Sent Items: Thunderbird and Outlook Express on the same account

Outlook Express likes to store a copy of your outgoing email in a folder called “Sent Items”. Thunderbird likes to store a copy of your outgoing email in a folder called “Sent”. If you use both to access the same email account using IMAP, you’ll end up with both folders being created, and your outgoing email will end up in either, depending on which client you used at the time.

Configuring Thunderbird to use “Sent Items”

In Thunderbird, choose “Account Settings…” from the “Tools” menu. Click on the “Copies & Folders” item for the relevant account.

In the section “When sending messages, automatically:”, click on the “Other” radio button. Pop down the souped up combo box and choose the “Sent Items on…” item.

Unfortunately, your “Sent” folder will still be there, and I can’t find a way to change the “Sent Items” folder to show the nice icon.

Configuring Outlook Express to use “Sent”

Under Tools / Accounts, choose the relevant email account and hit “Properties”. On the “IMAP” tab, you can change the names of the special folders.