I have resisted Apple for 30 years, this is no longer an option for me as many of my clients’ grand kids are gifting Apple stuff to their grand parents.

My first endeavor; Apple iPad
2017.12.17
Apple Store
Wellington Greens Mall
West Palm Beach, FL
Apple iPad 128GB iOS 11.2.1 (silver)

Infuriating episode #1
Lasted 2 days!

The mail program on a new Apple iPad iOS 11.2.1 will NOT sync the “sent” folder–“yes” I have set up the mail account using IMAP settings. I have exhausted all common sense choices in the “Advanced” settings section with no effective result. Keep reading, I’ve located an answer for you 🙂

Amazing (not really though) to find thousands of Apple Victims faced with the same dilemma, as per google. Search for “apple mail not syncing sent folder”

“Apple Victims” (those which apply logic and common sense as often as possible only to be rendered dumbfounded by Apple’s choice of UI nomenclature, ops and maneuvers)

When I set up my first email account, I think it was HP OpenMail back in 1987, the “system” by default had; inbox/sent/trash. Not much has changed in 30 years and other than archiving and spam folders/directories, the basic dir’s listed above, should have remained unchanged—common sense would suggest. Today, I can download Linux Mint 18.2, install it and using Mozilla Thunderbird, setup 30 or more IMAP mail accounts–all will sync flawlessly with my mail server. The “sent” folder is just that, a folder which contains all mail which has been sent from that account to wherever. It’s just default, and it’s just common sense, no ridiculous, uncommon settings to fumble with, it just works.

Setting up an IMAP email account on an iPad, that actually works as an IMAP account would be expected to:

And It Begins:

Start by going to,

1) settings > Accounts & Passwords >

2) Under the Accounts section on the right, open the mail account you want to apply the correct settings to.

3) You will see IMAP listed at the top with your mail account just below it and to the right you will see the email address of that account, tap on the email address to open up the settings.

4) The keyboard will pop up and display, hiding the settings window, hide the keyboard and look at the bottom of the open window which is displaying the settings, you will see “Advanced” at the bottom left, open this.

5) You will see a topic heading called “Mailbox Behaviors” which will list some (default or common) mail folders.

NOTE! These default system folders always will list at the top, no need to look for mail system folders down in your list of other folders–not in this case, keep reading.

6) You should see “Sent Mailbox”, and to the right it will say “Sent” in your case, but will be “Sent Messages” later on. (MAKE UP YOUR MIND APPLE, it’s e-mail, not e-messages!

7) Open the “sent” or “Sent Messages”  you should see two sections; “On My iPad” and “On The Server”

NOTE! If your running IMAP settings, there should be ZERO confusion as to how an email client is to handle mail and where to place it when syncing with the mail server, accept when Apple does it—keep reading.

8) Under the “On The Server” settings, IGNORE common sense and IGNORE the “sent” folder and if you see a check there, then that is the reason you have sought out help and are reading this right now.

9) Scroll to the bottom of the list of all your sub mail folders (ones you have created) and look for Apple’s “Sent Messages” folder, tap on it with your finger to select it, a blue check mark should appear.

10) start backing out of the settings area by tapping on “advanced” at the top left, then “account” at the top left and finally tap on “Done” at the top right.

11) press the home hard button on the ipad, now test out your email.

I’m giving credit to the following article that helped me solve this issue.

Web24.com

NOTE: I did not find any useful help on the Apple forums, only suggestions to make sure the “sent” folder was selected under the “on the server” section—had no effect.

-heinz