IMAP sent mail help

Hello,
Can somebody help me understand what IMAP is doing with my sent mail? I switched over to IMAP from POP a month or two ago, and things still aren't really right.
I'm trying to get it so that I see the same inbox and 'sent' mail lists from my computer at work, at home, and on the iphone. The inbox seems OK, but sent mail is really not.
On my computer here at work, in Mac mail, there is the 'Sent' group at the top with the paper airplane icon. Then at the bottom there is another group called [email protected], which is the email address in question. Within that group is a 'Sent' folder and a 'Sent Messages' folder.
The messages in all three of these folders are different. Also, when I login to my ISP's webmail for this account, it has a 'Sent mail' folder--those messages match the ones in 'Sent' under '[email protected]' on the mac.
Then there's the phone -- the account settings allow me to set the 'Sent' box to various folders 'On the Server'. There's 'Sent', 'Sent Messages' and 'Sent Mail'. But within the mail app itself, there are TWO folders called 'Sent' -- one with an airplane and one as a folder. There's also a folder called 'Sent Mail'. But no 'Sent Messages'. AAAAAAAAAGH
wft is going on. I just want them to be all the same, one sent mail folder, is that possible? What do I need to do? I don't want to screw it up and lose years of old sent messages either.
Thanks very much for anyone who can make this a little clearer for me.
Bob

Your ISP's webmail is putting your sent mail in the folder called "sent mail." You have Apple Mail on your desktop set to put mail that has been sent into a folder labeled "sent." So you have 2 folders on your server, "sent mail" and "sent." Since you can change the folder on your mac and probably can't change the folder choice for webmail, change the folder for mail that has been sent by Apple Mail from "sent" to "sent mail." Or, track both on your desktop.
If you are just starting out on IMAP, unless you are using canned IMAP such as Gmail, Apple has never figured out how to do IMAP right. I am going back to Thunderbird, which though a bit geeky, handles IMAP much better. Check my old posts if you want to hear some recent Apple Mail horror stories.

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