No option to create separate folder tree for new IMAP account

This option used to exist, but my database has become corrupt and i am forced to set up these accounts again - and now there is no option for a separate folder tree when setting up an IMAP account. The option exists for POP3, but it’s no possible to change from POP3 to IMAP without creating the account again.

How to fix this? I have 3 accounts that i currently cannot connect to because i need to keep the messages separate from local folders.

and then… after giving up i went online and the IMAP accounts that i had imported (but they didn’t appear) suddenly appeared when email was checked. So i presume that the original setting was stored somewhere and that’s why there was no option to choose it now.

Quite confusing…

IMAP and Exchange will ALWAYS create a separate folder tree for each account. It is not possible to combine more than one IMAP or Exchange account in the same folder tree, though I sometimes think that would be very useful. So there is no need for the option to be presented as there is only one possible option. Setup your account and you will see.

It is not possible to change from POP3 to IMAP just by changing a setting. That is because the two protocols are so different. Essentially IMAP is a mirror of what is on the server and POP3 is a local message store. If you want to change from POP3 to IMAP you need to first setup a separate IMAP account, then move the messages from POP3 to IMAP, then delete the POP3 account.

Thanks Gary. Yes, i thought i knew that, but then when i set up the IMAP account it did not create a separate folder, so i presumed that it would use local folders. It was only when i first checked email that a folder was actually created, and then it was all clarified. What was so confusing was that there was no feedback on this until i checked email the first time.

Yes, because IMAP is a synced copy of what is on the server, it is not able to show anything until it syncs the first time. :slight_smile:

I understand that, but there was not even a main folder for the account until after email was first checked.

A similar problem existed when i went to import eml files that i had exported from IMAP based accounts … there was no way to create folders to import them into. As it turned out, the accounts were created when i imported the settings, but i coujld not import the data because no account folders were showing.

You might say that, well, IMAP is only designed to sync with the server, but i had used the option to download emails and attachments for offline storage, and most of that data had long since disappeared from the server, and there was no way to import it without a folder to select.

The whole process is not very intuitive.

There’s a related problem here that i experienced with exporting and then re-importing email data. I had numerous folders that were under local folders, but not under the inbox folder. When it came time to import these folders i was unable to select local folders. I was forced to import them into the inbox and then move them afterwards. One of the big consequences of this is that all of my filters broke, and it took a few hours to fix them all. Categories also got lost but after setting them up again the filters picked them up again (but emails still lost their categories).