Mail.app and IMAP

Question

Level 1

55 points

Mail.app and IMAP

I'm new to IMAP. I've been using POP3 to access email for a variety of accounts for years. I switched to a new web host and mail provider that happened to offer IMAP access so I decided to implement it because I was getting tired of manually marking my email as read on my iPhone when I had already read it on my MacBook, which as many of you know means actually opening each email individually. Here's hoping that Apple will add a bulk mark as read function to the iPhone in the next software update.

Anyway, I use Mail.app on my MacBook and although I love the fact that my iPhone knows what messages I've read on the MacBook and vice versa, I am having trouble coming to terms with the IMAP paradigm because I never delete email that isn't spam. Ever. And I'm not going to start. I work in a business where I need to often quickly reference email from years ago and being able to do so is critical. I like to keep all of my email in my inbox and use the Spotlight search from Mail.app to find anything I need very quickly.

Am I right that I won't be able to work this way with IMAP because there is no way to keep a message in my local inbox without a corresponding copy being kept on the server? That doesn't work when you have GBs of email that exceed your server quota. Or is there a way with Mail.app and IMAP to keep a month of email on the inbox folder on the server but keep all of my email in the local inbox folder? I hope there is or I'll have to switch back to POP which lets me do this but doesn't update the read flag on multiple devices.

MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008) (2.0 Ghz), Mac OS X (10.5.4), iPhone 3G (White 16GB) / AppleTV (40GB)

Posted on Jan 16, 2009 10:49 AM

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Answer 1

ssh Mac

Level 1

29 points

Jan 16, 2009 12:40 PM in response to Rob Jennings

The way you describe IMAP is accurate (the mail is on the server and Mail.app is simply giving you an interface to it). Many mail providers now offer many GB of mail storage, so this isn't as much an issue as it once was. However, if you want to keep it locally, you can certainly do that, as well.

You can:

1) Create folders on your Mac and drag messages into them.
2) Create archives on your Mac and use them as your long-term storage.

In my case, I keep everything on the hosts, and it works reasonably well, although Mail.app doesn't seem to like my multi-gigabyte mail accounts all that well...

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Answer 2

Rob Jennings Author

Level 1

55 points

Jan 16, 2009 1:03 PM in response to ssh Mac

Unfortunately this particular email account is with a provider who offers limited storage space.

It looks like I will need to set up a rule that moves email from the IMAP inbox to a local folder after one week. But aren't rules only applied to incoming messages? Will I need to apply this rule manually from time to time?

What about email in the sent folder? I assume I will need to move them to a local folder as well or I will eventually fill my limited storage space. Again, if rules are only applied to incoming messages, how will this work?

This part of IMAP seems like a kludge. It doesn't seem suited to people who would like to keep local copies of all email. My experience in business has taught me never to delete an email because you never know when you may need to reference it. It's also taught me that you can never rely on a server 100% and you should always have local copies.

I need to decide if all of this is worth it just to prevent having to waste time every day opening email on my iPhone just to mark it read.

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Answer 3

Jan 18, 2009 3:35 PM in response to Rob Jennings

Rob Jennings wrote:
That doesn't work when you have GBs of email that exceed your server quota.

Clarification please. Are you mentioning a server quota because:

1) You know that you have limited server space (like Hotmail or AOL)? If so, how much space is it? In either event, how much space does your mail require?

2) You are having issues with the IMAP being sluggish? I've noticed that Mail.app and/or my server gets sluggish when I'm dealing with hundreds of emails at a time. Maybe loading your inbox, or any IMAP folder for that matter, with hundreds, or presumably thousands, of emails makes it sluggish and is leading you to the assumption there is an issue with a server quota.

Can you please let us know. Thanks!

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Answer 4

Rob Jennings Author

Level 1

55 points

Jan 18, 2009 5:00 PM in response to Robert Vance2

I'm mentioning the quota because the server space is extremely limited. The IMAP service is being provided by the web host I use for my business web site. Based on the limited server space quota, I believe they are offering IMAP as a small value-added and expect their customers to use POP3 for the most part. Maybe I'll take a look at paid Gmail premier edition for business. I believe they offer up to 25GB of storage space. I assume you can use private domains. That should last me a long time and permit me the benefits of IMAP without having to change my long-time email management behavior. Or misbehavior. I assume if I have "Keep copies of messages for offline viewing:" set to "All messages and their attachments" in Mail than I will always have local copies of my email?

