates

@RobertoS - apologies for hijacking the thread a little

Edited by nredwood (Thu 21-Jul-11 21:16:53)

I use Exchange. It does that, works with Mac too, and iPhones.

I used to use VPOP3 to support several users on multiple machines.
It isn't free, but it will collect/send mail from/to multiple servers, and offer POP3 servers to it's users - this I teamed with Pegasus (Windows only), with all the emails held on a server.
I also toyed with Mercury32 (free, from the same place as Pegasus, but found it's model description didn't immediately coincide with my mental model, so took a while to get working.

Now I and my wife use Pegasus to collect our emails without trying to use a server, as we found she suffered from unexplained delays (probably antivirus programs) when trying to use a server holding all the mail.
HTH

@RobertoS - apologies for hijacking the thread a little

No problem, the whole thread has been most informative.

@ (in order of first contribution) ggremlin; AEP; XRaySpex; nredwood. I read up about IMAP again, and it has developed a fair bit since I looked at it quite a while ago - I hadn't realised that might happen as I thought it was just as old as POP3 and just as fixed.

Allied to the facts that I don't remember which email client I was using when I investigated it, and maybe Purple Cloud server not Tsohost, and if it was Tsohost their implementation may have been upgraded, I was well out of date as to what could be achieved with it. Whatever the reason, maybe even I got hold of the wrong end of a stick, it wasn't suitable when I originally checked it out. I think it was to do with synchronisation, in particular the "Sent" folder.

Anyway I have set up a single IMAP account in Thunderbird on the W7 machine and added one on this machine, and so far things look hunky-dory. In particular the "Sent" folder seems to be reflecting onto both machines as well as the obvious Inbox.

So I shall make sure I don't lose anything and set about re-arranging the accounts and filters I have here, on the Tsohost server. They could do with a bit of rationalisation anyway. Probably start afresh on the server and stick all the existing email in an umbrella folder (say Local Folders) with the existing structure under it, on both machines, for searching purposes, as we use that a lot.

I must admit at the moment to be slightly confused as to whether I am looking at the server Inbox or the local Inbox when online. I'm pretty sure it is the local. The setup I have is downloading the full server contents, folders and messages, which is fine, as I have a network security disk so can periodically delete from the server as I don't have a huge amount of space there. Next experiment, delete something here and see what happens, and delete something on the server and see what happens. Don't tell me .

Thanks again, all the above.

@normcall - I hadn't really considered the network drive I have, which is basically for Acronis backup, but I suppose I could have used that. Possible complications as have been mentioned, and also the fact it's onsite so at risk of disappearing if we have a burglary. It has several times proved very useful in recovering data though. I need to rethink backups!

@BatBoy - nothing against Exchange but so far as I'm aware it's very expensive, and doesn't it require MS email clients, at least on Windows machines? Live Mail doesn't cut the mustard for me and Outlook again costs. I asked about clients a fair while ago and was talked into the excellent Thunderbird after I'd initially rejected it due to complication and a couple of minor niggles.

@dandnsmith - interesting re VPOP3, but I think the IMAP solution suits me, and VPOP3 does cost. Pegasus was one of the clients I considered before choosing Thunderbird. It nearly fitted my wants but TB is closer. Thanks for the suggestions though.

I must admit at the moment to be slightly confused as to whether I am looking at the server Inbox or the local Inbox when online. I

The folders are synced. Changes to one will get echoed in the other. I think you can archive local copies if you want to remove from the server only. Thunderbird has retention policies in that case.

In reply to a post by 12eason:

The folders are synced. Changes to one will get echoed in the other.

Exactly. That's why I'm confused. For example I have just established that when I send from one of my addresses to another, and I let that send a Read Receipt, the Read Receipt shows up almost immediately - but TB is set check for mail every 10 minutes.

So it looks as though I am seeing the server.

I think you can archive local copies if you want to remove from the server only.

Yes, so I gather.

