IMAP outgoing emails saved on server

[#1]

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@MJN wrote:

Notwithstanding this, statements like the following suggest you don't fully understand how mail servers work:

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Like I said, most smtp servers will not save mail to the servers sent folder. A good one will.

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I want you to remember this bold and underlined bit.

Sunshine you couldn't even grasp many of the points I've previously made. You also claim this thread is about IMAP.. it isn't. You've then claimed i'm using pop3 when i'm using IMAP and you've even offered to assist me in setting up an imap connection - i've been using it for years.

You have about as much understanding in this thread as Ronald McDonald has in nuclear physics.

Yes I did say a good SMTP server will save the mail to the users sent folder. Yahoo has the largest mail user base on the planet - seconded by GMail the last time i checked. I'd say the yahoo smtp server must be pretty good wouldn't you?

@MJN wrote:

*Neither* of those mail servers will save a submitted mail to the Sent folder on the server. The reason why? Because, as mentioned, it is not the role of SMTP to do that.

Stop being daft. Go back to my very first reply in this topic and read the part where i said the op was lucky because not many smtp servers will save the sent mail. You're telling me what i've already said myself:

@7up wrote:

Just delete them from the sent folder. 

You're luckier than you believe, many mail systems don't save emails sent through their smtp server into the sent folder. They just accept the mail and pass it to the destination server. Yahoo never used to save sent mail, 2 decades after i joined they've finally fixed that and sent mail now goes into the sent folder. Handy if you need to refer to it away from the home PC...

Oh and now would be a good time for you to remember the bit you quoted me as saying up above - which you then felt you needed to explain to me!

Stop being a fool.

[#2]

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@7up wrote:

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Specifications are open to interpretation though. Does it explicitly say it must ONLY transfer mail to another MTA and do nothing more? I don't recall seeing that though i may well be wrong.

It does by virtue of the fact that the SMTP command set doesn't cover anything related to saving copies of sent mail. Furthermore, there is no concept of a 'folder' in SMTP and so the idea of it being able to save a copy of a mail in one is simply unworkable even if if you have misinterpreted the standard.

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Also you say *No* mail server will do that.. well.. as mentioned previously, Yahoo does.

No - any saving of mail is done by IMAP (or their webmail backend) and not by their SMTP server.

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You also just said that it's seen low general adoption.. well You now know that both Yahoo and Plusnet have adopted it.. so there will be others out there.

Again, no - I said RFC4468 has low adoption. Neither Yahoo or Plusnet support it. Exim and Postix don't support it. Hardly anyone supports it! (I wish I hadn't mentioned it now as it has just confused you further - it was intended just to be a recognised inefficiency of how IMAP saves copies of sent mail).

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@7up wrote:

You then say this is a thread about IMAP. No, it isn't. This is a thread about the OP sending mail through SMTP and it clogging up their sent folder. The thread changed direction with him then trying to clarify what IMAP is and how it differs from pop3.

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The thread really *is* about IMAP. It is the adoption of IMAP that led to the OP's sent mail being copied to the Sent folder on the server. Not SMTP.

Let's draw a line under this - I don't imagine anyone is getting anything out of this discussion now.

[#3]

Draw a line? Wow.. 

Right, here we go:

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@MJN wrote:

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@7up wrote:

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Specifications are open to interpretation though. Does it explicitly say it must ONLY transfer mail to another MTA and do nothing more? I don't recall seeing that though i may well be wrong.

It does by virtue of the fact that the SMTP command set doesn't cover anything related to saving copies of sent mail.

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Agreed.

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@MJN wrote:

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Furthermore, there is no concept of a 'folder' in SMTP and so the idea of it being able to save a copy of a mail in one is simply unworkable even if if you have misinterpreted the standard.

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Yes you're right that by default there is no concept of a folder but Yes it is workable.

Yahoo's SMTP server (using smtp.mail.yahoo.com) DOES save the sent mail to the users sent folder. What do you not understand about that? My client is outlook 2003 and having used it with other smtp / imap combos i can tell you that it does not automatically save mail via imap to the remote sent folder.

The users client logs into the smtp server. The smtp server then knows the user and can look it up in a local database and then when the mail is transmitted from the client the mail can be forwarded and then SAVED into the users sent folder. How is that unworkable? - A "out of the box" smtp server won't offer that - you're correct there however many ISPs will be running their own implementations of a SMTP server. I have two myself - one written using Indy 9 and the other using Indy 10 sockets - it isn't hard to accept the mail, forward it and then save it - actually incredibly simple. 

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@MJN wrote:

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Also you say *No* mail server will do that.. well.. as mentioned previously, Yahoo does.

No - any saving of mail is done by IMAP (or their webmail backend) and not by their SMTP server.

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Outlook does not do that - you admitted that yourself: 

@MJN wrote:

I've yet to find any setting in Outlook that allows me to save sent mail to a remote imap sent folder - and believe me, i've spent many hours scratching my head on that one.

You've probably been using POP3, in which case the setting will not indeed exist as the protocol doesn't support such functionality. If using IMAP or HTTP mailboxes this behaviour should occur by default as it is a native part of both mailbox handling methods.

What version of Outlook specifically do you have? Happy to try and help pinpoint what the issue you're having might be. Outlook is unfortunately notorious for not supporting IMAP particularly well

I will repeat again, sending mail through yahoo's SMTP server does now result in it being saved to my sent folder. This behaviour didn't used to happen. I changed nothing my end, suddenly one day my sent mails started appearing in the remote sent folder. Clearly Yahoo have a custom smtp implementation operating - unworkable in your words.

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@MJN wrote:

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You also just said that it's seen low general adoption.. well You now know that both Yahoo and Plusnet have adopted it.. so there will be others out there.

Again, no - I said RFC4468 has low adoption.

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Okay fair comment.

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@MJN wrote:

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The thread really *is* about IMAP. It is the adoption of IMAP that led to the OP's sent mail being copied to the Sent folder on the server. Not SMTP.

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In your opinion.. I suppose that may well depend on the client they're using. I'm using outlook 2003 so it doesn't save mail to the sent folder via imap and never has hence my comments about yahoos smtp doing so.

[#4]

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@MJN wrote:

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It does by virtue of the fact that the SMTP command set doesn't cover anything related to saving copies of sent mail. Furthermore, there is no concept of a 'folder' in SMTP and so the idea of it being able to save a copy of a mail in one is simply unworkable even if if you have misinterpreted the standard.

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Just one other point to anyone reading.. the above is still incorrect.

When your email is sent to the recipients server, the server at the other end is also a SMTP server. You send mail through SMTP and that SMTP server then connects to the recipients SMTP server.

If you have filters setup, incoming mail is diverted to the appropriate folder. That can be done by the smtp server itself or a 3rd party process however when done by the smtp server, it makes a point - SMTP does do folders. As the smtp server knows the recipients email address then it would have the ability to put that persons mail in the appropriate place.

[#5]

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@7up wrote:

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If you have filters setup, incoming mail is diverted to the appropriate folder. That can be done by the smtp server itself or a 3rd party process however when done by the smtp server, it makes a point - SMTP does do folders. As the smtp server knows the recipients email address then it would have the ability to put that persons mail in the appropriate place.

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No - there really is no concept of folders in SMTP with the exception of the Inbox (and even then it is not necessarily a folder - it is often just a single mbox file). If you had any rulesets that diverted mail elsewhere this wouldn't be done via SMTP. As you say, a 3rd party process (such as procmail) would.

This is all besides the point though. The discussion was about saving copies of mail in the Sent folder and how/why this happens. This has nothing to do with the recipient's mail server (or SMTP, no matter how reluctant you are to accept that)