Unable to view Inbox sub-folders in Mail on OSX Mavericks

I discovered another solution that works almost as well as seeing the original folders in Mail. It involves using smart mailboxes.

I had one outlook mailbox that disappeared in Mac Mail. But I found that the messages belonging to the invisible mailbox actually do appear in search results when specifically searched for, and they are tagged with the (invisible) Outlook mailbox. So I created a smart mailbox in Mac Mail, with the criteria "Message is in mailbox" set to the name of the Outlook mailbox. This created a smart mailbox containing the messages I was looking for.

You do have to create a smart mailbox for every Outlook mailbox, but its a one-time task, so it didn't bother me much.

BTW, RowdyAce's trick above also works well, although it does require changing the 'level' of your outlook folder tree.

Hope this helps.

I know this post is old, but I found a solution that worked for me. My issues were similar in the fact that I had subfolders listed, but the content was not there. First select the folder that is missing data. Next the Mailbox drop down menu. On the bottom of the list you will see an option to "REBUILD." Click on that and you should see the folder populate with it's current data and will download the message as well.

Hohpe this helps for everyone.

I 'solved' my problem by using imap for mail, keeping exchange only for calendar purposes.

Not really a fix, but at least for me, It worked without losing any functionality I used via exchange.

I had a very similar problem after upgrading to Mavericks, where the contents of two subfolders that I had tried to rename in Mail and on Gmail webmail, became invisible. I could see there were messages in there, but they were simply not viewable on my Macbook. The iPod showed them, no problem. After trying most of the fixes here, in Gmail webmail I marked all the invisible messages as 'unread' and then synched Mail. The subfolder was re-populated and all messages are now visible.

I have been having this same issue with our exchange. All the subfolders showed up fine on our Exchange webmail site but Mac Mail would not show the subfoldres. My customer had 1 subfolder, named copies of old email, underneath INBOX and then all her other folders were subfolders of "copies of old email". I logged into our Exchange webmail site and then I moved all those subfolders of "copies of old email" and put them as subfolders of INBOX. Once I did this, I switched over to Mac mail and manually synced the "Exchange" account and all the subfolders now show up. It looks like there was some sort of heirarchy file structure glitch in Mac mail not being able to see the one subfolder.

I agree with FrCanuck if users already have subfolders. Create new subfolders under INBOX and then drag the emails accordingly to those new subfolders. Then Mac Mail will see the file structure change and your folders will sync properly. Looks like Apple needs to update the backend of Mac Mail.

Hope others find this useful!

I have an answer this issue. I just had this problem and I had to do one simple change.

1. Goto Settings

2. Goto Mai, Contacts, Calendars

3. Click the Account with issue (ie. Exchange)

4. Select Mail Days to Sync

5. change to No Limit

Hope that helps!

Under MAILBOXES you'll see VIPs, Sent and Trash. Then you'll see SMART MAILBOXES and ON MY MAC.

When you hover over ON MY MAC you'll see a text that says 'show'. Click on it and all you sub folders will show.

It took me a while to figure it out but it's there.

What I still can't find are my notes... the one that had the yellow background...

I found a solution that worked for me. I use Gmail (hosted app mail).

1. Go to Gmail settings->Labels Tab on Gmail (or your Google Apps mail)

2. Create a Label or choose an existing one.

3. Edit the Label name from "LABEL" or what ever the name of the label is to be "INBOX/LABEL"

4. Save settings

5. Restart Apple Mail app.

The folder/label show now show up under Inbox.

I notice these queries from Fall of 2013. I am writing with the same problem from Spring 2014. I want my folders back on my desk top! Has anyone worked out a solution to this?

I could see the folders, but they were all empty of my emails. I selected the folders - as a group - pulled down under Mailbox to Rebuild and after a few minutes wait, all the emails appeared in their correct folders.

I hope I haven't missed anything, but here is a way out of your difficulty: If you create a Cloud account, the InBox folders and other info will be reflected on both devices, and each will be a mirror image of the other - after iOS X Leopard.

Using Outlook 2011, creating a Folder underneath an Inbox, then shows up correctly in Mail.app, after an app restart.

As you say, creating a Folder under an Inbox in Mail.app causes it to appear in the Inbox foldy section lower down the left sidebar, which is silly.

So far I can't find a way to achieve this using Mail.app.

Good luck, Bill

Adding a second "dummy" email account worked for me, but I didn't like looking at the warning triangle that was displayed indicating that Mail.app was having trouble connecting to one or more email accounts. So, I tried something else (mentioned later in this thread) which is to login via the Exchange server's web interface (Outlook Web Access) and add a subfolder to the inbox. As soon as I did this, Mail.app decided to show the inbox's subflders again (I didn't even need to re-start Mail.app).

p.s. I also tried reindexing and rebuilding and it made no difference.

p.p.s. Hopefully Apple is monitoring this forum and can resolve this in a future update.

p.p.p.s. Oh, and I've been on Mavericks for 5+ months and this problem just occurred randomly. It didn't occur during the upgrade.

I fluffed around with this issue (or a very similar issue) tonight after setting up my partners mail on her new macbook. The problem and solution is:

When I setup the account to work off an imap mail server Apple Mail decided to insert "INBOX" in the "IMAP Path Prefix:" setting. I didn't put this setting in so maybe Mail has done it to your account too!

It seems that this tells Mail to only retrieve mail from the top level Inbox on the imap server and not the sub folders.

My solution was to simply get rid on "INBOX" and leave it blank:

Mail >> Preferences >> Accounts >> (select your account) >> Advanced >> remove "INBOX" from "IMAP Path Prefix:" >> close Preferences

Hope this helps! Good luck...

I had same issue with my Mail.app and exchange account, could not see subfolder in inbox.

Solution:

I jumped on our webmail Outlook and moved one subfolder to the root of the mailbox (to same level as inbox).

Then resync my exchange account and miracle happened my subfolders were back. Awesome!

This step kicked off something and Mail can see my exchange account properly.