Lyte Byte

I recently moved my email management for lytebyte from Windows Live Admin Center (earlier known as Custom live domain email) to Google Apps for a number of reasons. Though Live Mail provided a great support to connect with Outlook with Outlook connector, it did not work well with Custom Domain, but Google Apps gives plain and simple IMAP support. Also it gives a simple way to sync with the email support in my Nokia N95 8GB.

When I use Google Email from Google Apps or Gmail with Microsoft Outlook, a copy of the sent emails were saving twice in the sent folder. Its a little annoying when you get two copies of the sent mail when you actually view from Gmail in the form of conversation.

So how to solve when you get two copies of sent mails while using IMAP in Outlook?

First to understand why two copies are stored in the sent folder.

When you send a mail through Outlook, it saves a copy of the sent mail and transmits to the server (here it is the Gmail server). When the mail is sent from the server to its destination, it saves another copy of the sent mail. Since it is an IMAP connection, it syncs both and you get two copies of the same sent mail.

This is a unique situation and probably Google should be smart enough to know that the mail has been sent from an email client like Outlook and not save the sent mail again. But anyway you can change where the sent mails are stored in Outlook and by making sure you are not saving in the folders related with Gmail, you can avoid two copies of sent mail.

So how to change the folder where the sent mails are stored in Outlook 2007?

Go to Tools -> Account Settings -> Email tab.

Select the Email account and click Change. This will open a window titled Change E-mail Account. Click More Settings at the bottom.

Click the Folders tab and here you can mention where the sent emails have to saved and stored.

Instead of choosing the Gmail Sent folders to save, choose the default Outlook sent folder.

This saves the sent mail in a different unused folder and it can be cleaned up when required.