Apple Mail - Sync between Work iMac & Home Macbook.

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Level 1

8 points

Apple Mail - Sync between Work iMac & Home Macbook.

Hi there,

I use Apple Mail as my e-mail application. My email provider is "Bigpond" in Australia which I think is POP3. Anyways I have an iMac at work and when I come home I have a Macbook. I would like to have my email account sync every day. Now I have read a few posts in other areas about this however all the other posts talk about IMAP and other suggestions - if you can help me please imagine I am a 70 year old man and explain it to me that way. I am only 27 years of age however I don't understand half the terms or suggestions in other posts. I don't even understand what IMAP means - I just want to be able to come home and my Mail account is mirrored at home, all the folders are the same etc - is this even possible.

Your assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Jas

MacBook (13-inch Aluminum Late 2008), Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Jan 5, 2013 2:24 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 5, 2013 6:42 AM in response to Chizzle42

This may help as a workround.

For incoming mail. make sure that in Mail Preferences>Accounts>Advanced, make sure that "Remove copy from server… " is not ticked. This means that when one machine downloads mail, it will still be available for the other machine to download later.
For outgoing mail, on both machines, in Mail Preferences>Composing, set the option to Automatically Bcc yourself. This means that whichever machine sends the email will send you a copy which will be downloaded into the Inbox of both machines. It can be deleted from the Inbox of the sending machine.
On both machines, in Mail Prefernces>Rules set up a rule that if Sender is Jas ????, move message to Sent Box

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Answer 2

Chizzle42 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 5, 2013 10:12 PM in response to Mick Burrell

Hi Mick - appreciate the time spent replying to this question, this is something I already do but it is soooo frustrating leaving emails on the server and coming home and then having to re-download them and sort them into folders etc, especially when I receive 150+ emails a day. - I just want to be able to come home and my Mail account is mirrored at home, all the folders are the same etc. And not every day I come home and do this, sometimes I go to training on certain evenings, then coaching etc and it could be a week and then there is about 1000 emails to try and sort etc

Apple was the creator of being able to sync everything, phone, laptop, desktop etc but why isn't this an option for Mail.

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Answer 3

Jan 6, 2013 3:13 AM in response to Chizzle42

It's a restriction caused by the way POP mail works so not really something Apple can cure. There are other ways but by far the simplest would be to contact your email provider to investigate changing to an IMAP account. I expect Blueyonder will allow that and you shouldn't need to change your email address, only some settings in your email client (Apple's Mail programme?)

The easiest way to understand the difference between the two types of account is to look on it as POP keeping the mail on your machine and hence if it's on one machine, without jumping through hoops it's not on the other(s) but with IMAP it's stored on your email provider's servers. This means that whichever machine you use for mail, even though it looks as if your email client has the mail, it's really just showing you the setup on the email provider's server. So if you send an email from any machine, it goes into the Sent box on the server so any other machine will also see it in the Sent box. If you move an email to a folder called say Project Blue(!) then each machine will see it in the Project Blue folder.

Hope that helps.

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