[XQQQME]

Okay, here's the background: the company I work for has its Outlook email on an Exchanger Server. I can access that from home here via a VPN and my own copy of Outlook on my desktop. If I ever need to get company email through the company-provided laptop I have, I can use either Outlook or the web interface.

It's worth mentioning here that with the desktop or the company's laptop, accessing my inbox has not removed the contents and loaded them all locally...the messages still remain on the server.

Just last week I bought myself a netbook running Windown XP SP3...and I decided I wanted to "go one better" than the web interface....and, due entirely to the fact that I'm too cheap to want to pay for another copy of MS Office (or get an external DVD drive to install from the copy that I have from my desktop purchase), not go the Outlook route.

Instead, I wanted to use Thunderbird or Outlook Express as my client (both easily available for the download and, therefore, perfect for the netbook)....and I chose OE.

I've got it set up and running...at least to the point of logging in and getting me to my messages. And I was hearteded to see OE pulling in all the messages in my Inbox. So -- as the familiar direct mail saying goes -- "imagine my surprise" when, this morning, I logged on to the company's Exchanger Server via Outlook and the VPN to find my Inbox had been cleaned out! Obviously, there is a settting I don't know about that pulled those messages into my new computer and did NOT leave the orginals on the server.

Can someone explain to me what/where this selection is made? And, secondly, is there a way to work backwards and get those messages copied back to the Exchange Server? I want this netbook to be a convenient way to access my email and work with it....not become the one-and-only working repository of my messages.

Last question: through all of this, the contents of my Sent folder has remained right where it is....on the Exchange Server. OE did not move to that folder and download those messages. So, there's nothing to "un-do" there...but I *would* like to have the same local access to those Sent messages while keeping them right where they are on teh Exchange Server. Any suggestions?

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In OE:
Tools>Accounts>Mail Tab.
Highlight the account>Properties button.
On the Properties Advanced tab, place a check by "Leave messages on the server" and OK.

The only way I know of putting them back once they are downloaded and removed is to Forward them to yourself.
That will result in them all being From you, so you might want to edit the Subject line to better identify them.

OE, as far as I know, will only access the Inbox of the server.
If you want the Sent messages in OE, move them temporarily to the Inbox to download them to OE.

[Throoper]

In OE:
Tools>Accounts>Mail Tab.
Highlight the account>Properties button.
On the Properties Advanced tab, place a check by "Leave messages on the server" and OK.

The only way I know of putting them back once they are downloaded and removed is to Forward them to yourself.
That will result in them all being From you, so you might want to edit the Subject line to better identify them.

OE, as far as I know, will only access the Inbox of the server.
If you want the Sent messages in OE, move them temporarily to the Inbox to download them to OE.

[XQQQME]

Throoper, as it turns out, it all comes down to what kind of account you open within OE...a POP3 or an IMAP.

I received some instruction on how to put the messages back on the server by creating a separate IMAP account and then copying them from the POP3 inbox into the IMAP inbox, which by virtue of that kind of "online" account, puts the messages back on the server. Whatever it was, it worked!

And now I'm learning what the benefits are of having the IMAP account. Seems to me that for my personal email, a POP3 account (like it's been since forever) is what I would want, since it just grabs all the messages and brings them local to my computer. But to be online with my employer's email and be able to interact with it (AND have access to Sent folders, etc) the IMAP account is what I should have opened in the first place.