Outlook 2007 IMAP Folders

[Jerry]

I've set up Outlook 2007 to connect to an IMAP server running on another
machine, but it doesn't show any email in most of the folders on the server.

The server currently has the following folders for my account:

INBOX
INBOX.Drafts
INBOX.Spam
INBOX.Trash
Sent

All of these folders have multiple emails in them, but Outlook only shows
the emails in the INBOX folder and none of the others. All of these folders
have been subscribed to in Outlook's "IMAP Folders..." dialog. I can see all
of the emails in all of these folders using other email clients, such as
Thunderbird, OS X Mail, and others, but not with Outlook.

Is there some secret sauce need to get Outlook to display the content of
these folders?

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

I've set up Outlook 2007 to connect to an IMAP server running on another
machine, but it doesn't show any email in most of the folders on the server.

The server currently has the following folders for my account:

INBOX
INBOX.Drafts
INBOX.Spam
INBOX.Trash
Sent

Sounds like you may have incorrectly specified the Root folder path on the
Advanced tab of the account settings.

 

[Jerry]

Sounds like you may have incorrectly specified the Root folder path on the
Advanced tab of the account settings.

The Root folder path is blank -- should I set it to something else?

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

The Root folder path is blank -- should I set it to something else?

Depends on the server. For example, on Google Mail, of you leave the root
folder path blank, youll see one folder root [Gmail] with folders under it.
If you specify [Gmail] as the root, all of gmail's folders will be at the top
level as their own folders. I would not expect any subfolders in an IMAP
account. All your folders should be at the top level of the PST holding them,
which will be separate from your default folders.

 

[Jerry]

The Root folder path is blank -- should I set it to something else?

Depends on the server. For example, on Google Mail, of you leave the root
folder path blank, youll see one folder root [Gmail] with folders under it.
If you specify [Gmail] as the root, all of gmail's folders will be at the top
level as their own folders. I would not expect any subfolders in an IMAP
account. All your folders should be at the top level of the PST holding them,
which will be separate from your default folders.

I tried setting the Root folder path to all logical options (~/, ~/Mail,
etc.). When set to anything other than <blank>, Outlook doesn't see any IMAP
folder, including the default Inbox it sees when the folder path is set to
<blank>.

The fact that Outlook displays the names of the folders when the path is set
to <blank> indicates to me that Outlook knows that these are valid IMAP mail
folders. Why, however, it doesn't display the multitude of emails in each
folder is still a mystery.

Any further thoughts? It seems that this must be an Outlook configuration
issue (or bug) because Thunderbird running on the same machine does see all
the emails in each folder.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

The fact that Outlook displays the names of the folders when the path is set
to <blank> indicates to me that Outlook knows that these are valid IMAP mail
folders. Why, however, it doesn't display the multitude of emails in each
folder is still a mystery.

Are you subscribed to the folders? Have you enabled the option to download
the full messages and not just the headers?

 

[Jerry]

Are you subscribed to the folders? Have you enabled the option to download the full messages and not just the headers?

Yes to both questions.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

Yes to both questions.

I'm at a loss. The IMAP transport for Outlook is not, in my opinion, the most
robust part of Outlook. I have used IMAP successfully with some servers and
with others it doesn't work well. I don't know what else to suggest.