Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


IMAP folders Help
New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

IMAP folders Help

Hello ya all, hope all are safe in the pandemic.

I have a shared hosting account. I recently configured "Outlook" for IMAP...

I see the following folder structure:
Inbox
--> Drafts
--> Sent
--> Junk
--> Trash
--> spam
Drafts
Junk
Sent
spam
Trash

So, there are folders within Inbox and the same folders are present as separate. I have some emails in both the Inbox-->Sent and the Sent folder by itself

-- Of course, I would like to keep it simple by just having one set of folders... so, I need to make sure emails are only present in one set of folders...

I am not sure how/ why would these duplicate folders be created. Also, what is the recommended structure?

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

Comments

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited May 2020

    Different email clients may try to map the folders differently. If you set your IMAP prefix as "INBOX" in Outlook you'll probably bring it more in line with your expected result, but keep in mind if you have two folders for the same purpose right now it's not going to merge them, you'd have to move emails from one folder to another manually.

    Example: https://www.ecenica.com/support/answer/set-imap-prefix-outlook/

    Setting prefix "INBOX" would mean that your Sent folder is now mapped to INBOX/Sent instead of /Sent, which is what you're seeing nested under the Inbox currently.

  • plumbergplumberg Veteran

    @jar said:
    Different email clients may try to map the folders differently. If you set your IMAP prefix as "INBOX" in Outlook you'll probably bring it more in line with your expected result, but keep in mind if you have two folders for the same purpose right now it's not going to merge them, you'd have to move emails from one folder to another manually.

    Example: https://www.ecenica.com/support/answer/set-imap-prefix-outlook/

    Setting prefix "INBOX" would mean that your Sent folder is now mapped to INBOX/Sent instead of /Sent, which is what you're seeing nested under the Inbox currently.

    I see. Thanks for the insight.

  • TimboJonesTimboJones Member
    edited May 2020

    @jar said:
    Different email clients may try to map the folders differently. If you set your IMAP prefix as "INBOX" in Outlook you'll probably bring it more in line with your expected result, but keep in mind if you have two folders for the same purpose right now it's not going to merge them, you'd have to move emails from one folder to another manually.

    Example: https://www.ecenica.com/support/answer/set-imap-prefix-outlook/

    Setting prefix "INBOX" would mean that your Sent folder is now mapped to INBOX/Sent instead of /Sent, which is what you're seeing nested under the Inbox currently.

    Isn't this set by the mail server and the client is supposed to match? When using an imapsync years ago, it seemed to be set from the mail server.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited May 2020

    TimboJones said: Isn't this set by the mail server and the client is supposed to match? When using an imapsync years ago, it seemed to be set from the mail server.

    It can be seen that way but might be an over simplification. When you receive an email it goes to the inbox, and that's a server defined location. When you send an email or save a draft, that's written by the email client. Where that email client writes to is based on where it has mapped the Sent (or other purpose) folder to (usually either /Sent or INBOX/Sent). So really what you're trying to do is get multiple email clients to see it the same way, but since that first email client might be a webmail client, you might be able to say it's server defined by having it's default settings. Even though that webmail client is technically "client-side" it's just provided by the host.

    This is further confused by services like Gmail that actually do write emails to the Sent folder on the server side and not client side, but they're not using open source software.

    Thanked by 1TimboJones
  • @jar said:
    This is further confused by services like Gmail that actually do write emails to the Sent folder on the server side and not client side, but they're not using open source software.

    What do you mean by this? If a backup program using my gmail credentials sends an email, AFAIK, it shows up in my sent box.

    Thanked by 1jar
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited May 2020

    TimboJones said: What do you mean by this? If a backup program using my gmail credentials sends an email, AFAIK, it shows up in my sent box.

    Exactly, and because Gmail has become such a common household item almost everyone has begun to view this as natural behavior. But when using open source systems like exim/postfix/dovecot this isn't really standard behavior for the server software, rather it's then then standard behavior for email clients that use IMAP (but is subject to how the email software is mapping the Sent folder to choose where it writes to).

    The short version is the systems that rely on open source software generally don't write sent emails to the Sent folder for you. That's a premium feature of services like Gmail, developed by their in-house teams.

    Thanked by 1TimboJones
Sign In or Register to comment.