01:19
Faizan
Managing your email can involve complex decisions about whether to save every message you send and receive, archive only the most important communications or delete all of them, spam included. If your Gmail account seems to be making these decisions for you by failing to save the messages you send, check your preferences and all the interfaces -- webmail and applications -- through which you manage your mail.
Drafts
When you use the Gmail webmail interface instead of a standalone email application, all your outgoing messages carry Draft status until you actually send them. Drafts constitute work in progress, saved automatically as soon as you address a message. They enable you to craft a complex message incrementally and avoid the "sent too soon" phenomenon that results in the need for "what I really meant" followups. You can delete drafts manually if you decide not to complete them. After you finish a draft and transmit it to its recipient, the draft disappears automatically because it turns into sent mail.
Filters
Email filters enable you to set up rules that govern how Gmail's webmail interface labels the messages you send and receive. Gmail uses labels instead of folders to categorize your mail, simplifying the act of deleting a message or associating it with more than one sorting criterion. By default and without exception under normal operating circumstances, Gmail automatically saves all sent messages. If you set up a rule that deletes all the messages you send, your sent mail can't and won't accumulate. Like Gmail's labels, email software's rules govern if and how these applications save your outgoing mail, so if you apply rules in an email program other than the Gmail webmail interface, you accidentally or intentionally can alter where your sent messages wind up.
Software Settings
Depending on how you manage the process, splitting up your email activity among multiple applications and connection methods can complicate how, where and whether you can find your sent messages. For example, if you use the POP connection method to send some of your Gmail messages through an email client application like Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail or an app on your mobile phone, your sent mail may appear in your software's inbox instead of the Gmail webmail interface. If you use IMAP instead of POP so you can synchronize mail among various programs and interfaces, you can set Gmail not to file sent mail in your IMAP mail client. The "available everywhere" promise of mail synchronization comes with the prospect of some tricky exceptions.
Other Considerations
Keeping malware protection current can help you guard against unauthorized alteration of the files on your computer. Before you assume that Gmail fails to save your sent messages because of a virus or an intrusion into your files on the Gmail servers, however, verify that you haven't deleted a conversation -- Gmail's name for the compilation of an original message and all replies thereto -- erasing the sent message as part of the interchange.
Drafts
When you use the Gmail webmail interface instead of a standalone email application, all your outgoing messages carry Draft status until you actually send them. Drafts constitute work in progress, saved automatically as soon as you address a message. They enable you to craft a complex message incrementally and avoid the "sent too soon" phenomenon that results in the need for "what I really meant" followups. You can delete drafts manually if you decide not to complete them. After you finish a draft and transmit it to its recipient, the draft disappears automatically because it turns into sent mail.
Filters
Email filters enable you to set up rules that govern how Gmail's webmail interface labels the messages you send and receive. Gmail uses labels instead of folders to categorize your mail, simplifying the act of deleting a message or associating it with more than one sorting criterion. By default and without exception under normal operating circumstances, Gmail automatically saves all sent messages. If you set up a rule that deletes all the messages you send, your sent mail can't and won't accumulate. Like Gmail's labels, email software's rules govern if and how these applications save your outgoing mail, so if you apply rules in an email program other than the Gmail webmail interface, you accidentally or intentionally can alter where your sent messages wind up.
Software Settings
Depending on how you manage the process, splitting up your email activity among multiple applications and connection methods can complicate how, where and whether you can find your sent messages. For example, if you use the POP connection method to send some of your Gmail messages through an email client application like Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail or an app on your mobile phone, your sent mail may appear in your software's inbox instead of the Gmail webmail interface. If you use IMAP instead of POP so you can synchronize mail among various programs and interfaces, you can set Gmail not to file sent mail in your IMAP mail client. The "available everywhere" promise of mail synchronization comes with the prospect of some tricky exceptions.
Other Considerations
Keeping malware protection current can help you guard against unauthorized alteration of the files on your computer. Before you assume that Gmail fails to save your sent messages because of a virus or an intrusion into your files on the Gmail servers, however, verify that you haven't deleted a conversation -- Gmail's name for the compilation of an original message and all replies thereto -- erasing the sent message as part of the interchange.
Posted in: gmail