Thunderbird has retention policies in that case.

I will be looking into that and archiving, as I definitely want long-term retention here but to manage the space limitation on the server.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

but TB is set check for mail every 10 minutes.

That's for pop. With imap, the server informs your client of a server side change and it forces an update.

Yes, that's what I expected in a way, before I experienced it. But TB still has the "Check for new messages evey nn minutes" field checked and set to 10, on a new install and IMAP Server details. Tut!

Should be disabled.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

must admit at the moment to be slightly confused as to whether I am looking at the server Inbox or the local Inbox when online.

Within most email clients you should see 2 (or more) sets of folders:

• A set of Local Folders, used for all your POP3 a/c's and any local copies of your msgs. You can copy or move your IMAP msgs to here when you want to keep local copies and/or free up space on your server. You can create your own folder structure to hold these as you like.
• One set of folders for each IMAP a/c you have. These are a refection of what's actually on the server and are kept in step. You can also create your own folder structure here and it is created on the server.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Sat 23-Jul-11 17:11:06)

Thunderbird Help itself seems to have trouble explaining what Local Folders are for. As it creates POP3 accounts outside them, and I have five POP3 main domains (POP3 servers) I receive from, it was easier just to add sub-folders within each account and set up Rules to sort stuff.

What I shall almost certainly do is set up the required sub-folder structures and rules on the servers, either through TB or through webmail, (TB will be easier).

So far so good. However your suggestion about Local Folders could solve the retention side. Unfortunately the Archiving function looks to be not much cop, so I shall have to think up a method. What I want to achieve is permanent local copies of emails I haven't deleted, plus auto deletion of server-side after say 30 days as per my POP3 setup. TB doesn't seem to be able to do that, unless I haven't yet fully understood the Archiving system. It won't take long to investigate though.

A simple solution is to select a range and just drag them from initial copy location to a long-term one. Archive may do that more safely than a drag, I shall find out. It depends if it just does a huge archive when triggered, as it is manual, or allows selection first.

What I will be looking for primarily is whether archiving one way or another deletes from the server.

There's account settings > copies & folders > archive options. You can set up a message filter to select all date before X and move to archive.

Thanks, but more info please. I've been to that page a few times but the only options are 3 radio buttons for "A single folder; Yearly archived folders; Monthly archived folders. PLus a tick-box to maintain the folder structure in the archive.

Are you talking about an add-on? And does archiving delete from the server as well as the local normal copy? Logically it should.

Select using Shift-Click, (so I assume CTRL-Click), then Tools >> Archive works, but no use as the archiving is done on the server not locally. So no space saving.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

And does archiving delete from the server as well as the local normal copy? Logically it should.

I'm not actually sure tbh. I've never had to deal with a significant restriction on space (even gmail is about 8GB). If you want to make your own archiving system, create a folder under 'local folders' then set up a filter (tools > message filters) like this; http://i.imgur.com/GHDzm.png

eta; in fact you probably won't need the 'delete message' thing.

Edited by deleted (Sat 23-Jul-11 20:11:52)

No need . The clue is in the options for archive location. Radio button "Other" gives you the same target choices but access to sub-folders.

So create Archives in Local Folders, then sub-folder for the Account, and select that location in the Copies and Folders Archive section. As selecting the relevant range isn't too difficult the problem is solved.

Doing it this way will also encourage me to delete the dross I didn't even read .

Though if you can point me to the "before date" thing I'd appreciate it.

Not sure tbh. I'll check.

Edited by deleted (Sat 23-Jul-11 20:34:34)

I was in the middle of doing the Local Folder thing before I saw your post. Just looked at your screen shot - indeed, that filter idea looks better.

Have you accidentally Unticked the section?

filters do seem to be the best way to automate a solution, but it'll need to be set up separately on each client.

You mean each Account? Of course.

Oh Whoopee !!

