Have I got this right: If we upgrade to 2007 (I assume 2010 won't
work with our XPPro SP3):
a) messages sent from Outlook will appear in sent items on both
client and server b) messages composed and sent from the web
interface will appear in sent items in Outlook as well as on server
c) messages in sent items on server will remain in sent items on
server until *we* decide to move or delete them d) messages deleted
from sent items/inbox on server will *not* disappear from sent
items/inbox on client.
I suspect the last point might be the difficult one, even if the rest
are correct. We would probably still need to transfer sent items to
a local 'folder' to be sure of keeping a record.
Not quite. As you've surmised, I also have an ntlworld account, and as
far as I can tell you should have no problems unless you're trying to
access your mail from more than one client. If all you have is your
home PC you shouldn't need to make any changes. If, like me, you need
access on more than one device (e.g. laptop, phone, desktop etc) then it
becomes more complicated. You have to decide whether to stick with POP
or change to IMAP. It's actually possible to have both, and use IMAP on
one machine and POP on another, but trust me, you don't want to do this.
If you choose IMAP it's actually best to keep all your mail on the
server. You can create the same folder structure you had within your
Outlook Personal Folders. I found this confusing because whatever
client I used would also try to create its own folders when I set up the
account. So I ended up with a Sent folder as well as a [Gmail]/Sent
Mail folder and different clients would use different folders, plus the
problem I originally started this thread with, which meant my sent mail
ended up in three different places. Provided you catch this early on
and get rid of folders you don't need, you can have ALL your mail on the
server and thus accessible from any device. You can then set Outlook to
auto-archive these folders in the normal fashion so that anything over a
certain age gets saved to a separate .pst file on your home PC.
Or you can use POP on multiple devices. Virgin have introduced what
appears to be a unique feature (as Brian points out, it's not part of
the normal Gmail setup) whereby you add the word "recent:" in front of
your username. Do this on each client and the next time you log onto
the server it'll retrieve all your mail for the last thirty
days(including stuff you've already had); after this initial download,
each client will receive all your mail as independently of the others.
You can for instance receive an email on your laptop and delete it, and
when you get home and check your mail you'll receive it again on that
machine. Once you've deleted (or moved) a message, you won't receive it
again on that device, but you will on a device that hasn't received it
yet. This actually works quite well after the initial deluge of mail,
and deals with everything other than the sent mail problem. My solution
was to treat my home PC as the master, on which I need a record of
everything, and sacrifice the ability to see all my sent mails on the
laptop or phone (I don't want them clogging up my phone anyway). My
phone has a "send to self" option, which is essentially a BCC to my own
email address. On my laptop I use Thunderbird, which also has an option
to BCC everything to myself. From the Webmail intercace I can't see a
way of automating it btu just click "Add Bcc" and put your own email
address in he box that appears. All of this does mean that on the
laptop and phone I receive a copy of everything I send but I just delete
them. On my machine at home running Outlook 2007 I have an Inbox rule
set to move anything from myself into the Sent Items folder and mark it
as read. You could also set up a rule in Outlook to BCC yourself and
then have them moved into the sent items on the mobile devices too, but
then you'd have messages from yourself which the inbox rule would
automatically move to Sent Items, creating a duplicate.
That's a lot of waffle, especially if you don't have multiple clients,
in which case you didn't need to read past the first paragraph. To
quickly answer your points in turn:
a) No. Depending how you have it set up, they'll either go to the
server-side Sent folder or the local Sent Items folder. This can be
manipulated within Outlook using rules
b) No. Only the server. If you set Outlook up using IMAP you'll have
access to this folder from within Outlook.
c) As far as I know, this is the case. Only items marked for deletion
or moved to the [Gmail]/Bin folder will be deleted. Makes no difference
which version of Outlook you're using.
d) This seems to be the case for me. Again, depends whether you're POP
or IMAP as to what we're actually talking about. If you're set up as
IMAP you'll have local and server-side versions of these folders and
will have to get your head around which is which.
