Update: Awesome tips in the comments section (thanks Derik).
I think I’ve finally had it with Apple’s Mail.app. Take a look at the abomination on the right as I explain exactly what the heck is going on.
I have three email accounts:
- My GMail account, POP3, added first
- Wizardishungry.com, IMAP
- NYU,IMAP
The GMail account has busted settings and is not set to automatically fetch email. I have it setup so I can email attachments without having to wait around for uploads in webmail.
Now, why the heck are the folders on my NYU IMAP account appearing under the NYU tree at the bottom, but the folders on my Wiz IMAP appearing as subfolders of the inbox. Even worse is that there are TWO sent folders there. One is from Pine and I suppose you can’t expect totaly interoperability, but let’s turn our attention to the Wiz Draft folder.
Why is Mail.app’s draft folder not properly as in the other accounts? Well, let’s look in Console.app’s logfiles:
2006-12-10 21:36:25.346 Mail[305] Error NSError “IMAP command “CREATE” failed.
The server error encountered was: Invalid mailbox name.” Domain=MFMessageErrorDomain Code=1030 UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription = “Invalid mailbox name.”; } occurred while trying to append messages to outoing store. Ignoring and proceeding with delivery…
Thanks a lot, Apple. Meanwhile, my drafts and sent folder appears to be eating messages. I guess Mail.app does not work with Pine, as my NYU mailbox is only accessed with webmail, a very simple IMAP client on my Nokia 770 and two installs of Mail.app and works like a charm.
However, my “Smart Folders” from work do not show up at home and vice versa. This should be handled by storing them on the IMAP server. I don’t know very much about the way IMAP works, but I’m pretty sure this is a possibility.
So I guess I’ll be migrating to Thunderbird once I get a free couple days to export all my mail and regenerate my IMAP mailbox. If anyone has any hints about migration or using Thunderbird, I’d like to hear them. Too bad the University of Washington hasn’t released their multi-interface (Web/GUI/Console) successor to Pine, Alpine.
December 11, 2006 at 1:50 am
I was using Thunderbird for awhile and ended up switching back. Mail.app performance improved a lot when I installed the IMAP IDLE plug-in
December 11, 2006 at 3:20 am
A little bit of configuration will fix many of your issues.
1. Your NYU folders are showing up below in their own section because the server registers them at the same hierarchy as you inbox (it doesn’t need an IMAP Path Prefix).
2. Your Wizardishungry shows its folders underneath the Inbox because that’s where your server puts them. Dreamhost (you may be using them, I don’t know) does this as well and the solution is simply to put “INBOX” as the IMAP Path Prefix. Suddenly, your mailboxes get broken oout like NYU.
3. The error message you quote is simply Mail.app trying to create a “Sent” folder at the same level as the Wizardishungry Inbox. Once you set the IMAP Path Prefix, this should go away.
4. You can set arbitrary folders as the “Drafts”, “Sent”, “Junk”, and “Trash”. Select the ones that Pine uses and go to Mailbox -> Use This Mailbox For -> folder type. Pine and Mail.app will now use the same folders transparently.
5. Smart Folders are neither IMAP folders, IMAP emails, nor are they associated with any one email account, so server side storage isn’t possible in a practical sense. However, using .Mac’s syncing, these Smart folders will get synchronized between machines.
I hope this information gets you working like you want.
December 11, 2006 at 5:49 pm
re: 5 / I understand this but there’s no reason why it couldn’t be used as a data store for these.
December 11, 2006 at 11:10 pm
Well, how would you indicate this information given it must be a folder or email without the possibility of confusing actual emails or folders as Smart Folders?
December 11, 2006 at 11:10 pm
Oh, and you’re welcome.
December 11, 2006 at 11:11 pm
Oh, and if you plan on sticking with Mail.app, definitely check out Tim Gaden’s excellent Hawk Wings. It’s an amazing resource for Mail.app users.
December 12, 2006 at 8:43 am
[...] Jon at WizardIsHungry is an unhappy Mail user. [...]
December 12, 2006 at 3:32 pm
Oh, and to anyone who is setting an IMAP Path Prefix — it *is* case sensitive, so I had to set it as “
INBOX” before it would work.December 12, 2006 at 6:37 pm
[...] Recently I posted about having problems with Apple Mail and, like magic, Derik from MacUser arrived and solved all my problems and my story was quickly reblogged on Hawk Wings. It is great that Apple’s products have such an enthusiastic user community. In retrospect, I probably could have located solutions to these problems using Google and Google Blog Search (highly recommended for this sort of problem). However, many times a problem does not lend itself to being described as I didn’t think that the IMAP path prefix was the source of my folder soup. [...]