Mail not saving sent messages

I've noticed that Mail is not saving my sent messages. I started to notice this yesterday. It's very erratic though. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I have the option selected in preferences to Store Sent Messages on the Server (my .mac account).
Any idea what is going on? I even checked my .mac Sent Mesages folder using WebMail and they're not there either.
John
PowerMac G5 Dual 2.3 Mac OS X (10.4.2)

You're welcome.
With a .Mac or IMAP type account, you can save Drafts, Sent, Trash and Junk messages on the server instead of locally on the hard drive.
Messages in a .Mac or IMAP type account's Inbox mailbox remain on the server until deleted from the account's Inbox mailbox or moved from the Inbox mailbox to a user created "On My Mac" mailbox or deleted from the server using webmail access.
You can also create additional mailboxes that will be stored on the server.
Messages in the account's Inbox mailbox and in any other mailboxes stored on the server are synchronized with the Mail.app and with other email clients.
With POP type accounts, received/incoming messages are downloaded by the Mail.app and by other email clients. You can choose when messages are deleted from the server when downloaded by the Mail.app and by other email clients but you cannot store Drafts, Sent, Trash or Junk messages on the server or create any additional mailboxes that are stored on the server.
A .Mac or IMAP type account is beneficial for those who access their email account with multiple computers and want to keep all mailboxes for the account synchronized on each computer.
For example, you have a Desktop at work but also travel with an iBook or PowerBook. If you have a .Mac or IMAP type account and select save Drafts, Sent, Trash and Junk messages on the server in Mail on both Macs, all mailboxes for the account will be kept synchronized in Mail on both Macs. Messages sent with the iBook when traveling will be available on the Desktop Mac in the office and vice-versa.

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Mail not saving sent messages, not moving Junk messages

Hi everyone, I'm having a bit of trouble with OS Mail. I've set it up to use an IMAP account, and have set my preferences such that Mail should save all my sent messages in the Sent folder (I assume the Sent folder on my computer, not the one on my IMAP server). Regardless, neither my IMAP server's sent folder nor my computer's sent folder contain any messages that I've sent, and I have confirmed that these messages have in fact been received by the recipients (therefore successfully sent). I am unsure of how to resolve this issue, as there is no obvious setting change for me to persue. I just received this computer (new) a few days ago, so I wouldn't expect this problem to be due to disk maintenance/management, etc.
Also, I have noticed that Junk messages remain highlighted and in my inbox. I changed my prefs to have these messages be placed in my Junk Mail folder. Mail asked me whether I wanted to apply that preference to older messages marked as junk that have yet to be put in the folder; I indicated yes. Nothing happened, and the Junk Mail folder remained empty (until I manually moved the messages to it). Any ideas?
I have searched the forums for related issues and could only find problems that had an associated error message with it; my issue is different in that there are no error messages; Mail is simply ignoring my preferences. Thanks in advance,
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In OS X Mail, this sent folder appears as a subdirectory
(sub "mailbox"?) under my "Inbox" mailbox along with
other folders that are mapped on my IMAP account.
This means you haven't set up your account properly. You probably should set Preferences > Accounts > Advanced > IMAP Path Prefix to INBOX, or something like that.
After putting the right string in the IMAP Path Prefix field, either the IMAP folders will appear somewhere else in Mail (i.e. not as subfolders of Inbox), or your problem will have already been fixed. Let me know what happens.
I should probably mention (just realized) that in my
account settings, my outgoing SMTP server is set to
be my ISP's server (which is different from my IMAP
provider).
I wonder if, by selecting "save messages on server"
I am saving these messages somewhere on my ISP?
Mail should still save the sent messages where you've told it to. It's Mail, not the SMTP server, that stores the sent messages. The SMTP server has no bearing on this, but it was a good idea to consider that possibility, nevertheless.
When I uncheck this option, perhaps my mail will
be stored on my local computer instead?
Yes, that's what would happen, but don't uncheck that option if you really want your sent messages to be stored on the IMAP server, or do it temporarily, so that Mail does at least save them somewhere until we fix the problem, but I believe I already know what the problem is.

Mail not saving sent messages (in the year 2015)

I recently switched from Entourage to Mac Mail (I know, I know) on my laptop running 10.10.1, but have been increasingly annoyed with Mail's inability to save Sent mail at random times. I use Mail with only ONE e-mail account (Comcast IMAP), and yet it often takes FOREVER to send an e-mail and then there is no record of it. This is causing me all sorts of problems professionally and personally. I started looking into this only to find that it seems to be a longstanding issue with no solution. Has anyone solved this? I am contemplating going back to Entourage, which is RIDICULOUS.

Have continued to look into this, and it looks like this affects IMAP accounts only. It sounds like you need to specify for Mail exactly WHERE it needs to save messages, even if you're only using one account, like I am. I found these directions on a site called Media Temple, and am trying them (I know some folks have said some of these options are grayed out, but I did have a Sent folder nested inside my Inbox that this process worked for). Will update here if this does not seem to solve the problem (it takes a while to test changes because this problem appears randomly).
Q: Emails sent in Mail do not appear in my Sent Folder, why?
A: When using IMAP, as we recommend for the Grid, Mail requires you provide a specific folder to save sent messages. Follow these simple steps to configure this:
Click and highlight the "Sent" folder for your account.
Click the "Mailbox" menu
Choose "Use This Mailbox For"
Choose "Sent"
This will configure Mail to save new outgoing emails to the sent folder for your account. If you want your previously sent emails to appear they must be dragged from Mail's local Sent folder to the Sent folder listed under your account.

Mac mail not saving sent messages

I am using IMAP for my mac mail (since I work on several computers). I am on OSX 10.4.11 and mail 2.1.2.
The problem: None of my messages are being stored in the sent folder, even though in preferences it is enabled to do so. Also, when I hold my cursor over the sent folder a pop up message appears that reads "content stored on server. Name of server = INBOX/SENT". And yet, there are no messages on the server. I even looked through my control panel on my web host just to make sure.
Not being able to have a copy of sent messages makes mac mail virtually useless - I can't bcc myself on everything! I'm feeling desperate - anyone out there have any suggestions?

click the SENT folder on the server.. then go to MAILBOX > USE THIS MAIL BOX FOR SENT

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Looking at other posts in this forum would have revealed that this is a known problem. It’s even documented here:
Overstuffed mailbox is unexpectedly empty
The “solution” suggested in that article, however, wouldn’t have worked in your case because the mailbox was already way too big for Mail to be able to do anything with it.
Although Sent Messages.mbox appears to be a file, it’s actually a special kind of folder (a package) that contains several files. Ctrl-click on Sent Messages.mbox and choose Show Package Contents from the contextual menu to see the files it contains. Of these files, mbox is the most important and is where all your messages are stored.
Since the mailbox is too big for Mail to be able to handle it, you’ll have to break it into smaller pieces. You can do that using the MBOX Breaker Script available at Allan Sampson’s website, or with Emailchemy.
If they aren’t too big, mbox files can be imported back into Mail doing File > Import Mailboxes and choosing Other / Standard mbox or something like that as the data format.

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Nevermind. I figured it out. I had migrated from an IMAP version of this particular account to an Exchange version. I was still listing the IMAP version of the account as the outgoing server. I changed that to the Exchange outgoing server and it's all set.

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