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User profile for user: WordWeaver777
WordWeaver777 Author
User level: Level 4
1,153 points

How do I view custom mailboxes and their subfolders that are under "On My Mac" in Mail on my iMac, on my iPhone?

Greetings. Ever since I purchased my first iPhone about two and a half years ago, I have been trying to figure out how to sync my custom mailboxes under the "On My Mac" section in the Mail app on my iMac, with the Mail app on my iPhone Xs Max.


I have created about ten of these custom mailboxes under "On My Mac" in Apple Mail on my iMac. In turn, these ten custom mailboxes under "On My Mac" likewise have different amounts of subfolders/mailboxes under each of them as well.


So, after I have read messages in Mail app's inbox on my iMac, I then manually move the already-read messages to one of these ten custom mailboxes -- or to one of the subfolders/mailboxes within these ten main custom mailboxes -- under the "On My Mac" section.


So my main question is the following:


How do I view these ten custom mailboxes -- and their subfolders/mailboxes -- that are under "On My Mac" in Mail on my iMac, on my iPhone Xs Max?


In other words, I want to see the same mailboxes on my iPhone Xs Max, that I have under "On My Mac" on my iMac. I want ALL maiboxes on my iMac to be synced to my iPhone, including all of my custom mailboxes. Is this doable? If so, exactly how do I make it happen? I have researched this issue for a few years now, and I have yet to find a clear-cut way to accomplish this.


If it is of any help, I primarily use Gmail and Yahoo, and have all emails from their mail servers automatically downloaded to my iMac.


If you have personally accomplished the above, I would really appreciate hearing from you. Thanks in advance to anyone who may choose to respond.


iPhone XS Max

Posted on Nov 12, 2021 5:59 AM

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User profile for user: Demo
Demo
User level: Level 10
166,633 points

Posted on Nov 12, 2021 10:08 AM

When you create a mailbox in an IMAP account, that mailbox will sync across all of your devices. I have three IMAP email accounts and the mailboxes that I created and have stored emails in, sync to my Mac in the mail app, and to my two iPads and my iPhone XR.


You can’t create mailboxes in your Gmail account with the same name as those on your Mac, in the On My Mac mailboxes, and have those emails appear in the Gmail mailboxes with the same names. It doesn’t work like that. What you can do is to create mailboxes with those names and then transfer the emails from the On My Mac mailboxes (with the same names) into the newly created Gmail mailboxes. The emails must be on the Gmail server in order to sync to all of your devices.


You can create the Gmail mailboxes directly on your phone. While you can also create them on the Gmail server, it’s not necessary to do so. With IMAP email accounts, whatever you do on one device is reflected on all of your devices. If you create a mailbox on the server using your Mac, that mailbox with automatically appear in the Gmail account on your phone.


This explains how to create custom mailboxes on your phone.

Use mailboxes to organize email on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support


Just to show you what I’m talking about, here is a screenshot of about half of the custom mailboxes that I created in my Comcast account. I created all of these directly on either my iPad or iPhone.



When you do this, yes, you have to leave the emails on the Gmail server. If you delete them on any device, you delete them everywhere.

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13 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply
User profile for user: Demo
Demo
User level: Level 10
166,633 points

Nov 12, 2021 10:08 AM in response to WordWeaver777

When you create a mailbox in an IMAP account, that mailbox will sync across all of your devices. I have three IMAP email accounts and the mailboxes that I created and have stored emails in, sync to my Mac in the mail app, and to my two iPads and my iPhone XR.


You can’t create mailboxes in your Gmail account with the same name as those on your Mac, in the On My Mac mailboxes, and have those emails appear in the Gmail mailboxes with the same names. It doesn’t work like that. What you can do is to create mailboxes with those names and then transfer the emails from the On My Mac mailboxes (with the same names) into the newly created Gmail mailboxes. The emails must be on the Gmail server in order to sync to all of your devices.


You can create the Gmail mailboxes directly on your phone. While you can also create them on the Gmail server, it’s not necessary to do so. With IMAP email accounts, whatever you do on one device is reflected on all of your devices. If you create a mailbox on the server using your Mac, that mailbox with automatically appear in the Gmail account on your phone.


This explains how to create custom mailboxes on your phone.

Use mailboxes to organize email on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support


Just to show you what I’m talking about, here is a screenshot of about half of the custom mailboxes that I created in my Comcast account. I created all of these directly on either my iPad or iPhone.



When you do this, yes, you have to leave the emails on the Gmail server. If you delete them on any device, you delete them everywhere.

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User profile for user: Demo
Demo
User level: Level 10
166,633 points

Nov 13, 2021 4:48 AM in response to WordWeaver777

I’m sorry that I didn’t see you responses sooner. By 7:00 or 8:00 my time, I am pretty much done with the support community and I put my devices away and put them on DND.


As you found out, you can’t collapse folders in the iOS mail app. If you asked about that, I missed it and I apologize.


You can always send feedback to Apple. They won’t respond, but they welcome user input.

Feedback - iPhone - Apple

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User profile for user: WordWeaver777
WordWeaver777 Author
User level: Level 4
1,153 points

Nov 12, 2021 5:09 PM in response to Demo

Hello. I am sorry to bother you again, but I have two new questions.


Question #1: On my iPhone, under the "Gmail" section, there are currently the following:


Inbox

Drafts

Sent

Trash

[Gmail]


The first four are proprietary icons. The last one is a folder icon. Why is that folder there, and why does it have brackets around it?


