[TriLUG] IMAP - Nested folders

[Josh Vickery]

I just did this for my company.  Originally I went with Courier-IMAP
and setup virtual shared folders and virtual users pulled from LDAP,
but due to some issues with IMAP NAMESPACE Outlook 2003 refused to see
any shared folders.  The individual inboxes worked fine, and I had a
script that would create those from LDAP.  Since Outlook is the
primary client, I ended up switching to Cyrus IMAP, again
authenticating against LDAP.  Cyrus works fine with Outlook, and users
are able to create folders, move folders, and transfer messages
between them.

As a bonus, with Cyrus, I found that I did not have to create INBOX
folders for users, which helped this projects, since the only use for
this IMAP server is shared folders.  I haven't finished yet, but Cyrus
IMAP and and Outlook 2003/XP seem to be getting along fine and dandy.

Cyrus also works find with Thunderbird, but Thunderbird complains
everytime you log in if an INBOX folder does not exist.  Since the
Cyrus admin client is actually a Perl module, it should be simple to
create inboxes from the LDAP tree, but I have not yet done this.



On 12/9/05, Jeff Groves <jgroves at krenim.org> wrote:
> I ran into the same limitation with Outlook.  And it is an Outlook
> problem -- not an IMAP problem.
>
> I wound-up importing my Outlook email into Thunderbird locally and then
> moving folders instead of futzing around with Outlook any more.
>
> Outlook's support for IMAP is poor.  An example of it's poor support is
> that it does not put sent email in the sent folder on the IMAP server.
> It still sticks it in the local Sent folder.  I would have to move the
> contents of my local Sent folder to the IMAP server on a regular basis.
> I'm sure there's some rule you could set up to do this automatically,
> but feh, I'll use Thunderbird instead.
>
> Jeff G.
>
>
> Paul G. Szabady wrote:
>
> >Greetings,
> >
> >At work we have a desire to move all users from .pst files on the desktop
> >to a central IMAP server.  I have set up a test (WU) IMAP server on
> >RHEL3-U6 for this project.  I'm able to create folders (a.k.a. files),
> >move email from exchange and .pst files to my imap folder(s), but the
> >standard email clients we use (Outlook on PCs and soon to be Entourage on
> >OS X) do not have the ability to create folders as directories, which of
> >course will allow for additional nested folders.
> >
> >On the other hand, I can log into the imap server and create as many
> >directories and sub directories as I want (probably a limit somewhere, but
> >I haven't reached it).  I can then use Outlook to subscribe to these
> >folders and I'm off and running.  Unfortunately, very few of our 1500+
> >users will want to do this, even if they knew how to do it.
> >
> >Ideally, we'd like the user to be able to drag an individual email or an
> >entire folder hierarchy from either the exchange server or the local .pst
> >file(s) to the IMAP server.
> >
> >Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?  Maybe a different IMAP server
> >would act differently?
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Jeff Groves
> email: jgroves at krenim.org             Web Site: http://www.krenim.org/
>
>
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