Mails sent on my iPhone isn't shown in the sent folder

Question

Mails sent on my iPhone isn't shown in the sent folder

Whenever I send an email it does not show up in the sent folder on my iPhone or on my Mac when I sync. Why could this be?

It works just fine, I recieve mails and I'm able to reply and all that. I just can't see them in the sent folder which is annoying.

Hope you can help me 🙂

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.1), 2.0 GHz - 2GB RAM - 80GB HD

Posted on Aug 4, 2008 5:13 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Markus Hänchen

Level 1

140 points

Aug 22, 2008 12:34 PM in response to Rune Neesgaard

I think figured it out. The original problem was that Mail.app was not using Gmail's smtp server. In the account preferences in Mail I have checked the box which says: 'Only use this server' under the pop-up list which has Gmail's smtp server selected. But examining the full headers of emails sent via supposedly different smtp servers (via different email addresses with all have that 'Only use this server' checked) and emails sent via Gmail's web interface gave me the strong indication that Mail.app is not using Google's smtp server.

Lo and behold, once I switched between my corporate network and a cellular-modem based one which caused Mail to fail to reach the smtp server (inside my corporate network only my corporate smtp server works and outside every smtp server except the corporate one works) and therefore brought up a dialogue which allowed me to choose the smtp server and I selected Gmail's smtp server, my sent messages showed up in Gmail's sent folder.

Even better, after restoring my iPhone (syncing wasn't doing the trick), emails sent from my Gmail account on the iPhone show up in Gmail's sent folder (and Gmail's sent folder also shows up on the iPhone).

As usual, if you for your life's sake cannot figure something out, most likely something you consider a fact is actually not the true. I was assuming that Mail was using Gmail's smtp server, that is what I told Mail to do. But apparently, once Mail fails to reach an smtp server and you tell Mail to use another it continues to use this alternative server forever until it fails to reach this one and ask you again (and that is the only way to reset it). And more importantly this alternative smtp server gets carried over to the iPhone. Even more sneakily, if you check the smtp server setting on the iPhone it still reads the 'correct' one but it is using in fact another one (visible from the full headers of the received email).

Getting Mail to use the correct smtp servers is its own pain in the butt. And after the umpteenth restore with everything working now, I now unchecked the option to sync mail accounts (since I keep switching networks on my Mac, I'm sure to end up with the wrong smtp servers associated with my email accounts).

Reply

Answer 2

pchone

Level 1

15 points

Aug 14, 2008 12:41 PM in response to Rune Neesgaard

I was having the same issue and I JUST figured it out. You need to have "store sent messages on the server" checked in your mailbox behaviors in Mail prefs. Then, on your iphone, in mail settings, in advanced, in "sent mailbox", select "sent messages" in "on the server". that should do it. but i think it'll only work for mobileme accounts. not sure about other accounts.

Reply

Answer 3

Aug 14, 2008 4:02 PM in response to pchone

Thanks a lot for responding!

I do not have MobileMe (yet), but I wanted to try this out anyway. The thing is that I can't find the menu on my iPhone that you are reffering to. I go to Settings and under "Accounts" I choose Gmail and then I go to Advanced. But in the advanced menu I can't find any "sent mailbox" menu. Where is that?

Thanks 🙂

Reply

Answer 4

Aug 21, 2008 9:14 AM in response to Rune Neesgaard

I have the very same problem. A reason for this might be that one can setup a gmail account on the iPhone using IMAP in three different ways:
(1) Create an IMAP account in Mail (on your Mac) and sync the settings to the iPhone
(2) Create an IMAP account on the iPhone (via Other)
(3) Create a GMAIL account on the iPhone

Google recommends (2) and says using (3) results in different archiving and deleting behaviour. The help pages however still talk about the iPhone OS 1.3.x, things might be different with 2.0.x.

I used method (1) and do have the problem of e-mails sent from the iPhone not showing up anywhere (except in the recipients mailbox). At the moment, I still have, in Mail (on the Mac), the box checked with said it should store sent messages on the server. I am going to try tonight to reverse that setting and see whether that helps (sounds wrong, I want my sent messages to be stored on the server, that is the point of IMAP but I'll try it anyway).

Reply

Answer 5

Aug 21, 2008 2:39 PM in response to Markus Hänchen

Hi Markus,

I'm glad to hear that others are experiencing the same problem as me. I set up my IMAP account like you - in Mail on my Mac.

Let's hope we find a solution soon. Remember to drop a post if you find out something 🙂

Reply

Answer 6

Aug 26, 2008 9:50 AM in response to Sekoya

Okay, I'm restoring now.

"Maybe at some point something was not in English since you said you had folders with Danish names in Mail and that was a left-over from that time."

