How to create/import identities as root (not as part of Local Folders)?

I am investigating eM Client as an alternative to Outlook, primarily because Outlook is so incredibly bad at IMAP. Unfortunately, I’m finding account setup and import absolutely maddening. Some accounts are set up as root folders, some are lumped into Local folders. I have multiple instances of accounts in the account list, visually indistinguishable, but deleting one deletes all imported information, deleting the other doesn’t. Some accounts do not show up in the root folder list at all, so I don’t know where their information is being stored. Importing filtered PST backups results in files being dropped in the Local Folders tree; I can access the drop-down to add them to a different root folder, but can’t figure out how to create a root folder for various identities.

Don’t even get me started on trying to get the calendar and task items imported.

Surely it isn’t supposed to be this hard. I’m fairly technically savvy (network experience, minor java programming and troubleshooting, server setup and website maintenance), but I’ve spent two days on this so far and have already decided to blow away my initial installation and start over. I can’t find anything to explain what I’m doing wrong, or how to overcome the acknowledged idiosyncrasies of my Outlook pst file. Google has been uncharacteristically useless.

Can anyone point me to comprehensive documentation that would explain the apparent inconsistencies and the expected program behavior?

I think I finally figured it out. Rather than allow a global import, I created each account one at a time using the automatic account creation. This seemed to work better than entering credentials manually (which is what I did before). Then, I created separate backup pst files for each account using the Outlook function, filtering each one for the relevant email address in the frequently used fields. From there I was able to import the data to individual account folders as expected—at least, so far.

I’m seeing a few oddities, like empty folders that take an extraordinarily long time to delete (several minutes). Presumably this is because the new accounts were created using the IMAP profile and the folders are themselves local structures (I’ve been using POP3 for these accounts in Outlook). By and large, though, I think I’m over the hump and can move forward.

Overall, I really like the client. The interface is clean and modern, and it seems to contain a lot of the mission critical features I rely on without tripping over IMAP the way Outlook does (with constant disconnects). But the account setup process should be much, much, MUCH easier and more intuitive.

The “root” folders are created when you add an account to eM Client. The easiest way to do that is with Automatic Setup of accounts. When you delete the account from eM Client, the corresponding folder tree is also deleted. This is not a problem with IMAP because the folders are just a synced copy of what is on the server, but with POP3, the contents don’t exist anywhere else, so deleting the account deletes the data. Unless you move it to Local Folders first.

Once you have setup your accounts in eM Client, you can then import from Outlook, using Import Selected Folders, and import them account by account selecting the correct destination.