Sync email between Mac Pro and MBP?

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Ideally.. I'd like it so that my Mac Pro is my main computer, and has all my emails on it. I'd like it to work so that while I'm at home, I can sync, for example, the past X days of email from Mail on my Mac Pro, with my MBP. And any e-mails I read/write/etc. while on the road with my MBP will be sync'd up with my Mac Pro when I get home. Is this possible??
 
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Ideally.. I'd like it so that my Mac Pro is my main computer, and has all my emails on it. I'd like it to work so that while I'm at home, I can sync, for example, the past X days of email from Mail on my Mac Pro, with my MBP. And any e-mails I read/write/etc. while on the road with my MBP will be sync'd up with my Mac Pro when I get home. Is this possible??

:D

I'd like to know the answer to this question too!
 
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Here are some links for you to consider:

http://sidesh0w.com/weblog/2005/02/02/mac_sync/

http://www.markspace.com/synctogether.php

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61766

http://www.designersdomain.com/filesync/

Filesync (above link) only need be installed on one machine (which one does not matter). The other volume(s) can be mounted from anywhere - network shares, external devices (USB Flash drives, external hard drives) - anything really, as long as it shows in Finder.

http://www.maclive.net/sid/221

Keep in mind that you need to be vigilant about syncing after making any change on either computer. If you make changes in both places and then sync, you're doing to lose some data.

I have tried various sync apps and they all have failings. Often, they'll replace important data without asking me first or they'll "forget" which files get sync'ed and make unnecessary duplicates.

Beyond .Mac sync

Apple has made Mac-to-Mac synchronizing available only to .Mac members. But thanks to MildMannered Industries’ MySync software, you can use Apple’s syncing engine to synchronize two or more networked computers, without .Mac.

After downloading and installing MySync (which is still a public beta program) on each machine, you designate one machine as the master (meaning that it serves as the central repository for your data) and all others as slaves. You then launch MySync on each computer, and select the options for the data types you want to sync (see “Another Way to Sync”). Click on Sync Now on each slave machine to synchronize it with the master.

Another Way to Sync If you want to sync data between two or more Macs but don’t have a .Mac account, MySync lets you do it.

 
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Ahh.. wow, I'm kinda surprised that Mac, being geared towards the whole "it just works" philosophy, doesn't have this feature built into the OS. That's kind of a bummer. And you can use .Mac to sync mail, photos, etc., but at a cost.. also kind of a bummer.

Don't take this the wrong way, as I really dislike Windows and am switching to Mac soon, but.. you know, with Windows (at no extra cost), you can sync a laptop with a desktop computer. Except e-mail, if I recall correctly. For some reason you can't mark a .pst file as "accessible offline."
 
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Well, the usual way to keep mail synchronized is to use IMAP and keep your mail on a server that's accessible from whatever computers you want to use...regardless of whether you're using a Mac, a PC, or something else.
 
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Well, the usual way to keep mail synchronized is to use IMAP and keep your mail on a server that's accessible from whatever computers you want to use...regardless of whether you're using a Mac, a PC, or something else.

Call me paranoid but I don't like the idea of keeping all my business e-mails on someone else's server. I prefer POP.. grab 'em, and only I've got it. Besides, if it's on an IMAP server, what if I want to read an e-mail while I'm offline? Besides, if I use IMAP, then I've got a bunch of e-mails eating up my space on my web host.
 
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Syncing with .mac does not sync the e-mails themselves.

If you use IMAP, you have access to all mails off line as well. The content of the server is permanently kept up to date with the content of the computer you are currently using. I myself think that is the best way use e-mail on several computers.

You could also set up a POP-account to keep the mails for one month before deletion for example and providing you log in with all your computers in that time period, you will have all mails on each computer.
 
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Ah I didn't know IMAP lets you access content offline. Nice.

What do you mean, syncing with .Mac doesn't sync the e-mails themselves? I thought that was one of the features, it lets you sync email between several computers?

One question though, about IMAP.. which I think might be a drawback. Let's say I'm on the road, with my MBP, and I email a response to a client. I assume with Mail, that's stored in a "Sent" folder of some kind? Well, the drawback is that it my response would not appear on my Mac Pro's "Sent" folder. I think .Mac deals with this if I'm not mistaken.
 
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What do you mean, syncing with .Mac doesn't sync the e-mails themselves? I thought that was one of the features, it lets you sync email between several computers?

One question though, about IMAP.. which I think might be a drawback. Let's say I'm on the road, with my MBP, and I email a response to a client. I assume with Mail, that's stored in a "Sent" folder of some kind? Well, the drawback is that it my response would not appear on my Mac Pro's "Sent" folder. I think .Mac deals with this if I'm not mistaken.

Everyone thinks that .Mac syncs everything, but it is only the mail settings that get synced. I guess it has to do with the fact that the .Mac mail account is IMAP and does not need to get synced....

When you are on the road, I think that once you reconnect to the IMAP-server, all folders get updated and the messages will be in the sent folder on all computers as they get connected.
 
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Syncing with .mac does not sync the e-mails themselves.

If you use IMAP, you have access to all mails off line as well. The content of the server is permanently kept up to date with the content of the computer you are currently using. I myself think that is the best way use e-mail on several computers.

You could also set up a POP-account to keep the mails for one month before deletion for example and providing you log in with all your computers in that time period, you will have all mails on each computer.

That's how I do it with POP accounts -- I let the POP server hold email for 30 days then delete, that way every machine gets all the mail. DotMac sync's email because it's an IMAP mail service. The actual syncronizing (as with SyncTogether and most others) is on the mail settings, not the actual mail.

And the Mac's actually have the sync'g built-in . . . it's the iSync functionality. This is what .Mac and SyncTogether rely on to do their thing.

BTW, I've been using SyncTogether for a few months now and it works pretty well. The upgrade to OSX 10.4.9 introduced some bugs, but that's been overcome. It works quite well to sync Address Book, iCal, and Mail settings at $49 one-time fee (compared to .Mac $99 per user, $179 family, annual fee).
 
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I'm not quite clear after visiting SyncTogether's site. Can you or can't you sync remotely while not on the LAN? If so, how does that work? Is your information transferred through their server somehow?
 

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