Hi, everyone, First, I would like to thank everyone who responded to my queries about synchronization of two separate installations of The Bat. The help and information provided by the moderators and other list members on this, and other questions, is invaluable.
After posting my original query about how to synchronize The Bat on two separate computers, I went back through my personal archive of Bat mail and read every post on synchronization since January 2002. (As an aside: as a testament to The Bat's speed and functionality, I was able to quickly sort and pull up every message that had the letter grouping "sync" anywhere in the message. Since the search was on my hard drive, this search took not more than a minute or two, at most. From past experience, I know that it would have taken me 15-20 minutes to perform the same search at my office, where all mail is in Outlook on a heavily used server located across the country.) It seems to me that in most situations involving synchronization that were discussed on the list, there is a single user. Thus, synchronizing two computers to the most recent file is not an issue. However, where, as in my case, there are TWO users on two separate computers, true synchronization is more difficult since the more recent file may not necessarily include actions performed on the other computer. A clear example is where user A downloads e-mail on to computer A and then deletes some of it. User B subsequently downloads e-mail on to computer B and deletes none, but is likely to delete what A deleted, only at a later time. If synchronization occurs prior to when B deletes the same mail that A deleted, I think most synchronization programs would restore to A the mail that had already been deleted on A if synchronization goes from B to A. On the other hand, if it goes from computer A to B, then the same problem can also occur, depending upon who downloaded and deleted first. Unless a synchronization program is able to identify which e-mails have already been read and deleted, there is great potential for the mail box on A, in my example, to become clogged with mail copied from computer B that user A had already deleted on computer A. In order for both computers to be up to date, I would want to synchronize, automatically, overnight. (Which can be done with 3rd party software, I don't know if it can also be done with The Bat's own synchronization program.) The best solution would be IMAP. But, my mail file is already at 2.6 GB. Although gmail would accommodate this, not all of my mail is through my g-mail account. Personal and business mail is through a private domain on another server, and for security purposes, I am uncomfortable with leaving personal and business correspondence on an outside server. (The provider has a 1 GB limit for their most expensive option--too small for my purposes, anyway.) That leads me back to POP3. Since I don't know how a synchronization program could keep track of which mail has already been deleted on a computer and keep from copying back to that computer such mail from the other computer, it seems to me that the next best solution would be to do what a few here have suggested, which is to download e-mail separately on to both computers, but BCC any mail sent in order to make sure that each computer has on it all sent mail from both computers. This means that read/unread identifiers for a given message will not be identical on both machines, and, it also means that some mail deleted on one, may not be deleted on the other. This is not perfect, but it isn't critical. If I BCC to myself every sent e-mail from each of my accounts, that leads to two questions: 1. Is it possible to program The Bat to automatically BCC to myself every e-mail sent? 2. Since BCC'ing to myself every e-mail sent will create duplicates of that e-mail on the originating computer, what rule or filter can I create that will automatically delete the BCC'd item from the originating computer. There appears to be no BCC field in the filter's parameters. Moderators: Are these questions more appropriate for TBTECH? If so, I'll join and post there. -- Avram Sacks Using The Bat ver. 4.0.18 on XP Professional SP2 ________________________________________________ Current version is 4.0.18 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