So somewhere along the line here I managed tp move the whole of the Inbox I'm testing on to Local Folders. Which emptied the IMAP Inbox.

No problem. Just selected all and copied it back.

Until I went to the live machine ... which is running POP3 on the same server Inbox ....

Network Acronis backup copy from 5pm to the rescue!

It could all be done fairly simply with POP's and some message rules....,
too late I guess.
M

pop sucks, you suck. Go die in a fire.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Thunderbird Help itself seems to have trouble explaining what Local Folders are for. As it creates POP3 accounts outside them, and I have five POP3 main domains (POP3 servers) I receive from

Can you post a picture of this folder structure (LH pane) so I can see what you are getting at?

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

It could all be done fairly simply with POP's and some message rules....,
too late I guess.
M

Exactly how please?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

What I want to achieve is permanent local copies of emails I haven't deleted, plus auto deletion of server-side after say 30 days as per my POP3 setup. TB doesn't seem to be able to do that, unless I haven't yet fully understood the Archiving system. It won't take long to investigate though.

This email managing thing is a bit of a nightmare when you have several PCs and work from different locations.
For your archive what might work for you is to POP your emails into TB local folders say once a week(10080 minutes), this would be after you have deleted all the unwanted and rubbish ones. And set each POP server to have mail deleted after 30 days. This way you will use IMAP on a regular daily basis and use the local folders for a local email archive.
If you set TB on your main PC as the only one to delete mail on server after 30 days you will ensure that you always get every email as a local copy on at least your main PC and as long as the others connect at least every 29 days then you will hopefully get synchronised local folders on all clients.

It is worth spending a lot of time setting this up initially to get it working how you want it.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Thunderbird Help itself seems to have trouble explaining what Local Folders are for. As it creates POP3 accounts outside them, and I have five POP3 main domains (POP3 servers) I receive from

Can you post a picture of this folder structure (LH pane) so I can see what you are getting at?

If you look at the link in 12eason's post of 20:08 you will get the idea, except he has one Account with a lot of sub-folders.

I have 5 Accounts, holding 7 domains, ie one for RobertoS, one personal, one a domain used for disposable email addresses to give to online shops etc., one for my O2 email account, and one for an association that I provide a website for, with its email service. I have far fewer sub-folders within each than he has though - which is understandable. It's a very flexible piece of software.

When you create an email account in Thunderbird it creates it in that pane, but outside Local Folders. It is perfectly simple to set up sub-folders within Local and message rules to sort stuff from the true account Inbox to those, but given 5 accounts it is simpler to do it within the individual accounts.

The solution that seems to work, except being new to IMAP I screwed up, is to set up the sub-folders and rules on each server, thus automatically duplicating the layout and sorting onto both client machines and keeping the same structure for webmail access if necessary. Then every so often to use the Archive function within Thunderbird to shift stuff into a single Inbox per Account, as by then the sub-folders within accounts become relatively unimportant.

Archiving to Local Folders removes the mail from the Account sub-folders and therefore from the server. Which in turn removes them from the other machine. OK - the archive is only on one machine, but that will be the one with a daily back-up to a network disc or similar. (Needs review as mentioned earlier).

Thunderbird could be better in this area, as although you can set up simple archiving rules, selecting a range and triggering a run are both manual, unlike the Message Rules/Filters that 12eason referred to for "more than nn days old". The Help system seems to stop round about the time Version 3 was released, so can be garbage for Version 5, and googling specific topics for it can give clues but tends to be at geek level rather than practical as in the method I just described. Even some 2011 stuff about archiving looks like tripe.

In reply to a post by jaba:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

What I want to achieve is permanent local copies of emails I haven't deleted, plus auto deletion of server-side after say 30 days as per my POP3 setup. TB doesn't seem to be able to do that, unless I haven't yet fully understood the Archiving system. It won't take long to investigate though.

This email managing thing is a bit of a nightmare when you have several PCs and work from different locations.
For your archive what might work for you is ....

