Viewing all sent and received emails on my iPad and my iMac.

[#1]

Hello
I have bought an iPad, mainly to send and receive my Plusnet emails when I am away from my iMac (i.e. in a different part of the house!). And of course I need to be able to see both sent and received messages on both machines - no matter which I sent them from, or first received to.
Plusnet tell me this is perfectly possible using IMAP - it's just a case of configuring the 2 devices correctly. But they can't tell me how to do it. They do have an iPad set-up guide which I followed. But I can still only see sent messages on the device I sent them from, not the other one.
Help! This is surely the standard way of working these days. So how do I configure and sync my iPad and my iMac?
Many thanks.

[#2]

Are you using the Mail app on both devices or another mail client?

[#3]

You need to set up both devices to use IMAP.
Assuming you have set up your iPad to use IMAP as per these instructions:-
https://portal.plus.net/support/email/setup/ios-setup.shtml
then you just need to set up your email client on your iMac using IMAP. Instructions for using Mac Mail on Lion, Snow Leopard & Tiger can be found here:-
https://portal.plus.net/support/email/setup/index.shtml
If you have Mountain Lion then I assume that the instructions are very similar to Lion.

[#4]

Quote from: RPMozley

Are you using the Mail app on both devices or another mail client?

Yes, the Mail app. But the version on my iMac might be a bit old - I'm still on Tiger OS. I'm away from both machines right now but from what I recall the iPad is showing all the same mailboxes as were set up on my iMac - so there seems to be some syncing going on. But the Sent box is still empty on the iPad.
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Quote from: acr

Assuming you have set up your iPad to use IMAP .......then you just need to set up your email client on your iMac using IMAP.

I noticed a 'just' in your reply...! I set up the iPad using the Plusnet guide. Not sure if I used the Plusnet guide for the iMac - that was a couple of years ago, but it's certainly IMAP.  Though looking at the guide it's very basic and doesn't include 'Mailbox behaviours' or Advanced' settings, which I suspect are the critical ones. Anyway, rather than fiddle with the current settings (dangerous in my experience!) could I just set up an additional, alternative account as per the guide and try that?

[#5]

I suspect the problem might be that sent messages are being stored locally on each device rather than in the Sent folder on the server. Based on information posted here (external link), on the iPad there should be an advanced setting to instruct its email program to use the Sent folder on the server. Hopefully there is a similar setting for the iMac.
If those work both devices should then see each other's sent emails.

[#6]

For Mail on the iMac, in the accounts section, click the Mailbox Behaviours tab and check that the Sent option is ticked to keep messages on the server.
Then for the iPad, click the Advanced settings for the account, under Mailbox Behaviours select Sent Mailbox. Then make sure that the Sent on the server is ticked and not "On My iPad".
After doing that both should show the same sent items.