That sounds very likely 🙂

Reply

Answer 7

Sekoya

Level 2

265 points

Aug 26, 2008 10:41 AM in response to Rune Neesgaard

1. Now all the Gmail folders shown in Mail.app is showing in my iPhone Mail to. Can I do anything about that?

It is the same for me. It is a bit annoying since one cannot collapse the folders on the iPhone. But the point of IMAP is to have exactly the same of everything on every device.

2. New mail is shown both in my Inbox in Mail.app and in the Gmail folder in Mail.app and it looks like the batch that displays the "New Mail count" is not going to go away unless I click in the new mail on both my Inbox and the Gmail folder.

That is a known issue with Gmail and Mail.app (though not on the iPhone), see
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=200802081934189
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080405191647566&query=gmail%2Bmai l%2B
There is no simple workaround, my 'solution' was simply never open that GMAIL category simply let that number grow.

Reply

Answer 8

Aug 21, 2008 2:40 PM in response to Markus Hänchen

I've now tried a few more things, incl. (2). Nothing works, emails sent from Mail.app don't show up in the sent folder in gmail either. I see two possible reason:
- gmail's IMAP is currently broken (because of something they've changed or some momentary downtime)
- gmail's IMAP is just flat out broken, maybe it's not called beta with a reason
(I think I am going to look for a paid-for email provider and move away from gmail, at least I can complain to a service I pay for.)

Reply

Answer 9

Aug 25, 2008 4:06 AM in response to Markus Hänchen

I'm not quite sure I understood everything in your post. I tried checking the "Only use this server" box in the Mail prefs, but as far as I can see in your post that's not going to do it alone, is it?

I'd prefer not to restore my iPhone before I'm sure I have done the right thing as it would delete all my music and so on.

Thank you for your detailed post! I'm sorry that I don't understand all of it - I'm trying 😉

Reply

Answer 10

Aug 25, 2008 9:21 AM in response to Rune Neesgaard

Hang on in there. Let's do it step by step, first does it work in Mail.app? That is, does sending an email in Mail.app adds that email to the send folder on your email provider's web server as accessed via their web interface?

Reply

Answer 11

Aug 25, 2008 11:19 AM in response to Markus Hänchen

Now, I got it working by syncing the email account from Mail.app to the iPhone. If you enable this syncing, all email accounts set up on the iPhone will be replaced by the set of accounts you choose to sync in iTunes. If you are willing to do this, here are my settings:
- in Mail.app, for the account in question: (a) check the box that says 'Store messages on server', (b) For outgoing server, select the SMTP server associated with your account (you most likely did these two things already, otherwise you would not have been able to see the sent message in the browser)

To make sure these settings are synced, I'd suggest you first deselect all accounts in the syncing preferences in iTunes, do a sync, and then enable the accounts you want to have on your iPhone.

Now, the first thing you should see is a Sent folder for that account on the iPhone, this Sent folder should contain all the messages you also see in the browser. Secondly, you should also see messages sent from the iPhone.

Reply

Answer 12

Aug 25, 2008 11:38 AM in response to Markus Hänchen

I have one account that I can enable in iTunes called "Gmail". I tried unchecking it, synced, checked it and synced again. But nothing has changed really. In the sent folder on my iPhone are all the emails that I have sent from the Mail.app or from Gmail in Safari. But the ones I send from my iPhone still doesn't show up in there...

Reply

Answer 13

Aug 25, 2008 1:21 PM in response to Rune Neesgaard

I was in the same situation that things were working fine when sending from Mail.app but re-syncing the settings to the iPhone did not make it work there. Restoring the iPhone, however, did make it work.

Resetting is not such a big deal, sure it takes a while (mainly copying the music) but you can let that happen overnight. The only settings I had to re-do after a reset were the sync settings in iTunes, adding a second keyboard layout, change the fetch-mail interval, remove the signature and add my home wifi network. Sure, it's a bit of a drag but I've done this at least four times already (while trying to figure out how to get the Sent folder working).

Reply

Answer 14

Aug 25, 2008 3:06 PM in response to Markus Hänchen

Well, I tried restoring, but unfortunately it didn't work. I wonder if I accidently let something out that you did, but I don't know what that would be as you guided me through step by step. Anyway, thanks a lot for trying!

Reply

Answer 15

Aug 26, 2008 2:08 AM in response to Rune Neesgaard

Just one more quick test, if you send an email from the iPhone and from Mail.app to you (from the same account but preferably TO a different account) and then look at the complete headers (cmd-shift-h), does the 'Received' part look the same? It should if both emails are sent via the same smtp server.

What I think I have not asked you, do emails sent from the iPhone show up in the Sent folder as seen in the webaccess (browsers) view? (Probably not.)

Reply