A very good suggestion, thanks . The effect is very similar to what I have arrived at as described above, but I may swap to your way once I have thought about it and perhaps done a bit of testing.

In some ways it is better than mine, but it does mean duplicating sub-folder structures and rules on each machine, and changes to these, as POP3 doing the deleting after 30 days - which is exactly the way I run POP3 on the single-machine access basis that I want to get away from - will only fetch from a single InBox as I understand it. (Am I wrong?)

It is worth spending a lot of time setting this up initially to get it working how you want it.

Indeed!

Ah, OK! That gmail.com is a POP3 a/c not a IMAP one as I originally thought.

If you set up an IMAP a/c in TB for a mailbox that you already have as a POP3 a/c does it have a separate folder structure or do they share the same folder structure?

It's totally separate.

I've been experimenting on both machines with IMAP for the same single server account. The old machine still has (now disabled) the original POP3 one as well. Then playing with the archiving I accidentally archived the whole IMAP Inbox, thus emptying it on both machines and the server. Copied it back from the archive to the machine Inbox, which re-instated the server copy and the other machine one, but that triggered the whole lot being treated as new mail and the POP3 account downloaded it all, thus duplicating rather a large number of emails which of course also got distributed to their allotted sub-folders.

Anyway, that's all sorted now, and also as a result I realised the best way, I think, of migrating everything to IMAP without it all appearing as new.

I haven't really got a problem now apart from the migration fiddling, as you can't convert a Thunderbird account from one to the other. The simplest solution looks like being to move all the existing stuff into Local Folders on both machines, set the POP3 accounts to delete everything up to what isn't on that disc at that point in time and let them do that, then kill the POP3s and set up the IMAPs.

A variation on that being to shift it all into Archive folders in Local so that archiving from the live IMAPs goes to the same place. I think that stage comes later though, as having it all in unstructured archives for the recent stuff doesn't appeal. So maybe do that around the first real archive run.

To 12eason:
.
NO NEED TO BE OFENSIVE !!! Just because you don't lile POPs ???
M

He's unable to reply at the moment, he's taking a short break.

You have to laugh though don't you? He has the gall to make self righteous comments in the Amy Winehouse thread in FC, then come up with a comment like the one in this thread (and other threads before)!! I must admit that I find him hilarious these days - it's always good to have something to really laugh at

I'm still interested in how it would be simple with POP3. Particularly as with regard to the Sent folder. CC'ing ourselves is not acceptable.

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 25-Jul-11 19:57:12)

There is no way using POP3 to keep Sent msgs in sync on diff. clients, cuz all each client does is use SMTP on the server to send its own msgs and just keeps a local copy.

Unless you include yourself in the To:/CC:/BCC: which you don't want to do and even if you did they won't appear in the Sent Items of the other clients.

EDIT: Tho' I suppose you could use a tortuous method of BCC: "[email protected]" and filtering these at all clients to move them to Sent Items.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Mon 25-Jul-11 20:13:58)

Exactly.

But one never know what one doesn't know. Even thine good self and myself.

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 25-Jul-11 20:47:22)

The method that I use is to have a separate email address for my "sent" messages & use automatic "bcc" (available within Thunderbird, but not all email clients will support it) to send all of my outgoing messages to myself.

Additionally, I leave all my emails on the Server for 30 days - for BOTH incoming & outgoing emails. When I send an email I do NOT retain a local copy, but automatically compile a "bcc" copy to myself for send purpose.

Accordingly, my "sent" messages are received by all of my email clients & I use a Script to detect these & transfer them to the Sent Box - hence, I have a copy of ALL of my incoming AND my outgoing messages on ALL PCs!!


(NB:- Many thanks to TrevorSP for suggesting this method so time ago).

Pity you didn't leave the Anonymous person to explain their brilliance though . I had worked out that system, and in fact already keep things on the server for 30 days for other reasons, as previously explained.