I tried to delete it, but I get a message which says "Unable to Delete Mailbox. The mailbox could not be deleted on the server."


Question #2: I created a test folder under the Gmail section in the "[Gmail]" folder called "Family", and then I created two subfolders inside of "Family" called "Mother" and "Brother". But once I save everything, how do I collapse the [Gmail] folder, so that the subfolder called "Family" cannot be seen, and so that the subfolders inside of "Family" that are called "Mother" and "Brother" cannot be seen either?


In other words, right now it looks like this:



I have probably hundreds of custom subfolders on my iMac in the "On My Mac" section which I would like to convert to the IMAP system, but if I cannot collapse them on my iPhone, then it is really a no-go.


Thanks again in advance.

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User profile for user: WordWeaver777
WordWeaver777 Author
User level: Level 4
1,153 points

Nov 12, 2021 6:11 AM in response to Demo

Major bummer, Demo ... and thank you for responding. Sadly, that is basically the same answer that I have been getting for the past several years. I was hoping that by now, Apple would have made this possible.


It is so frustrating when I am out and about, and using my iPhone, and I can't refer to any messages that I have stored in those custom mailboxes on my iMac. It would also be great if I could move already-read messages to those same custom folders, while using my iPhone.


Do you have any idea regarding why Apple hasn't made this possible yet? Is it just too complicated a process to be able to sync all mailboxes, both default mailboxes and custom mailboxes? I would really like to understand this. Thank you.

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User profile for user: Demo
Demo
User level: Level 10
166,633 points

Nov 12, 2021 8:11 AM in response to WordWeaver777

I can’t answer why Apple hasn’t come up with a way to sync local mailboxes. I won’t pretend to know what something like that would involve or if is even possible. With IMAP email accounts, there really is no need to create other mailboxes that will sync to your devices. Any mailboxes that you create in an IMAP email account already syncs across devices.


The On My Mac mailboxes are for that exact purpose and that is to be on the Mac.


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User profile for user: WordWeaver777
WordWeaver777 Author
User level: Level 4
1,153 points

Nov 12, 2021 8:29 AM in response to Demo

Thanks for the added details. When you say this …


”Any mailboxes that you create in an IMAP email account already syncs across devices.”


… do you mean that if I go to my online Gmail account, and create new folders that have the same exact names as the “On My Mac” mailboxes, I will be able to see the contents of those “On My Mac” mailboxes on my iPhone?


I doubt that is what you are saying, based on what you have already stated previously, but if by some odd chance the answer is “yes”, in order for the contents of those new IMAP folders to be shown on my iPhone, doesn’t that mean that I would have to leave my mail on the Gmail mail server, even after it is downloaded to the Mail app on my iMac?


I am very uncomfortable with that idea.

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User profile for user: WordWeaver777
WordWeaver777 Author
User level: Level 4
1,153 points

Nov 12, 2021 11:54 AM in response to Demo

Thank you so, so much for providing me with this detailed answer. It is the kind of clear, direct answer which I have been waiting for, for several years now.


One final question if I may. So, if I follow your aforementioned setup instructions, if I want to move a message from one mailbox — say, from my inbox, for example — to one of my custom mailboxes, can I do it from any device, and the move will be reflected on all devices, or do I have to log in to my actual Gmail account first, and move the message on Google’s mail server?

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User profile for user: Demo
Demo
User level: Level 10
166,633 points

Nov 12, 2021 1:16 PM in response to WordWeaver777

You can do it from any device and that action will be reflected across all of your devices. IOW, if you move an email to a custom mailbox on your iPhone, that email will be moved to same custom mailbox on your Mac in the Gmail account in Mail.app and on the Gmail server. You do not have to log into your Gmail account on the server.

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User profile for user: WordWeaver777
WordWeaver777 Author
User level: Level 4
1,153 points

Nov 12, 2021 5:20 PM in response to Demo

Demo, please disregard my previous message. I just searched for an answer regarding collapsing folders on the Apple Support Community, and going back at least eight years to 2013 -- and maybe further -- it seems that everyone gives the same answer: "It can't be done." What???!!! So I went through all this trouble to learn how to use IMAP on my iPhone, and now I discover that it is a no-go, because I would not be able to collapse my 100s of subfolders. Oh well. Unbelievable!

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User profile for user: WordWeaver777
WordWeaver777 Author
User level: Level 4
1,153 points

Nov 13, 2021 7:41 AM in response to Demo

Hello again Demo. Well, I just sent them the following, and I suspect that I am amongst many others here who have already done the same thing:


”I have 100s of custom folders/mailboxes and subfolders in the Mail app under the “On My Mac” section on my iMac. I would really like to convert these to IMAP folders on my iPhone. The problem, as you know, is that folders and subfolders in the Mail app on the iPhone are NOT collapsible. This means that I would have a very long list of folders on my iPhone, and it would take a long time to find something. Before writing this message, I conducted a search in the Apple Support Community, and I discovered that iPhone users have been asking for this functionality since at least 2013, and probably earlier than that. Please, please add this functionality to iOS soon. The current performance is simply impractical and unacceptable. Thank you for your consideration.”

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How do I view custom mailboxes and their subfolders that are under "On My Mac" in Mail on my iMac, on my iPhone?

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