Automatically Save Local Copy of Sent Mail (IMAP)

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Level 1

8 points

Automatically Save Local Copy of Sent Mail (IMAP)

Hello - I use an IMAP account (several, actually) but want to save a local copy of all messages (incoming & sent). Mail seems to do this easily for incoming mail but not at all for sent mail, which seems odd and makes me think I'm just missing something. Am I?

To be clear, the IMAP sent mailbox and its corresponding folder in Mail work fine (I know how to set up "use this mailbox for..."): what I want to do is duplicate the contents of that mailbox on my mac automatically (i.e. don't want to continually have to copy messages and remember what's copied and what's not etc.).

Also what's up with not being able to apply rules to mailboxes? Is that fixed in 10.6 version? Thanks in advance!

MB Pro, iMac, Powerbook G4, Mac OS X (10.5.8), iPhone, iPods, Airport Extreme, Multiple Airport Express

Posted on Jan 20, 2011 10:43 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 20, 2011 7:45 PM in response to dunderhead

If I understand your question, what you can do is go to the "Composing" tab in Mail preferences and select "Automatically Cc: (or Bcc:) myself. Then every message that you send will send itself back to you and you can set up a rule to place that copy in a separate folder of your choice when it arrives.

As for the rules not working, what are you experiencing? I have computers running both OS 10.5 and 10.6 and the rules seem to be working just fine on both of them.

Mike

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Answer 2

dunderhead Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 20, 2011 10:44 PM in response to Mike Strohmeyer

Thanks Mike - I find the bcc option kind of inelegant and overly elaborate for what should be fairly simple, but in the absence of anything else I guess it's worth a try. On the "rules don't work" front what I meant was that there is no apparent option to apply rules to mailboxes: this issue would be solved if I could say "if mailbox is sent/imap, copy message to sent/on my mac" but the available conditions in rules don't include mailboxes. You know of anything I can do about that? I'd love it if I could get this worked out without having to create 2 copies of every sent message just to save one...

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Answer 3

Jan 31, 2011 4:48 PM in response to dunderhead

Sorry for the delay. As far as I know the rules are applied only to incoming, previously unread messages. It's possible that an Applescript script could do what you'd like, but I have so little ability in Applescript that I'm probably considered dangerous. However, there is a forum here that's dedicated to Applescript and people always seem to be asking someone to write all or part of a script for a wide variety of events. You might try over there. Good luck.

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Answer 4

dunderhead Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 31, 2011 5:39 PM in response to Mike Strohmeyer

No problem, and thanks for the scripting tip!

JK

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Answer 5

quillson

Level 1

0 points

Nov 2, 2011 9:28 AM in response to dunderhead

Dunderhead,

I am looking to do exactly what you posted about back in January.

Did you ever find a solution?

Thanks,

Steve

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Answer 6

dunderhead Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 2, 2011 1:27 PM in response to quillson

At the risk of being cast out as an apostate, I got MSFT Office 2011 and am using Outlook. It's great & does this easily and automatically using rules (copy message in xxxx IMAP box to xxxx On My Computer). Also, previous issues in Entourage with syncing (especially causing mass duplicates) seem to have been resolved. Entourage sucked, but Outlook works fine.

JK

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