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.