[X4U] MacOS X Mail and AOL...retaining local "sent mail"?

[Stroller]

On 5 May 2007, at 00:44, Michael Elliott wrote:
> I also access my e-mail from both my home iMac and my MacBook.   
> What I see is the same in both situations: same inbox, sent mail,  
> etc.  Is that a natural function of IMAP, and is there still a way  
> that my "sent" mail will be synchronized between the two?

Yes, this is the joy of IMAP. The "master copy" of the messages are  
stored on the server, and IMAP synchronises your machine to its  
status. Consequently you always see the same unified view of your  
mail corpus, whether you access it via webmail or from regular  
clients on different machines.

> ... I've recently noticed that my "sent mail" folder is only  
> keeping e-mails for 1 month, and then they're being removed.  Now,  
> the regular AOL service removes sent mail after a month or so in  
> their own client, but I thought Mail could be set to keep the sent  
> mail indefinitely until I choose to delete it

AOL are removing the copy from their servers - the IMAP account in  
Mail.app synchronises to reflect this & the older messages are  
deleted. :(

> Mailbox Behaviors in Mail for the AOL account are set for "Store  
> sent messages on the server" as checked, with "never" under "Delete  
> messages when..."
>
> Should I un-check the "store sent messages on the server" setting?

That's the most obvious solution - messages stored on your Mac can't  
be deleted by AOL. I can't see a way to synchronise sent items  
between your two Macs without using the IMAP Sent folder, tho'. Try  
making a "Sent2" folder on the server - AOLs scripts shouldn't delete  
older items from a folder that's named differently - then highlight  
it and in the Maibox menu "Use this mailbox for ... " "Sent". You may  
even be able to delete the old Sent Items folder.

Are you sure that there isn't an option in AOL's software suite not  
to delete older sent messages?

If none of these options work you might be able to write a Bash  
script or Automator action to one-way sync between IMAP & local  
folders, but I can think of disadvantages to this method.

Stroller.