Mail Problem

[lexus]

Until recently I just used my 17" MBP as my main computer with my email and everything on it and travelled with it. I have ordered a MBA which will arrive this week and just realized I will have a major problem:

I need my Mail on both computers to be synchronized together so I do not lose any mail and each one is identical.

Another more minor issue is my sent mail. Is there anyway to have mail i sent on both computers?

Is there anyway to do this?

Many thanks,

 

[vandozza]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Message_Access_Protocol

if you use IMAP, as opposed to POP3, then you will achieve the desired result (including sent mail)
messages are stored server-side (with a local copy cached.)

pretty much all mail accounts support IMAP (except for the free hotmail)

you have to make sure you are using IMAP across all your computers though.

 

[lexus]

Is there anyway to do it with POP3? Its just a pain moving everything to IMAP unless someone knows of a quicker way?

 

[cdcastillo]

Is there anyway to do it with POP3? Its just a pain moving everything to IMAP unless someone knows of a quicker way?

It would be much more difficult and painful to set POP3 to do something that resembles what you need.

I would go the IMAP route, much easier and it's only once that you need to set up things.

If you have a job email account that does not support IMAP, you should be able to get gmail (that supports IMAP) to pull your non-IMAP email account and then deliver it via IMAP to your computers.

 

[yoppie]

IMAP is not that difficult to set up. I set up my school account with Mail and it may have taken all of 10 minutes, if that.

 

[bpasker]

I agree, IMAP is the clear win.

 

[vandozza]

it shouldnt be too hard to change.

- backup/archive all the POP mail that's in Mail at the moment.

- change the account from POP to IMAP (you might have to delete the POP account, which is ok cause you did back things up!, and then recreate a new IMAP account.)

- recreate your folder structure on the IMAP server, by adding folders in mail.

- drag and drop, or cut/paste your old POP mail archived folders into the newly created folders.

(As long as you archive all your old POP mail, there is very little chance of breaking stuff for good!)

 

[Salmar]

Check out this site for switching to iMap with gmail:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81379