Copying my outgoing messages back to myself - in an unusual setup
This might turn out to be a gmail question, not a thunderbird question but here goes.
I like to use the setting "Cc these email addresses" to send a copy of my outgoing messages back to myself so that they show up in my inbox. This works fine under normal circumstances, but I am trying to use it with an unusual setup and it is not working. I don't get a copy in my inbox. Sorry for the long explanation...
My wife Sonja and I have an extra email address that we share. In other words, any email that comes in on that account ends up on my two devices and her two devices. For the sake of this explanation I will call it bill.sonja@myisp.com.
I have been experimenting with ways to make this work better.
My first version had all devices access the email account using POP3 with all of them set to leave the message on the server for 7 days. This was a workable solution, but with one major drawback. With each device holding its own independent copy of the messages, I would read them on one device and mark them as read, then have to also mark them as read on my other device.
My second version had all devices access the email account using IMAP. This had a worse drawback. If Sonja marked a message as read, then it would be marked as read on my devices as well. If Sonja deleted it, I would not get to see it at all.
My current idea was to create a secondary email address using gmail, call it bill.sonja@gmail.com. I then set up bill.sonja@myisp.com to forward a copy of all received emails to bill.sonja@gmail.com, leaving the original on the myisp server. Sonja continues to pick up these emails from the myisp server and I pick them up from the gmail server. This works great for incoming emails. Using IMAP on the gmail server, I mark a message as read or delete it on one device, and the other matches it. So my devices mirror each other, but Sonja's devices and my devices do not affect each other. For emails I send, however, I still have a problem. For all messages I send, I have set up Thunderbird to automatically CC them to bill.sonja@myisp.com. Sonja then gets to see a copy of the emails I send, and I was expecting to also receive a copy of my sent emails coming back at me into my bill.sonja@gmail.com inbox. At this point gmail appears to be too clever by half. I assume that it recognises this incoming email is identical to the one I sent, so it stores only the one copy and omits to tag it with the inbox tag. It even flags it as "read" rather than "unread". Is there any way I can persuade gmail to tag this email with the inbox tag so that it will show up alongside other emails from my correspondent? Or some way I can tweak Thunderbird to make it work?
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I think you'll find that gmail eliminate messages Cc'd to oneself. It makes sense given their way of filing all messages in one folder. You already have a copy, labelled "Sent", so you don't need to send yourself an explicit copy. Maybe if you set up an alias address on the same account, and either send to or from the alias…I don't know, I haven't tried it.
With messages that my wife needs to see, I redirect or forward them onwards to her own account. Sharing a mailbox is just too tricky. You might force a shared IMAP-connected account to work by having individual subfolders for specific categories of messages, but then the success of this comes down to how carefully and systematically you use these folders. It is essentially a manual filing system and I think you're seeking some level of foolproof automation.
In the normal course of events gmail does not eliminate messages Cc'd to oneself. Yes, it does indeed store only one copy, and it is labelled "Sent" as well as having the tag "Inbox".
So, using the same fictitious email addresses as above...
When I send the message and Cc it to the bill.sonja@gmail.com address, it shows up in "sent mail" and "inbox" of the bill.sonja@gmail.com account.
When I send the message and Cc it to the bill.sonja@myisp.com address, which forwards it to bill.sonja@gmail.com, it shows up in "sent mail" but not in "inbox" of the bill.sonja@gmail.com account.
As for sharing a mailbox being tricky... In my setup we are sharing an email address but not sharing the mailbox. All mail addressed to bill.sonja@myisp.com ends up in two mailboxes; the "true" mailbox bill.sonja@myisp.com, which Sonja accesses, and the "shadow" mailbox bill.sonja@gmail.com, which I access. The forwarding is done by the myisp.com server and therefore takes place instantly without human intervention and without the involvement of either email client. This means that if my devices are offline for a day, Sonja still gets the emails "instantly", and vice versa. Also, anything I choose to do with the email does not affect Sonja and vice versa.
When I send an email, I want to ensure Sonja gets to see it too, so that she sees both ends of a back and forth communication between me and a third party. CC'ing my outgoing emails to bill.sonja@myisp.com achieves that aim. What it fails to do, however, is show up in my inbox, the way I want it to.
Eureka! Typing the above led me to the "obvious" solution. I have now set up Thunderbird to CC my outbound emails to both bill.sonja@myisp.com and to bill.sonja@gmail.com. Problem solved! (That is, until gmail decide to "fix" the omission, in which case I may well see two copies in my inbox!)
One further clarification of my setup. When I send an email from my bill.sonja@gmail.com account, I have configured Thunderbird to show the "From" address as bill.sonja@myisp.com. This ensures that email responses we get come to both of us.