INBOX, Inbox, and MS Outlook 2007
 

I have a Cyrus-IMAP server with altnamespace:yes and unixhierarchysep:
yes. I want my sent messages to be stored on server, the INBOX.Sent
being the most obvious choice. Setting this in Apple Mail was easy
(Mailboxes>Use this folder for...>Sent). With Outlook 2007, however,
I've run into a strange problem.

The Outlook documentation suggests:
" ... In the Internet E-mail Settings dialog box, click the Folders tab.

Folders tab in Internet E-mail Settings dialog box
To choose a custom folder for saving your sent items, click Choose an
existing folder or create a new folder to save your sent items for
this account in."
(http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ou...010164216.aspx)

OK, I choose Inbox.Sent, but the sent messages are still saved in a
local Outlook folder. If I try to move them to Inbox.Sent, I get an
error message: server said the mailbox does not exist. Yes, what does
exist, is INBOX.Sent, and both SquirrelMail and Apple Mail store sent
messages there. Now, if I create a subfolder in Inbox.Sent, like
Inbox/Sent/test, it DOES exist from the server perspective (and sent
mail can be stored there). But Inbox/Sent still cannot be used for
that, and INBOX.Sent is not visible in any folder list.

The most bizarre is that Outlook recognizes the existence of
INBOX.Sent by storing its own test messages there (those generated
while creating the account).

After googling half a day I'm out of wits. Please, help.

Thanks.

Tom

From my experiences with Postfix/Qmail ect... I would have a script to create the maildir directories for the user account, chown, chmod ect...

When they logged into Squirrel Mail for instance the (inbox,sent,trash) would already be there.

How did you originally setup the accounts, I did not have any problems with people who used Outlook with imap setup.

Each email client will create it specific set of folders when setup via imap. When you click on download folders it should automatically create the ones it is going to use. (if you delete all of the inbox folders) When you launch the email client again it will ask you to download the email folders).

maildir

johndoe
--> inbox
----> .Inbox.Sent
--> sent
--> trash
----> .Trash

I am trying remember from memory, but if you create imap account using another email client (example Thunderbird) it will create its own set of folders. I never recall having any problems with sent/trash or any other messages going to the (local folders) on the client's machine.

Not sure if this helps or not.

First, I'm using Cyrus-IMAP. Cyrus-IMAP uses its own database to look up folders and messages. Yes, Outlook does create "special" folders with proper permissions, but the database doesn't seem to know it.

Secondly, the whole idea of storing sent messages on server is to store all the sent messages in one place for easy reference from any location, that is, potentially using different clients: Outlook from work, Apple Mail from home, etc.

For some reason I'm now trying to understand, Outlook uses INBOX as Inbox, but refuses to use INBOX.Sent as Inbox.Sent

I feel your pain, Outlook along with other MS email clients do bizarre things and not reproducibly in other email clients.

Have you check your database permissions for the user (that the service talks to)?

Also, create test accounts if you can get a hold of Outlook 2007 and view the server logs to see if you can't find the culprit.

OK, it looks that I understand what's the problem.

Outlook 2007 takes folder names as case-sensitive, while Cyrus and the rest of the world take them as case-insensitive. So when Outlook asks Cyrus to list the available folders, it gets INBOX.Sent and other INBOX.* folders for a reply. No "Inbox.Sent" among them? Outlook just takes it as the destination folder doesn't exist and doesn't save anything on server. At the same time, it continues to insist there IS "Inbox.Sent" on the server by showing it among IMAP folders! And if you try to tell the server to create "Inbox.Sent" folder, server responds that the folder exists, as Cyrus takes INBOX as case insensitive!

The workaround is to fit the rest of the world to the Microsoft peculiarities by forcibly creating "Inbox.Sent" folder before some other e-mail client creates INBOX.Sent. Then it works with the rest of them, except that you have to specify "Inbox.Sent" explicitly to save the sent messages. And if the client does not allow it (some phone clients), then an extra Sent folder is created.

I've tested it on Apple Mail, Outlook 2003, 2007, 2010, Thunderbird 10.0.2, TheBat! 5.

Before I got rid of a Qmail & Postfix server, when the new user was added via a script it created the end users 'maildir' with the folders. Otherwise it would fail as the email client would not have rights to create them without the pre-created directory structure.

What you just said makes perfect sense, Windows does not care about case for some unknown reason and it does not care about S P A C E S in file names. (I always use_underscores_in_files).

So I guess in your situation, creating the directory structure before the Outlook end user connects via imap protocol would allow this to work correctly.