if an email folder is sync`d on outlook on say a laptop - why would the same folder on another pc show it as empty?
Sync issues, or perhaps the period to sync. Depending on the version of outlook it can be found in control panel, mail...
hmmm it would seem that my mum has sync`d to her ipad , but when she checks her laptop the contents of the folder is not there (yet it is on the ipad) ergo - has the ipad downloaded the emails?
Email is far more complicated than the perception of "send and receive" gives it. I'm not going to attempt to explain just how complicated it can get but the simple explanation is easy to understand. Your email is sent to a mail server, that mail server then sends it to the recipients mail server, in turn the receipt mail client sends a response to update the his mail client with the latest emails on that server. Very rarely would you want to cache the entire mail server onto your computer, it's wasteful and quiet frankly scary with the amount of junk I get. So what happens is that you temporary store the visable data of the email in your client. So very very simple explanation over. The solutions you need to look at are, is your mother's mail client still using the correct details on that device. The DNS settings may have changed or she may have simply forgot to change her password on the laptop. Simple solutions often work for me, I would also check that she's definitely looking at the same folder since you can multiple email address's and then select the wrong folder.
I assumed that we were talking about exchange here, but I guess we are talking about pop or imap. If it is pop check the settings on the ipad to ensure that it is set to "leave a copy of the mail on the server" or whatever description is used in ios. If this hasn't been ticked on all devices then one device will remove the copy from the server following sync. If it imap or exchange this isn't the case.
