sent to whom? To: in sent Folder

[daandi]

Is it possible to see to whom I sent a mail in the sent folder list? I only see from: subject: et al? How can I see to whom I sent a mail? BTW i still use classic view.

best regards Andreas

[BritTim]

As I recall, if the Sent Items folder (or a subfolder of Sent Items) is used, you get what you are looking for. If any other folder is used for the messages you send, the From field is shown instead. Annoying, but you can usually arrange to use the supported folder(s).

[janusz]

There is a Sent folder, and a Sent Items folder. The latter shows the To: field.

So a workaround is: move all messages from Sent to Sent Items and use the latter in the future.

And yes, I also use the classic interface (until my current contract expires).

[daandi]

Hmm - I can not find a sent-items folder. I only have a sent folder. Where could I look?

[BritTim]

Sent Items is a system folder and should always exist. Are you looking for it in the Classic interface? If so, it may not be visible because it has been explicitly hidden. Go to Settings->Folders and look there (turning off Hidden if necessary). If looking using an external mail client, it may not be visible because the folder is not subscribed.

[n5bb]

Originally Posted by daandi

Hmm - I can not find a sent-items folder. I only have a sent folder. Where could I look?

If you use the Classic web interface, you will always have a "Sent Items" folder. It is not called "sent-items". As BritTim noted, you can choose to show or hide this folder.

If you have ever used an email client on a PC or a smartphone, you may have other folders which were created by that email client. Some email clients create a "Sent" folder, which by default is not used by the Fastmail web interface to save sent mail but may be used by the email client for this purpose. You can choose to hide or delete that folder, similar to what BritTim described. If you use an email client, you should attempt to change the sent folder to "Sent Items" on the subscribed Fastmail server if possible so the Sent folder doesn't get created again.

If you use the Classic web interface, you can choose whether to save your sent messages and to which folder to save those messages.

• Go to Settings>Personalities
• I the upper left select the sending personality you wish to change. The default personality (FROM email address) is shown with an *asterisk.
• Change the Sent Items setting to the Sent Items folder
• You can also choose to Save sent files
• Be sure to click Save personality at the top when finished

Bill

[Grhm]

It is as important to know who an E-mail was sent to as who it was sent from, so why is it that Fastmail (and most of the other E-mail providers, too) allow you to see either the 'to' or the 'from' fields in a folder but don't permit you ever to see both?
They must be assuming that everybody always files all their sent E-mails in one place and all their received E-mails in another.
But that's a weird asumption to make.
Why would anyone ever want to do that, rather than filing everything by subject?
This is a thing that has puzzled me for years.

[BritTim]

I agree with you. The reason for not showing both is saving screen space, but it is very annoying in the case you mention (when messages sent and received are filed together).

[rusl]

This is the reason I persisted with using Thunderbird for so many years - so I could customise the columns to show the sent and received party. It's an ongoing annoyance to have to click on emails to see who sent or received them. But this is the price we pay when we have a clean looking interface without a huge number of customisations available. I'd also like "hide folder if empty, show if non-empty" and "always show message count next to folders". Again, it might look too visually busy for some people and the devs want to keep the number of options down to a minimum (and I don't blame them for wanting to reduce complexity).

I suggest using an IMAP client like Thunderbird if you want a powerful interface which can show full headers, raw text, lots of columns of information, etcetera. The web interface will always be less powerful than a dedicated client.

[n5bb]

Originally Posted by rusl

This is the reason I persisted with using Thunderbird for so many years - so I could customise the columns to show the sent and received party. It's an ongoing annoyance to have to click on emails to see who sent or received them. But this is the price we pay when we have a clean looking interface without a huge number of customisations available.

The Microsoft Outlook client can also be customized in this manner.

In the Fastmail current web interface:

• The Preview Pane (if enabled, on the right) will show both the source and destination, so you can use keyboard shortcuts (J/K and N/P) to move through conversations and messages inside conversations. The conversation list preview feature only shows the first portion of the message body -- I wish that you could separately enable the same to... and cc... display in the conversation list as we already have in the Preview Pane (or regular message display).
• In the message reading display (normal reading or Preview Pane) there is a show details link which expands the display to show the full From, To, Cc, Subject, Date, and Size fields. If you switch to Classic display theme (in the normal system), you will always see the expanded details. You can also customize the message details to show any header (such as X-Delivered-to, X-Span-hits, Authenticaion-Results, etc.). When used with the Classic Theme, Preview Pane, and keyboard shortcuts, you can for example sort for certain spam messages, then quickly go through them examining useful headers using the J/K keyboard shortcuts.

Originally Posted by rusl

... I'd also like "hide folder if empty, show if non-empty" and "always show message count next to folders".

Some partial solutions:

• Each folder has properties which can be set so that folder is always hidden, always visible, or hidden unless unread messages are present in the folder. I think this is what you wanted for the first case.
• The unread message count is always visible. You have to use the mouse-over feature to view the total message count in a folder, and if that's important to you I agree it's not convenient. I only rarely need to know how many total messages are in a folder - only the unread count is important to me on a daily basis.
• In some cases, searches can take the place of additional columns in the display to help you find certain messages. For example, you could use the in:Inbox is:answered search to discover which messages have been answered in your Inbox folder. You can save such searches (and name them) so you can quickly use them in the future.

So although Fastmail doesn't allow full customization of the message list (with many columns, such as in full-featured clients), some of the other features I described (customized header display and advanced searches) can make it much easier to find certain messages without manually looking through a long list. It's a different set of tools for working with your messages. The advanced search features have enabled me to find messages hidden in folders with thousands of old emails, and search across folders.

Bill