IMAP oddity

[jamesrob]

Mac/iOS user (Mountain Lion and iOS 5)

When I moved from MS Entourage 2008 to Apple's Mail app last November, I also moved my email accounts from POP3 to IMAP. I couldn't see any of my sonic.net mail until (on the advice of a very helpful 3rd level Apple support engineer in a one hour screensharing phone call), I tweaked the "advanced" tab of Mail.app's preferences "Advanced" tab to set "IMAP Path Prefix" to "INBOX." I now see that my sonic.net IMAP account is different from all my other accounts in two respects, both evident not in the Mac OS, but in iOS.

First, in iOS, all my other accounts display some special folders (Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Trash, Archive, and Junk) with special icons, and all at the same hierarchical level as Inbox for that account. However, the sonic.net account shows all the other folders without the custom icons, and all the other folders are one step below inbox in the IMAP folders hierarchy.

Second (and I'm pretty sure this derives somehow from what I've just described), messages sent from my sonic.net account are displayed in iOS with the Sender (me, of course) as the title in the list of messages, which is sorted by date sent, whereas in all my other accounts, the messages show the intended recipient as the message title in the list of messages.

Even more curiously, the lack of custom icons and folder hierarchy problems are specific to iOS. In the Mac OS, the custom icons and hierarchical parity between Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Trash, etc. are the same between my sonic.net account and other IMAP accounts, none of which has any entry in the "IMAP Path Prefix" box in Mail.app prefs.

I sent a detailed email to sonic tech support asking for help. They responded that they cannot help with software client or OS issues and suggested that I ask here.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks so much,
Jim Robertson

[dane]

Some A/B comparison screenshots would probably be useful for the discussion.

[jamesrob]

I'm unable to do so. Indeed, I'm not even able to post a reply at all!

[jamesrob]

I'm unable to do so. Indeed, I'm not even able to post a reply at all!

Curious: I can do a quick reply, but not a regular reply using the full editor.

[kgc]

The IMAP folder hierarchy where folders are considered to be sub folders of the INBOX rather than at the same level is a legacy support issue for us. Apple's Mail program has a bit of a history of problems around IMAP prefixes but the special folders (Drafts, Sent, etc.) should all behave as expected unless something else isn't configured correctly. Hopefully someone with more familiarity with the program will be able to help out.

As for the full editor - maybe you have a javascript blocker installed in your browser?

[jamesrob]

The IMAP folder hierarchy where folders are considered to be sub folders of the INBOX rather than at the same level is a legacy support issue for us. Apple's Mail program has a bit of a history of problems around IMAP prefixes but the special folders (Drafts, Sent, etc.) should all behave as expected unless something else isn't configured correctly. Hopefully someone with more familiarity with the program will be able to help out.

As for the full editor - maybe you have a javascript blocker installed in your browser?

I'm running the current version of Safari in Mac OS X 10.8.1, and Javascript is enabled, so I don't think that's it as far as my inability to upload attachments or use the full editor. I'll hope for help from someone else familiar with your servers and Apple's mail clients in OSX and iOS.

[jamesrob]

I just tried again to upload a file. Same message, which looks as though it comes from Safari:

Safari can't open the page posting.php?mode=reply&f=5&t+580 because the server unexpectedly dropped the connection. This sometimes occurs when the server is busy. Wait for a few minutes, and then try again.

I'll keep trying.

[jamesrob]

Even more weird: some of the URL was lost in my "Quickreply" which WAS accepted.

Here's the full URL:

posting.php?mode=reply&f=5&t+580

I'll keep trying.

[jamesrob]

Guess the server won't accept the full URL. Maybe that sheds some light on why it won't accept attachments, either.

[williamt]

Please try your attachments again.
Note they must not be bigger then 8M.