IMAP sent items issue

[Guest Lazydonkey]

I've just set up an email account with easily.co.uk (who host my domains) and i'm accessing the account using IMAP rahter than webmail.

Thing is when i send an email it doesn't go into my sent items folder and easily don't seem to have an IMAP sent folder.

Is this a WM6 issue or a easily issue ?

Ta

martin

EDIT : Should say it appears in sent items and then dissapears again. Grrrrr

Edited November 2, 2007 by Lazydonkey

[Guest lozzd]

That would probably be because your Sent Items doesn't synchronise. You have to explicitly set it to synchronise, otherwise it's on the phone until next sync, gets sent to the server, then is removed from the device.

[Guest sliver]

Intermittently, e-mail does not go into the Sent Items folder in my IMAP account (mac.com)

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I have the Sent Items folder set to synchronized.

In account options I have it set to save sent items.

By the way, for those of you looking for the synchronization settings for the Sent Items folder (or any other optional-use IMAP folder), open one of the folders in your account, hit the Menu soft-button and choose Manage Folders from the Tools sub-menu. Put a checkbox on the folders you want to synchronize during Send/Receive.

[Guest StephenR]

I was wondering if someone could clarify something for me. My IMAP account has "Sent" and "Sent Items" folders. In Outlook 2007 on my desktop I see the "Sent" folder but not "Sent Items". The account settings are set to save sent items into the "Sent" folder. I have set the "Sent" folder to synchronise on my Vario III but I don't see an option to specify where to save the sent items, so I have a feeling that if I send an email on my phone it will go into the local "Sent Items" and not get copied up to the server. So should I be using the "Sent Items" folder instead on both my desktop and phone? IMAP is confusing ;)

[Guest liteswap]

I was wondering if someone could clarify something for me. My IMAP account has "Sent" and "Sent Items" folders. In Outlook 2007 on my desktop I see the "Sent" folder but not "Sent Items". The account settings are set to save sent items into the "Sent" folder. I have set the "Sent" folder to synchronise on my Vario III but I don't see an option to specify where to save the sent items, so I have a feeling that if I send an email on my phone it will go into the local "Sent Items" and not get copied up to the server. So should I be using the "Sent Items" folder instead on both my desktop and phone? IMAP is confusing :(

I have exactly the same issue: the app is set to save items in the Sent folder, so I would expect them to be saved in the Sent folder on the server, where I could see them via the desktop which is also using IMAP. But all sent emails seem to disappear into some black hole somewhere. It's a bit annoying....

Edited November 28, 2007 by liteswap

[Guest doctormetal]

Intermittently, e-mail does not go into the Sent Items folder in my IMAP account (mac.com)

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I have the Sent Items folder set to synchronized.

In account options I have it set to save sent items.

By the way, for those of you looking for the synchronization settings for the Sent Items folder (or any other optional-use IMAP folder), open one of the folders in your account, hit the Menu soft-button and choose Manage Folders from the Tools sub-menu. Put a checkbox on the folders you want to synchronize during Send/Receive.

I saw the same thing. Microsoft totally screwed up imap support again.

I use an imap server at home which I access from my WM6 device (htc tytn II).

I also set my sent items to synchronize with the server and see all sent items except the ones sent from the phone.

After digging deeper I saw the following happening:

1. I typed an email and pressed Send
   
2. The email was placed in my outbox.
   
3. When it started to sent the message it was locally placed in the sent items folder.
   
4. After the sent was complete, all folders where updated from the server.
   

There was no attempt made to send the message to the server before the update, so the mail got lost.

[Guest sliver]

Has anyone come up with a trick to fix this IMAP issue where only some of our sent messages actually end up in the sent items folder? This Kaiser is completely random in which messages actually end up getting saved and which do not.

I saw the same thing. Microsoft totally screwed up imap support again.

I use an imap server at home which I access from my WM6 device (htc tytn II).

I also set my sent items to synchronize with the server and see all sent items except the ones sent from the phone.

After digging deeper I saw the following happening:

1. I typed an email and pressed Send
   
2. The email was placed in my outbox.
   
3. When it started to sent the message it was locally placed in the sent items folder.
   
4. After the sent was complete, all folders where updated from the server.
   

There was no attempt made to send the message to the server before the update, so the mail got lost.

[Guest christhedon]

Has anyone come up with a trick to fix this IMAP issue where only some of our sent messages actually end up in the sent items folder? This Kaiser is completely random in which messages actually end up getting saved and which do not.

I also would like a fix for this as I was convinced by colleagues to move to IMAP. The benefits sounded good... But not seeing my sent items is making me want to go back to pop...

[Guest Zazoo]

WORKAROUND FOUND!!!!

Hello! I would like to share my workaround for the Windows Mobile + IMAP problem involving the proper saving of sent items. As most posts describe, when using Mobile outlook / windows mobile device with IMAP e-mail retrieval, sent items don't appear to save to the Sent Items folder as they should. As one poster described:

1. I typed an email and pressed Send
   
2. The email was placed in my outbox.
   
3. When it started to sent the message it was locally placed in the sent items folder.
   
4. After the sent was complete, all folders where updated from the server.
   

This led me to thinking that the order of operations was wrong between send/move/sync in the program. So, what did I do to get around this? The problem lay in between the synchronization of the Sent Items folder and the copying of the message to the server. The device copied the message to the local sent items but then when the device resynced to the server on the Send/Receive, the message was wiped out. I took that part out of the equation. SO:

Do NOT tell your mobile device to synchronize Sent Items (Most important). All the messages that are sent WILL be sent to the IMAP server and saved remotely! However, they will not be visible to the mobile device since we aren't synchronizing this folder anymore. This is the key to not LOSING the message. So how do we see all our sent mail? First I have to say that you must be friendly with your server admin, or have access to your mailbox via a shell / console. Now, some of you may have noticed that in most cases, Outlook (desktop) stores its sent items in the IMAP/Sent folder (and not the IMAP/Sent Items folder like the mobile phone). This means that we can safely synchronize IMAP/Sent with the phone without clobbering the messages sent by the phone which are being saved in "Sent Items". Next step: the tricky part. My IMAP server runs on a Debian machine using the Maildir storage format. If yours doesn't then hopefully you can inspire yourself from what I do next. I physically delete the folder ".Sent Items" on the server and create a symbolic link pointing to ".Sent" called ".Sent Items". What did this do? It means that Outlook desktop saving in .Sent and Outlook mobile saving in ".Sent Items" are really saving to the same place. When the phone synchronizes its Sent folder it won't clobber the message being saved locally in Sent Items, but will keep a synced record of it in Sent since the server is pointing to the same physical location for the two imap folders.

I hope i didn't lose anyone, i tried to explain as best I could. Here is the step by step from a normal well intentionned setup to a bizarre but functional one:

1. Remove synchronization on the mobile device for "Sent Items"
   
2. Add synchronization for "Sent"
   
3. Save sent items should be checked
   
4. On the IMAP server, physically delete ".Sent Items" from the Maildir location
   
5. Create a symbolic link to .Sent called ".Sent Items" (ln -s ~/Maildir/.Sent ~/Maildir/.Sent\ Items)
   
6. Try to send a message. It will be "saved" to Sent Items, but not visible. After the send completes, view the Sent folder that we ARE synchronizing and force a synchronization to see your sent item appear there.
   

I really hope many will be helped by this !

Best of luck, Pat

I also would like a fix for this as I was convinced by colleagues to move to IMAP. The benefits sounded good... But not seeing my sent items is making me want to go back to pop...