I keep a copy of email I send by setting mail-archive-file-name to "~/mail/outgoing-mail". Every once in a while I open the outgoing-mail to look at a recent message, then I send another mail message. The latter message gets appended to the buffer, and not to the file. I think this is a really bad idea. Messages can get lost this way. (You can send mail from another emacs that appends to the file) I finally tracked this behavior to mail-do-fcc, which in fact goes far out of its way to append the message to 'target-buffer'. If this function always appended to the file, then the worst that would happen is that I might have to revert the target buffer. Can we either 1) take this code out, or 2) make it an option. -jeff In mail-lib/sendmail.el we have the following code: (defun mail-do-fcc (header-end) (let ... (save-excursion ... (while fcc-list (let ((target-buffer (get-file-buffer (car fcc-list)))) (if target-buffer ;; File is present in a buffer => append to that buffer. (save-excursion (set-buffer target-buffer) (cond ((eq major-mode 'rmail-mode) (mail-do-fcc-rmail-internal tembuf)) ((eq major-mode 'vm-mode) (mail-do-fcc-vm-internal tembuf)) (t ;; Append to an ordinary buffer as a Unix mail message. (goto-char (point-max)) (insert-buffer-substring tembuf beg end)))) ;; Else append to the file directly. ;; (It's OK if it is an RMAIL or VM file -- the message will be ;; parsed when the file is read in.) (write-region (1+ (point-min)) (point-max) (car fcc-list) t))) (setq fcc-list (cdr fcc-list)))) (kill-buffer tembuf)))