My primary computer is a Windows desktop. For traveling and geeking about town, I’ve got a 12″ Apple PowerBook. When I travel, I use my ISP’s lousy Web interfaces to check mail. This is painful and deeply inefficient. I’m reluctant to use Apple’s Mail app, because what do I do when I return home and want my downloaded mail back on my PC?
I know one option is configure Mail to not remove messages from the server, and then I can download a copy when I get back home. However, that doesn’t resolve a secondary, thornier issue: needing to access existing emails.
Here’s what I need: a means of moving all my mail from Outlook to Mail. I go traveling, checking email in Mail. When I return home, Mail automagically syncs with Outlook, and passes any new or modified messages back to Outlook.
Does anybody know how to do this simply? Several Google searches have generated some depressingly-complex approaches, but I couldn’t find a plug-and-play solution.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Hi Darren,
I finally switched to Gmail.com for all my email. As much as there are mail and RSS apps I love (especially FeedDemon), I found the hassle of booting my laptop or remembering what I’ve read between home and work to be too much.
So I use Gmail.com for all my personal mail and Bloglines.com for my blog reading. Now that Gmail has POP access, you can also have a POP client pull emails down as an offline backup if you need one, but I’ve had a Gmail account since it started and have never needed that kind of backup.
I can flip you a Gmail invite if you need one.
Hey Darren,
does your ISP offer IMAP? This will let you keep all mail, and mailboxes on the server – then outlook/mail.app/whatever should just synch every time you check/send mail.
IMAP was invented for exactly this purpose – to enable (from the client end) it should be as simple as setting your email client to use IMAP instead of POP.
Good luck.
D.
Darren,
I just spotted this article over at macosxhints – it might help.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050117170158158
Cheers,
D.
IMAP++
Last comment from me 🙂
Re-read your post, and you say that the “thornier” issue is how to get your existing email onto both computers.
I seem to recall having the same problem myself, and outlook I believe has an option to “resend” email – so that you can pick an email message and resend it to yourself. With this trick, you could resend all your email, and then use IMAP to keep it on the server – so then it would be available to all IMAP clients..
Good luck.
D.
Thanks for the suggestions. I’m familiar with IMAP. It may be an option, but it seems overly complicated for what I need.
Why not just export the mail you’ve already received to a *.mbox -file or something, then copy it to the mac, and import it there.
Then when this it tried, and you find all your mail on both pc’s, you can use IMAP or gmail, or whatever after that.
Just make a snapshot of the current mail status, back it up, and continue in another fashion from now on.
I don’t know how well this will work, but it seems as if a solution, anyway.
The best way is to use a mail program that runs on both platforms, such as Eudora or Mozilla Thunderbird. Then you can move your mail files from one to the other over the Net (by FTP or on a web-accessible drive) or on a USB keychain.
You can do a one-time export from Outlook into a format Eudora or Thunderbird understands, then import your contacts and old mail. It may take a bit of reorganizing to get everything just right, but then you’re set.
Then you can ditch Outlook, which you shouldn’t be running anyway—too much risk.
I use remote desktop connection to connect to my box at home. It gives me access to all my old messages and lets me check new ones without having to worry about syncing them when I get home.
IMAP++
IMAP is not complicated at all. It is much simpler and less error-prone than syncing. It was invented to solve exactly the problems you are having with accessing mail from multiple locations.
Download Boot Camp from Mac for free. Install Windows XP [or Vista]. Install Outlook. Then you have a simpler case of synchronizing two copies of the same .pst file between your mobile drive and desktop drive.
Darren, I can really relate to what you’re describing. I go to a college where they require me to have an Outlook Exchange account which I can’t seem to sync with Mail. It is a huge hassle to check them both all the time and would simplify matters greatly if all incoming mail could just be “forwarded” to mail through POP or IMAP (as I’ve done with my Gmail account). I can’t find the answer either.