How to know who I've forwarded an email to

[rwbock38]

I'm using Apple Mail, OS X 10.10, and would appreciate help with a functionality I'm too dense to figure out on my own. Like all of us, I frequently forward an email. Sometimes, later, I want to know to whom I have forwarded it. I know that Mail marks any forwarded email with a sideways right-pointing arrow, but when I try get find out to whom I have previously forwarded it, I come up empty. Google searches bring no joy.

Richard

 

[JohnDS]

Look in your Sent Mail box.

Or, open the message, then right-click on the messages menubar and choose Customize Toolbar. Drag the icon for "Show Conversations" to the menubar. Click DONE. Once you have done this once, the icon will appear in the menubar of all messages.

Then click on the Show Conversations icon and it should show all related messages, including the sent forwarded message.

 

[rwbock38]

Thanks very much ... but I cannot get either solution to work. The first suggestion, looking in my Sent Mail folder, would work fine except that I have configured Mail to delete Sent messages after a month. Yes, I could change that and keep them forever, but that's a lot of messages.

I tried the second suggestion (my version of mail calls the icon you're referring to "Show/Hide Related Messages"). It does not show a test message, forwarded earlier today.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Forwarded mail is "sent" mail and if you delete it you cannot reference it.

A Time Machine backup done in the 30 day period after you sent an email should contain said email.

 

[rwbock38]

That makes sense. So even though the sideways arrow remains on the saved, original email (showing that I had forwarded it in the past), there's no way to know to whom I forwarded it.

But it's still odd that the second option given by JohnDS doesn't work...

 

[JohnDS]

When trying the second method, did you try scrolling UP?

 

[0007776]

You could change the setting to not delete it after 30 days. For stuff before that assuming you have some sort of web access to your email without using the mail app you could try the sent folder there, I know with gmail at least it doesn't delete it from the server when it is downloaded and I can find sent mail from the app on the page in the browser.

 

[rwbock38]

Yep. I just reconfirmed with a second test email which I forwarded, then went back through your steps. It's not in "Show/Hide Related Messages". Thanks very much for noodling this!

 

[nightcap965]

Hint: Create a GMail account and BCC all of your mail to it. This will give you an archive, and you'll never run out of space.

To BCC all outgoing mail, enter the following from a terminal window:

defaults write com.apple.mail UserHeaders '{"Bcc" = "myaddress@gmail.com";}'