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.