So, I was messing about with my Thunderbird email client today in an attempt to make it do exactly what it is I want. I have currently 3 computers accessing the same  email account, and I want to have the same emails, both inbox and sent items, on all of them. Now, same inbox is easy, sent items not so much. There is always IMAP, but I don’t want to use IMAP due to server side storage limitations. So here’s my solution.

Inbox:

This is simple, I designate one main computer, which is the main desktop PC at home. This is also the computer I am away from the longest when travelling. It is set up to download all emails, and leave a copy for 30 days before removing them from the server. My other two laptops are configured to just download and leave a copy. No deletion. All the necessary options are found in “Tools -> Account Settings -> Server Settings”.

Sent items:

Now this is the tricky one, although simple enough.

First you need to disable the automatic storage of a copy of your sent items. This is found under “Tools -> Account Settings -> Copies & Folders”. Instead what I use is an experimental Thunderbird addon (don’t worry, it works just fine) called Auto-CC, found here. The instructions how to set it up are on that page too, they are quite easy really. Basically you set up the client to email yourself your own email as a blind carbon-copy (BCC) each time you send out an email. This is done through “Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Config Editor”.

Second step is setting up your client to recognize these copies and move them to your sent folder. You do this by entering “Tools -> Message Filters” and clicking “New”. I named my filter “Sent Items” (clever ain’t it?) and entered these settings:

Where the red-outed bit is your email address. I have a separate email-alias for this, if you don’t, you would probably want to just select “From” from the first dropdown list and have it grab all emails sent to you from you. The “X-Original-To” option is not in the list, but you are given the option to customize the list and can just add it yourself.

That’s it really … Now all my emails will be synchronized on all my computers, both inbox and sent items.