Mail folder, dropbox and symlinks - oh my!

Hmmmm, interesting, but not sure if/how that would even work for Mail.

Can you or can you not setup an IMAP account at work?

In your case you want the symlink to exist in the Dropbox folder and point to the mail folders you want to sync (assuming Dropbox follows your symlinks).

You could practice by creating symlinks inside the Dropbox folder which points to a test folder then see if changes you make in the test folder show up on the destination system.

The problem I see is how are you going to resolve initial sync'ing of the 2 mail systems?

Another - maybe easier way to deal with this - assuming you can't get your work email setup as an IMAP, is to setup a gmail account with IMAP and have all your work mails auto forwarded to this account. Then set up the SMTP with your work mail details and as the default for this account. Once in an IMAP account all will be in sync no matter where you access it.

May I suggest before making any changes on the second system, you first quit Dropbox, then make your changes in the dropbox folder. When happy with the changes, then restart dropbox on that system.

I would make sure you have a backup of your mail folders on both systems as if something goes wrong dropbox will multiply the problem across both systems.

I'm assuming work is not a large company, as the often frown upon company email being stored on outside servers such as gmail or even dropbox.

Correct - plus if you can then get the details of your out-going SMTP server and set up the same in Mail (which maybe you already have set up if your using this already for your work acoun, and se the default SMTP outgoing server as your work one.

BobHarris may have a point here on the company frowning in this though...but may be good leverage for them to allow for IMAP - which would make this all seamless 🙂