Rob

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Answer 5

Jan 18, 2009 5:47 PM in response to Rob Jennings

I've been using Gmail and it's been great! You can even point your domain's MX record to Google's server and keep your email addresses at username@yourdomain.com

Good Luck!

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Answer 6

Network 23

Level 6

12,333 points

Jan 18, 2009 6:08 PM in response to Rob Jennings

I can't help with the rules except to say that you could just select all and run your rules every week or so, and it oughta be able to pick up any old messages and move them.

I have been running Mail on IMAP for years and it's fine. I usually have 30-60MB of mail on the server. When the InBox approaches the quota I move mail to the local folders in Mail (under On My Mac). It isn't slow. For the messages still on the IMAP server, I have Mail prefs set to cache them locally so that I can still read them when offline. It's pretty seamless.

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Answer 7

Rob Jennings Author

Level 1

55 points

Jan 28, 2009 9:09 PM in response to Robert Vance2

Switching my business email service to Gmail as part of the Google Apps Premier Edition allowed me to retain my domain name and take advantage of all the benefits of IMAP while still sticking with my tried and true email workflow. With 25GB of storage I can leave years of email on the server and keeps as many messages as I want in my inbox. It works great and I no longer have to spend time every day opening email on my iPhone to mark it as read. My only complaints are the top level [Gmail] folder that appears in my Mail.app sidebar and the fact that Mail.app keeps creating a To Do folder on the server. Hopefully the latter will be fixed by Apple in the next update to Mail.app.

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Answer 8

Apr 1, 2009 12:51 AM in response to Rob Jennings

Cheers

I have no problems with Mail.app and my hugely populated IMAP mail account. Whenever I restart Mail.app it asks to change my prefix path to INBOX and if I let it all subfolders disappear .. so I just don't let it change it .. problem "solved".

My only really big issue is that it seems to be impossible to have Mail.app create new subfolder on my IMAP mail account. So currently I have Thunderbird for that .. where handling IMAP subfolders is a breeze btw. Actually I find Thunderbird to be a better mail reader than Mail.app by miles, but for reasons of sync I would like to use the latter. Does anyone know how to create new IMAP subfolders using Mail.app? If possible at all?

Regards,

Jan

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Answer 9

Apr 4, 2009 3:00 PM in response to Rob Jennings

Quite the contrary. IMAP is suitable for business mail, at least in larger organizations. They would normally prefer mail to be on a central server than the user's desktop, for several reasons:

* You can access it from anywhere
* The IT admins make sure it's backed up; many users aren't so careful
* If you leave or are on vacation, someone else can access it.
* If there are any legal issues or regulatory issues, the mail is all someplace where the people responsible for corporate policies can search it, determine what it's lifetime should be, etc

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Answer 10

egoes

Level 1

20 points

Apr 15, 2009 9:27 AM in response to Jan Mikkelsen

{quote:title=Jan Mikkelsen wrote:}Does anyone know how to create new IMAP subfolders using Mail.app? If possible at all?{quote}

In Mail.app, just type a slash after the name of your new mailbox (thename/) and you will get a white folder in which you can create nested mailboxes or other folders. Apparently a folder can only contain mailboxes or other folders but not messages.

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Answer 11

Apr 15, 2009 11:17 PM in response to Jan Mikkelsen

Jan Mikkelsen wrote:
My only really big issue is that it seems to be impossible to have Mail.app create new subfolder on my IMAP mail account. So currently I have Thunderbird for that .. where handling IMAP subfolders is a breeze btw. Actually I find Thunderbird to be a better mail reader than Mail.app by miles, but for reasons of sync I would like to use the latter. Does anyone know how to create new IMAP subfolders using Mail.app? If possible at all?

To answer my own question; all there is to is is to choose "Mailbox" and "New mailbox..." from the menu bar. It would have been nice to have the option available with right-click directly, but now I at least know how to do it.

/Jan

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Answer 12

Apr 16, 2009 12:05 AM in response to Jan Mikkelsen

This may no be related to this discussion but you all seem to know a far bit, I have a mobileme account and I did use that for mail, i then switched to a personal domain and coped my mail over using the mail app, just dragged and dropped from one mail box to another.

Now I want to go back, but for some reason certain emails give me this message The IMAP command “APPEND” (to INBOX) failed with server error: Message contains invalid header.

Any clues?

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