Glad to see I am not alone. Currently I am simply right clicking on the
sent folder when it gets to 20 or more unread messages and marking them
all as read. I have not found a solution.

Boot wrote:
I am haveing precisely the same issue and am working on a fix, though am
largely dependent on what I can find on the internet. If you did make any
headway - any assistance greatly appreciated.

" wrote:

I recently ran into a problem with my IMAP account, I found that Sent
mail was being saved locally, not to the IMAP server as it should. I
created a rule to move a copy of Sent mail to a 'Sent' folder that
exists on the IMAP server, now I can see all my Sent Mail even from Web
Access. The problem now is that when the rule I created moves a copy of
my sent mail to the specified folder (as it should), it marks it as
unread. This is an annoyance since I only expect to see unread mail in
my Inbox, not my sent items. I have tried creating a rule to mark all
items that arrive in the Sent' folder as read but it doesn't work, or
at least I am doing something wrong.
Any and all help is appreciated.