I sent an email using Yahoo Mail. Their servers are rather slow from time to time and my browser just stood still. Nothing seemed to happen (I did not get the confirmation). So I decided to log out and log back in and try again, because I thought that it did not send. However, when I checked it, the mail was in the "sent folder", so I did not send it again, since I guessed that it was sent. I am not sure though now.
How is the "sent folder" handled? Is it managed on my account specific? Is it possible for an email to land in the "sent folder" without actually being sent? Basically, is an email first sent and than copied to the "sent folder", or first copied to the "sent folder" and than sent?
Best Answer
The "Sent" folder is a construct of mail clients, and the behavior of it is entirely dependent on what client you're using.
At most a mail server might pre-create a folder named "Sent", but after that the server has nothing to do with it. When you send a message it's up to Outlook/Thunderbird/Eudora/Webmail/etc to put a copy of the message in that folder. At what point a given mail client does that is at the discretion of the people who made it.
Logically it should only be placed there after it has been successfully sent, but I've seen developers do things that fly in the face of logic.