I should have said bcc not cc. That is just so yukky compared to using IMAP which is designed for the job. Then things like having to maintain duplicate rules and sub-folder structures on all machines for sorting/filtering - remember I said I have five external servers with seven domains, and this could easily increase. The personal domains are quite complex and changeable.

Not to mention the deletion of unwanted and "no longer required" messages having to be carried out on both machines.

Plus how well will this work with a tablet? Only 30 days would be available, which is insufficient for our purposes, whereas with IMAP I can significantly increase the retention period and still remain within my storage limits across the five servers.

So although this can work, it isn't particularly elegant or user-friendly.

As a matter of interest, on your IMAP account(s) what Outgoing Server does your mail provider provide for IMAP and on which port?

I believe some providers only provide an ordinary SMTP server for IMAP and I can't see how this would keep the Sent items on the server; a sort of Partial IMAP maybe.

Isn't it down to the client where it stores the sent mail? I'd guess a web-based client connected to an IMAP server would bung a copy in the IMAP sent folder. I'm not sure if a PC based client would.

I was talking about PC clients. Web Mail is not connected to IMAP or other servers and has no need to. It is all co-located. Nor is it a client as such.

I think we may have different ideas about what we mean by web-mail. I can access my remote IMAP folders from PC based clients or via browser based web-mail contacting the IMAP server on port 143.

My PC clients don't automatically store sent mail in the IMAP folders they are connected to.

We obviously have different ideas of IMAP.

IMAP is an Internet comms protocol that allows remote clients to access mailboxes held on a server whilst retaining the msgs on the server.

When you access the same mailbox via browser based web-mail you are not using IMAP; there are no IMAP folders on the server, only its normal folders; and it doesn't contact the IMAP server on port 143, only remote (to the server) clients do so.

PS: I use "Client" to mean any device remote from the server; I don't use "PC Client" cuz I include devices like mobiles & Pads.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Tue 26-Jul-11 17:14:09)

Ummh. I use the Dovecot IMAP server http://www.dovecot.org/ to store e-mails. I use the squirrelmail webmail application http://squirrelmail.org/ to access the Dovecot IMAP server to read e-mails.

I was simply responding to your request &, hopefully, trying to be helpful.

It is up to you to take it or leave it.

You don't have to be sarcastic about it!

Ah, you are talking about a generic Webmail client that is used to access mailboxes on other servers. That is a horse of a different colour from the usual webmail that accesses the co-located mailbox.

In any case we were considering the effect in the mailbox itself (on the mail server) of items sent from the clients and that must depend on the Outgoing Server used by the clients for this purpose, which gets us back to my original Q.

In reply to a post by johnjburness:

I was simply responding to your request &, hopefully, trying to be helpful.

It is up to you to take it or leave it.

You don't have to be sarcastic about it!

Wrong end of stick john .

I wanted the clever-clogs to explain what he meant, having asked him once before and repeating my request in the post you replied to, in case he was spouting out of the top of his head and hadn't even understood the requirement/problem.

Your excellent explanation screwed that up.

I then continued with what I thought was a reasoned argument as to why I didn't feel it was the right solution for me. I honestly don't know where the sarcasm accusation comes from.

Yours and John's discussion has got a bit too convoluted for me. The situation I have is that I used to, and still do for all except my personal domain, use POP3 and SMTP.

Using webmail accessed through logging into my hosting account and from there into cPanel and thence into webmail I see all the Inbox, which as I have said has the contents left there for 30 days, (or until deleted on the POP3 client).

The Sent folder on there contains no messages sent by me using SMTP. It does contain those sent whilst in webmail.

I have IMAP on both the old and new computers accessing this same Inbox on the server, the email client being Thunderbird. On each machine the folder structure and folder contents on the server have been automatically downloaded, including the Sent, with no manual trigger by me.

Messages sent from the IMAP account on each computer appear in the Sent folder on both. However, (I will check later), I think the sending Thunderbird is set to copy sent messages to its own Sent folder - thus I assume avoiding having to have it then downloaded.

