"Mail needs to change the IMAP path prefix"

Check mail preferences under composing and make sure you've set "Create Notes & To Do's" to just "On My Mac". I believe it might still try to create that mailbox on the server regardless (it did for my Gmail), but hopefully won't force the issue.

Otherwise, ask your company email admin. It depends on how your IMAP server is set up. I think the most standard is to let you set up your folders under INBOX so that's probably what Mail is trying to assume as your path prefix.

If you look under email preferences > accounts > advanced, you will see the IMAP path prefix shown there.

For me the folders don't disappear... Mail just moves them. I see them appear in the bottom of the sidebar as the name of the account.

I personally like that Mail grouped them with the Inbox (when you don't set the "proper" path for INBOX), so if anyone knows how to suppress the original "Mail needs to change the IMAP path prefix" please in the name of all that's holy share that info.

Thanks!

Have the same Problem. Isn´t there any solution?

I have this problem, too. What is blocking Mail from using my existing (and perfectly functional) IMAP path prefix?

-B...

I played around with this quite a bit this morning, both client side and with full access to my IMAP server and its settings, and it seems that the reasoning for this request on the part of Mail lies in Mail's overall display design:

If you want subfolders in your mailbox per account, they need to be in a completely different part of the folder list than the Inbox. It is as simple as that. Every other mailbox-analog design idea lies within this overarching theory.

This is the reason your folders seem to "disappear". They're likely not completely vanished, but rather just much farther down the list under a top-level hierarchy named after the account to which they belong. So, your Inbox for that account, for some unknown and unreasonable reason, is up with your other accounts' inboxes, and every folder "under" that inbox in IMAP is way down the list in a cluttersome, top-level-per-mail-account jumble-f *.

So, to that end, if you want your Tasks etc. to save to the server, then Mail requests over and over that you make your mailboxes appear in this way, aka setting your IMAP Folder Prefix to "INBOX" usually, thus being able to separate your folders in the haphazard method in which Mail prefers. I expect this is the only way it knows how to read and write from those folders as well, even if you created them on the server yourself. I am however unwilling to test this out, given another experience I had with this system:

NEVER ever delete the calendar that Mail creates in iCal for this integration. I had this bind up the entire related account for some undetermined amount of time as it tried and failed over and over to come to grips with my apparent vile indiscretion. I don't recall what I did to fix this beyond rebuilding my mailbox and being very very patient.

I'm happy not using this half-baked Tasks-to-server system "convenience" for the tradeoff that my accounts appear where I want them and how I want them, without having to fit into the mold of whoever designed this kludgy, disjointed and embarrassingly counterproductive UI scheme. I suppose it works for someone with one, maybe two mailboxes, and that is likely the system under which this was tested.

Bums me out.

Gregory, thank you for your exhaustive testing. At least I know to just accept the way Apple Mail currently works rather than fight it.

I urge everyone who cares to go to the Mail menu and select *Provide Mail Feedback...* Maybe enough feedback will help change the behavior in a future rev.

Excellent! Nearly made me switch to a different mail viewer there.
Thanks!

To get rid of it, permanently, this has worked for me so far.

Make sure Mail is closed. In the Finder go to the Mail.app application. Right-click (or CTRL-click) and select Show Package Contents. In a folder called PlugIns is a file called "ToDoPlugIn.bundle". Move this file to the folder called PlugIns Disabled.

Reopen Mail.app, and delete the To Do icon from your toolbar. You may have to delete the "Apple Mail To Do" folder in your email server manually, but it shouldn't reappear manually.

Forget it. Didn't work.

this topic is marked as "answered"

where is the answer? is there any solution for the problem?

Please provide a solution to this. I am tired of clicking this every time I open mail....

From my experience, it doesn't seem to happen equally across all accounts. I have three accounts in Mail.app, and none of them have an inbox prefix set. But Mail only asks to change the inbox prefix for two of them - both on Dreamhost. It doesn't ask to change the inbox prefix for my work based, Zimbra.

Regardless, I agree that this is killer annoying, especially since it completely changes the way email accounts are listed in the source pane.

Wow, I was really hoping to find a way to toggle this behavior off. The account servers mine are all upset with is Joyent. I'm not sure how they have their servers setup but Mail.app does not like it and wants the prefix changed.

If you let it change, poof, goes your structure, and if you mess with it too much it's overwritten my timestamp data before which causes fantastic joy. 😉

I also have this annoying pop-up every time I open mail. The problem is, I need it the way it is set now, not the way mail.app wants it.

If I let it change the path prefix nothing links correctly