[kman42]

My university just enabled IMAP in January so I decided to give it a try. I set up my account in Mail as IMAP and it seems to be functioning in the sense that I can read/send mail. The weird part is that in the @ folder in Mail where it lists your IMAP folders it is showing my login files and some other things:
.cshrc
.login
.mailboxlist
INBOX.Drafts
INBOX.Sent

Any ideas about what's going on? I'm an IMAP newbie so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
kman

[larkost]

You will want to go into Preferences->Accounts->(select account)->Advanced and change the "IMAP Path Prefix", probably to "INBOX". You could also call tech support there and ask about the "IMAP Path Prefix". This is a fairly common problem with IMAP servers, and is because the IMAP standard leaves too many details open to interpretation.

[kman42]

Originally posted by larkost:
You will want to go into Preferences->Accounts->(select account)->Advanced and change the "IMAP Path Prefix", probably to "INBOX". You could also call tech support there and ask about the "IMAP Path Prefix". This is a fairly common problem with IMAP servers, and is because the IMAP standard leaves too many details open to interpretation.

Will all of my online IMAP folders then live within the INBOX folder?

kman

[kman42]

So I just changed it to INBOX and all of the folders that used to be in 'On my Mac' are now at the root level of the folder/mailbox drawer in Mail. Perhaps this is because there are no longer any folders in my IMAP mail directory?

kman

[kman42]

I have a couple of other questions while I am at it. For my .Mac account I have a folder under the Sent folder (paper airplane icon) and one called Sent Messages under a folder call .mac with a globe icon? What's the difference?

kman

[Mithras]

Originally posted by kman42:
I have a couple of other questions while I am at it. For my .Mac account I have a folder under the Sent folder (paper airplane icon) and one called Sent Messages under a folder call .mac with a globe icon? What's the difference?

kman

There's no standard for the name of the folder that holds your sent mail. If you used your .mac account with a different email client before, it might have created the 'Sent Messages' folder. You can specify which folder Mail uses for sent mail by selecting the folder in the drawer, then choosing the menu item Mailbox:Use This Mailbox For:Sent.

You can move the messages from the other folder into your 'Sent' folder, and delete the old folder, if you want.

[hudson1]

Originally posted by kman42:
So I just changed it to INBOX and all of the folders that used to be in 'On my Mac' are now at the root level of the folder/mailbox drawer in Mail. Perhaps this is because there are no longer any folders in my IMAP mail directory?

kman

I think this is what happens if you only have one e-mail account. More of a bug or quirk than a feature, IMHO.

[kman42]

I finally got everything working and then I came home from lab and tried to set up my G5 to work in the same way, but it won't connect to the server:

There may be a problem with the mail server or network. Check the settings for account “IMAP” or try again.

The server error encountered was: The attempt to read data from the server “xxx.xxx.edu” failed.


It works when it is setup as a pop account. I now get the same error when I try to get email on my laptop which I brought home from work and was functioning fine with IMAP there.

I can ssh into my account and check my email with pine so the server is up and running.

Any suggestions?

kman