Does that help, or does it confuse the issue further? I know it is ideal for what I want .

The messages sent from Thunderbird using IMAP appear in the Sent folder on the server when that is accessed through webmail as above, and also demonstrated by the fact these arrive on the other machine.

I shall be converting all to IMAP next week. Had a dramatic week here and going away Thursday - Sunday night. Still have to sort out a further mess I have made of the POP3 personal domain side - might try to do that now in fact. I've even managed to delete the Filter Rules that I want to copy onto the server .

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

The messages sent from Thunderbird using IMAP appear in the Sent folder on the server when that is accessed through webmail as above, and also demonstrated by the fact these arrive on the other machine.

Yes, good! All I am asking is what is the Outgoing Server set to in TB just for this IMAP a/c & what is its port # set?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I've even managed to delete the Filter Rules that I want to copy onto the server .

I occasionally (they don't change much once I've worked them out) take backups of these Rules which are held in Registry for my preferred clients OE & WM, e.g [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\{GUID}\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express\5.0\Rules].

Server name and username are identical to the POP3 ones, if that helps. Port is 143.

Filter rules in TB are held in the Account Profile. However, restoring the files from the Account Profile doesn't work properly, there seem to be pointers elsewhere.

There is a procedure described for recovering backup copies, but it looks to be for V1.x. I look to have a nasty process in front of me, as some of the backup folders restore fine, but their sub-folders don't.

The filter rules aren't too important. But lost emails are! Ahhhhhh.

If I re-create the subfolder then copy its files back ....

Going from bad to worse here. I did have the first level folders showing contents in Local Folders, now nothing. Bedtime, and come back to it next week.

The elephant in the room is how to sync sent emails on all clients. I have been trying to achieve this on and off for several years on an automated basis without too much luck for there is no elegant solution.
For this to be achieved all sent emails must be stored on one server for all clients to see. This much we all know.

I have five suggestions or ideas, all of them untested, which I offer for what they are worth. I have considered and rejected them all for my particular circumstances but they may well offer just what Roberto is looking for.
I think I will drip feed them one at a time so as to keep the lines of communication clearer.
So here is my starter.

1. Install and run Tbird on a network disk.

Oh well I may as well post the second at the same time as it is a similar idea.

2. Install TB as a portable application on a USB key.

EDIT : Ahh I see the OP has now found a solution which is ok for him so I will now leave the thread in peace.

Edited by jaba (Tue 26-Jul-11 23:14:35)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Server name and username are identical to the POP3 ones, if that helps. Port is 143.

I;d wish you just spell it out, considering I'm not familiar with your mail provider, and save all this to'ing & fro'ing.

Anyway, I presume you mean your Outgoing Server is smtp.your-mail-provider's-domain on IMAP port 143.

The port is the crux of it. Your mail provider is not using the normal SMTP server to Send mail, but the IMAP server. For this reason any Sent mail from any client is stored in the server's mailbox and is synced with every client. This is what I'd call Full IMAP. This was what you are after; as long as all your providers do similar you are OK.

Unlike other IMAP mail providers, like GMail & AOL, who use the normal SMTP server, albeit not on port 25 but certainly not on port 143, to Send mail. With these you will not see the Sent mail stored in the server's mailbox and therefore not synced with other clients; you will only have the Sending client's local Sent Item. This is what I'd call Partial IMAP.

The elephant in the room is what Outgoing Server an IMAP mail provider provides. If it is a true IMAP Outgoing Server then all Sent Items from all clients are synced. Not all providers provide this

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

The port is the crux of it. Your mail provider is not using the normal SMTP server to Send mail, but the IMAP server.

IMAP4rev1 does not specify a means of posting mail; this function is
handled by a mail transfer protocol such as [SMTP].

