In Gmail, what is the difference between "sent mail" and "sent messages"
January 15, 2014 6:11 PM   Subscribe

This is a question about Gmail. I have sent a Rather Important e-mail and have not heard back from the recipient. It shows up in my sent mail in Mail on my MacBook. It shows up in my "sent messages" in Gmail when I go into Gmail directly. However it does not show up in my "sent mail" in Gmail when I go into Gmail directly. What is the difference between "sent mail" and "sent messages" and did the damn e-mail go out or not? I don't want to bother this person unnecessarily with my computer issues.
posted by HotToddy to Computers & Internet (4 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Based on this and the linked lifehacker article, it looks like Mail created a "sent messages" label when connecting to GMail over IMAP. The way I interpret it is that the items are sent, it's just that Mail put things in an odd place.
posted by deezil at 6:32 PM on January 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


Why don't you try sending an email to another account you own, or a friend you can check in with immediately, and see where it shows up?
posted by telegraph at 6:34 PM on January 15, 2014


The Gmail folder "Sent Mail" contains all of your mail that has gone out via Google's Gmail servers, no matter whether the mail was composed and sent via Gmail's web interface or via a Gmail client like Apple's Mail. Clicking "Sent Messages" does a search for all mail labeled "sent-messages"; it shows only the e-mail messages that you sent via a Gmail client and not through Gmail's web interface. See Google's What are these new labels in my web Gmail?
posted by RichardP at 6:34 PM on January 15, 2014


Response by poster: telegraph, other messages that I sent to other people on the same day and afterward show up in both places. It's just this one that doesn't show up in "sent mail." I sent it twice and the same thing happened both times.

RichardP, then shouldn't "sent messages" be a subset of "sent mail"? Because it seems to be the other way around, that "sent mail" is a subset of "sent messages." Sorry if I'm not understanding.
posted by HotToddy at 6:39 PM on January 15, 2014


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