IMAP Support in Outlook

One thing that many of you would agree is that IMAP support in most email clients are pretty horrible. I’ve encountered some problems after I switched to my new email account. Those who emailed recently should’ve gotten my updated email address. Anyway, I use webmail (RoundCube) when I’m not at home and I use outlook when I’m at home. That way I can move email around from my Yahoo! to *@krunk4ever.com. Outlook 2003 is my default email client and the delete flow is completely broken.

I understand that that maybe how IMAP system works, but there’s got to be a better way to deal with this. Most email clients when dealing with deleting emails on IMAP only marks the email for deletion and after a point you have to go purge the deleted emails. Same thing occurs in Pine, but when you exit Pine, it prompts a message asking if you would like to purge your deleted emails. In Outlook 2003 and as far back as I can remembered, emails marked for deletion appear with a line striked through it. The only way to purge is to click Edit > Purge Deleted Messages followed by clicking OK to confirm the purging.

If I had to write a email client for IMAP, what I would allow the user to do is set a trash folder. If none is set, then create a trash folder and move any deleted email into that folder (similar to how every other email client works in the world). None of this marking email for deletion and still appearing in the same folder. It’s like if you had to delete a file off your network drive, it won’t really delete it, but instead just have a line that strikes through the filename and won’t be truly deleted until you purge it. And of course, you have to do this by folder, there’s no purging of emails in multiple folders or even subfolders.

Okay, maybe I was dreaming a bit too much. A shortcut key to quickly purge would be nice too. The fastest and only way currently as mentioned above is to click Edit > Purge Deleted Messages and click OK on the confirmation.

I found out that in Outlook Express, they have a function which when enabled allows you to Purge deleted messages when leaving IMAP folders. I mean even that work around would do it for me, but after contacting the Outlook team, there isn’t such a feature on Outlook 2003, not even a shortcut key to purge deleted emails. However, I was told that in Outlook 12 (also known as Outlook 2007), they would have PurgeOnSwitch which basically does the same thing that Outlook Express did for years. For now, in Outlook 2003, we’re stuck with manually purging. The person who responded to me did say that I could filter out deleted emails or sort by deleted status so the deleted emails appear at the bottom.

My dear officemate did tell me a faster way to do this. With a keyboard, this is the combo to purge: ALT+E, S, <SPACE> (basically the keyboard combo of doing what I mentioned above). It’s the only way I can think of so far. If you have any better ideas or ways around this, please let me know. Guess I can only wish for now…

One Reply to “IMAP Support in Outlook”

  1. Well, I think you should always have up to date email backups. I used to do it manually by saving the .dbx files, until I found Outlook Express Backup Genie that does it automatically at regular times.

    I choused it over other because it can work with both MS Outlook and Outlook Express

    Alicia

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