True, but a provider can choose to provide an Outgoing Server that enables transmitting the message content twice, once to SMTP for delivery and a second time to IMAP to store in a sent mail folder, as Bob's obviously does.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

True, but a provider can choose to provide an Outgoing Server that enables transmitting the message content twice, once to SMTP for delivery and a second time to IMAP to store in a sent mail folder, as Bob's obviously does.

Yeah right

Some email servers reserve a special IMAP email folder for outbound email messages � often called the "Outbox" or something similar. When a user wants to send an email message "via IMAP" s/he composes it and saves it in this special folder (using IMAP). Then, a special process on the email server looks for and notices a new message in that folder, sends it for the user, and deletes it from the folder. Thus, as far as the user is concerned, s/he sent it via IMAP.

In reply to a post by jaba:

The elephant in the room is how to sync sent emails on all clients. I have been trying to achieve this on and off for several years on an automated basis without too much luck for there is no elegant solution.
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EDIT : Ahh I see the OP has now found a solution which is ok for him so I will now leave the thread in peace.

Thanks anyway, as it looked like some useful suggestions coming up. However, as you say, I think I have it sorted now.

Judging from the conversations between XRaySpeX, john2007 and BatBoy I seem to have been fortunate in my choice of Host, on this ground as well as the ones I chose them on. It is in fact almost the elegant solution I was looking for, the minor drawback being I may have to archive occasionally to stay within my file space, or alternatively dump my 3 2-domain packages at £15pa each into a single 6-domain one at £50pa, and get 20 times the storage. Problem eliminated as I'll die before accumulating that much stuff.

Phew - original POP3 Thunderbird account completely reconstructed , including the filter rules, and overlap with the 30-days or so removed from the IMAP side, so with luck my jobs next week are to:

- clear out garbage;
- drag the unsorted IMAP emails into the POP3 Inbox;
- drag the POP3 folders and sub-folders back to the IMAP account;
- via webmail set up the filter rules on the server;
- check it all worked;
- delete the POP3 accounts and set up dummy IMAP equivalents purely to provide outgoing email addresses, meaning the ones we send from ... now there's a thought, I have 10 mailboxes per package, so maybe drive things that way instead;
- repeat for all domains, except bring everything down by POP3 before setting up the IMAP.

I do what you want, but not with Windows. I have a small Linux box running fetchmail (to fetch mail from external sources), exim4 (to send/move mail), dovecot (to provide IMAP access to the mail) and squirrelmail (to read/compose mail). This box is on the same switch as my router.

I don't leave e-mail on external servers for very long.

Sounds fine John but probably a higher level solution than I need. Especially as I don't really want to set up Linux to do it. IIRC you are running a business, and at the moment all I have is a few hundred per month with probably over half that now spam, where I shall be setting up blacklists on the servers.

Those aren't really going to work well though as the blighters are using sensible addresses before the @. Looks like it's time to accept specific addresses instead of a catchall on everything - pain . Funny, it's only the last year that my personal domain has started getting them, though I think I remember suspecting a nephew had had his contacts lifted. Which he denied any knowledge of. RobertoS is of course the sitting duck, and that has to be a catchall.

How automated is all your setup anyway? The worst I have to do is shift a pile of stuff on a date basis probably once a year, probably less than an hour's work.

But anything I haven't thought of about leaving up to 2 years on the server, (then archiving a year), other than worrying about losing it? I do have the network disc doing a daily incremental backup anyway so that is covered.

I suppose the occasional email one gets from online shopping where they give the username and password may be better deleted, but that depends on how likely server hacking is, and how important that particulatr account is. Sod's law says if that happens it will be at the worst possible time anyway.

I originally set the POP3 retention to 30 days just in case of catastrophe here, and for convenience of webmail access when away. IMAP for that will be much easier.

What I do is a straightforward solution for a Linux box as I don't do anything fancy.

I manually archive mail every 6 months are so but I leave it on the local server. It's backed up on daily basis to two other machines.