Syncing email 'On My Mac' folders across all my Apple devices

Hi James - people seem to be missing your point. You, and I, want our convenience folders in our Mac Mail folder panes to appear and sync automatically on all devices. Aside from iPad, which doesn't support Mac Mail.

IMAP is definitely required. The only caution with IMAP is if you mistakenly close an email account on the server, your stored messages will disappear on all your devices. This is rare but catastrophic.

I managed to create a folder on my Mac Air and get my iMac to sync it, but it wasn't easy. I think people are smart by suggesting we set the sub-folders up on our email servers in the cloud, and tell each device to keep a copy of those folders on our devices, synced easily by IMAP.

Then we can access the same folders from our iPads, from online cafes overseas, and on all our devices.

The short and sweet answer is still no. You cannot sync local storage folders to the iPad. The iPad mail app does not allow for local storage folders. As Bob said, if you have an IMAP account you can create additional mailboxes on the iPad. But the folders that you have on the Mac, just will not sync to the iPad.

Yes, as I said. To sync email you must use IMAP accounts. Your IMAP folders will be synced on all your devices. You can not create folders on your iPad or any other device locally and have those folders/emails sync with all devices.

I am not at my own Mac right now. I am at work and I don't use Mac Mail at work. I could certainly check when I get home. But you can create the mailboxes on the server or on the iPad itself and they will sync to the Mac mail account.

Frankly, I rarely use Mac mail any more at all. No need to now that I have the iPad. I can do it all on here. I use Mac Mail mainly to delete the old POP messages from my primary email account after I read and respond to them on the iPad.

James_uklondon wrote:

Just one last question, as I've just tried to create a new IMAP email account on my Macbook, I can't see how I can create the additional folders (mailboxes) in that account, so I can store old/important emails... could you tell me how I can do this?

Mail > Mailbox > New Mailbox...

Select the location (in your case, in the new IMAP account) and subfolder if needed.

Supply a name for the new folder (mailbox).

Hit "OK" button.

As Demo said, you can also create the new maibox hierarchy using your iPad.

Hi James

Just checked whether there is an easy solution because installing IMAP accounts will not work for all my accounts.

Basically, there is a simple way by exporting the On My Mac mailboxes to your desktop or elsewhere and then use a program such as Dropbox to make them available on any system. There's some work involved, of course, but at least it's possible.
Suzanne

Well, you are wrong, because I do have IMAP accounts and the On My Mac folders do not sync, no matter the settings, everything else does though without problems. It's not that important anyway, as it is only important for my main office computer, not for the MacBook, etc.

No, of course the "On My Mac" folders do not sync. They are, by name and definition, local to ("On") My Mac (singular).

The suggestion is to use new IMAP folders (perhaps on a new account reserved just for that purpose) to hold the messages in question instead of On My Mac folders.

ah ok - I misunderstood. But as I said, it's stuff that I only need on my office computer, so no problem. And if I very occasionally need a specific On My Mac folder on another system, I just export it and put it on a USB stick, which works just fine.

I understand that IMAP is the normal way for syncing email, but I think we need something better. "On My Mac" syncing would fit the bill.

Here's an example where there's an issue...I have 2 GB of saved email files (just want interactions saved for reference). I don't want my iPhone pulling all that junk in, but I want it on both of my computers. Also, I don't want to have to worry about something going wrong with my mail hosting service where my archive disappears.

Any ideas?

You already know the answer. To sync email across multiple devices you must use IMAP email accounts.