[X4U] Mail syncing

[Stroller]

On Nov 8, 2005, at 8:08 pm, Brenda Mitchell wrote:
>
> Client uses AOL for most of mail needs but also has .mac account and 
> domain account. I can forward all mail to the .mac account (now that 
> AOL mail can finally be tamed), but the problem is that she works a 
> lot from home laptop (which stays at home most of the time).
>
> I need to determine the best method of her handling the same mail at 
> the office and in the evening. She uses a small firewire drive now to 
> transport files. Does she need to transport the mail files and replace 
> each day? Or does she have to use .mac mail on-line as opposed to 
> Mail? I must be missing something simple?

Transporting her mail files around on an external drive is kludgy as 
heck.

For most people setting treating incoming mail servers as POP3 is 
adequate; if you leave mail on the server for a few days (advanced 
options) then it is retrieved by both machines and a copy of each mail 
is stored on both machines. The downside of this is that a message 
received & dealt with at work during the day will arrive in the inbox 
at home and be shown as "unread"; items in the sent items at work are 
not replicated at home & vice-versa.

Emil power users tend to prefer IMAP, which stores all messages on the 
server. AOL offers this, and I'd be inclined to try that. The client 
would need her .Mac mail forwarded to her AOL account - although this 
might seem counter-intuitive it should allow her to access the same 
mail folder hierarchy from home & work. If she moves a message into her 
"read" items at work it will be found there on her home machine as soon 
as she has synchronised, within a couple of minutes of starting Mail. 
Mail.app has an option for IMAP accounts to store sent & draft messages 
on the server, which is great - I can open my laptop & forward to 
someone a message I wrote on my desktop PC (or Mac).

I just had a play with .Mac & although it seems to allow you to 
synchronise your inbox between machnes it really doesn't seem to handle 
folders as well as IMAP. Read more about accessing AOL mail via IMAP at 
http://members.aol.com/adamkb/aol/mailfaq/imap/ but note that it may be 
slightly quirky under certain versions of Mail.app - try & get it 
running first but if you run into problems Goggle "aol imap mail.app".

Stroller.