MobileMe e-mail back-up - does Mail.app store MobileMe cloud e-mail?

[Nubben]

Hi all,

I have a MobileMe account and am thinking about moving all my e-mail to the cloud instead of (as I have it now) split between my Mac and the cloud.

Obviously mail that is stored on my Mac is stored locally but what about the mail stored in the cloud - is that cached on the Mac?

If I go in to the mail folder on the Mac all the messages stored in the cloud have a size of 4K which to me means no it's not stored locally.

I think Gmail has this function of downloading all your e-mail to the computer.

Can anyone please shed some light on this?

Many thanks!

Nubben

 

[aristobrat]

Here's a quick test. Disconnect your Mac from the Internet (pull the ethernet cable out, or turn off WiFi) and see how Mail.app operates.

Generally speaking, when you use an mail provider that offers IMAP support (like MobileMe, gmail, etc), your email lives on their servers, and your devices have caches of it locally so that you can work offline.

Check out the IMAP paragraphs for a little more info:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3300

 

[Weaselboy]

Using MobileMe (IMAP) for email with Mail app in 10.6.4 and all my saved mail folders are cached and fully accessible with no Internet access.

 

[swiftaw]

In Mail Preferences->Accounts->MobileMe->Advanced make sure the 'Keep copies of messages for offline viewing' is set to All messages. Then you'll have a local copy of everything that can be accessed when you're offline.