[Fuzzballz]

I was taking a nap and it came to me. Not that hard but it took me a sec to figure out.

I have a small business web site and send half my business email from my BB, and half from my computer, and sometimes if I'm on the road I'll send email from a web-based email client. I wanted the emails sent from my BB to be on my computer and on my web client server so if my BB went belly-up I'd have backups. Plus, when, on the computer, and I read and reply to an email I sent on the BB, I don't want to have to look at the BB to see what I said if they don't quote it. And when I'm doing web-based emailing I usually am not near the computer so I can't see what I wrote in prior emails.

(I realize if I used an IMAP system a lot of these steps wouldn't be necessary, but that's a lot extra $$ per month for my hosting plan. So I use the POP protocol for my email hosting plan.)

Sooooo... through BIS I set up the BB to automatically BCC myself when sending email. Then I set BIS up to filter out (not retrieve) any email that is sent from my own email address.

I set the email client on my computer to NOT save anything in the 'sent' folder, but to BCC my own email address on everything it sends out. Then I set up a filter in the computer email client to automatically move every new message it retrieves from the POP server that was sent by me to the local computer 'sent' folder and delete the original from the server.

I set up the POP server (and its web-based client) to make a copy of all email it receives that's been sent by myself to its internal "sent" folder and mark that read. So there's an unread copy of the email in the inbox, and a read copy of that same email in 'sent.'

This way, when I send something from the BB, it's sent to the recipient and also to myself. The server gets it, makes the copy, my computer email client sees the new message from me, downloads it and moves it to the local 'sent' folder. Then it deletes it from the 'inbox' of the server. But the server already made a copy and stuck it in the server's 'sent' folder so it's safe there and I can see it if I logon via web-based email.

My BB might also see the new message if the computer client hasn't deleted it already, but it doesn't download it because of the filter. (The BB doesn't need to d/l it because it's already saved as 'sent' by the BB).

Unfortunately, due to the limitations of the BB mail program (what else is new) it can't really work the other way around. BB (at least my OS) doesn't really use 'folders' and doesn't have device-based filters to sort incoming messages into folders. So unless I want to see a new message from myself on the BB every time I send something from my computer or the web, I have to filter out everything from myself.

So if I send something from the computer email client, it doesn't save the sent message to the local 'sent' folder but rather BCCs myself with it, which winds up on the server. Then when it checks the server it sees the BCCed message, downloads it and sticks it in the local 'sent' folder, then deletes it from the server. The server, meantime, has made its copy of the sent message and stuck it in the server 'sent' folder. So stuff that's sent from my computer is now saved as sent on the web as well.

Yes it's a total roundabout way and, like I said, if I used IMAP, things would be a lot simpler. But it works ok and I don't have to upgrade my hosting service to "professional" and pay extra.

yar