Can I suggest that the documentation for the “Automatic detection of special folder names” feature is improved please? It would be good if the documentation explained how it worked and what the limitations are. Also, I would suggest that the application gives a better indication that something is wrong with them, perhaps with warning messages on sync or one of those orange explanation marks (ideally with a tooltip!) against the affected account(s).
Some background. My parents have accounts with PlusNet - a fairly major ISP in the UK. I realised that something was wrong when one of the accounts was complaining that it couldn’t create a Trash folder on the server whenever something was deleted.
When I look at a Plus Net account in eM Client, all of the IMAP folders show up as sub folders of the Inbox. There is no indication of the folders real names. I tried using names like Inbox/Trash or Inbox\Trash but there were still problems. Then, I found a setting on the Plus Net webmail to show the special folder real names. Apparently they are:
INBOX.Sent
INBOX.Drafts
INBOX.Trash
INBOX.Spam
As soon as I set these up in emClient it was clear that things were better. The special folders all moved to the top of the folder list and suddenly the Trash folder has an “Empty Trash” option. They now seem to behave as expected. I’m pretty convinced that there could have been some indication that the account wasn’t configured correctly.
Hopefully this might be useful for other people that use PlusNet but perhaps the app and/or the documentation needs some tweaks too?
Thanks. I can believe that. I think that PlusNet are trying to discourage people from using their bundled email offering so that makes sense. I understand that they don’t offer it to new customers any more.
While I did want to help other users with this email, I did also intend it to be feedback/suggestions for the eM Client team too. E.g. in order of importance:
There’s only one line of documentation for the automatic detection with no examples to try. Could it be improved? Or could they add more information to their FAQ?
Could they give an indication to the user that either automatically or manually set special folders are not working correctly?
Could they give some indication to the user that the automatic detection has failed?
Could they add way to see the “real” IMAP folder names?
I suspect that when automatic detection fails then it tries to make some new folders in the IMAP root. In the case of PlusNet this isn’t allowed and it causes sychronisation errors that basically require the account to be completely removed and re-created to clear. Could the user-experience here be improved? Perhaps a way for the user to move the client side folder to somewhere else without losing the specialness?
I’m hoping that they might consider adding some or all of these suggestions to their backlog. While this is definitely a problem for PlusNet users, it might affect users of other email providers too.
Thanks again for a great email client though. I really like it.
Oh I totally agree with all your points, and voted for this.
I have previously written to eM Client requesting updating and increasing the documentation, and I was assured that it is a work in progress. Presently it is not much more than a quick start guide. ;-(
