[Jon Seff]

I've tried that too...using INBOX just gives me the normal inbox (without the subfolders even showing up) and when I get account info on it, the mailbox shows up as "Mailbox 'INBOX' does not exist," but does show that there are messages in it.

[bmonzing]

To set smart folders in Mail.app, click on any sub-folder of your IMAP inbox and click "Mailbox" in the menu bar. Then "Use this mailbox for..."

[macavenger]

For what it's worth, I think they fixed this with 10.5.2. I have an e-mail account I have been using on IMAP for years that does this, but I never bothered to set the imap prefix, because I never realized it would be an issue. It still worked. Upon launching mail after applying the 10.5.2 update, however, I got a message saying that my prefix needed to be changed to INBOX, and asking for my permission to do that. I gave it, and suddenly my mailboxes looked cleaner, as the sent mail, drafts, etc boxes all lined up properly :) But yeah, as mentioned in numerous other comments, this isn't a mail problem, this is a user problem. Just fill in the prefix field, and you should be good to go.

[alderete]

Jonathan, you mention in passing that you put a lot of effort into migrating your messages from Eudora to Mail. I'd personally be very interested in learning more. I've tried a couple times with Eudora Mailbox Cleaner, but it's never really lead to a good import; in particular, I can never get message dates to come across correctly.

Any chance of an article or blog posting taking us through the process you used, and discussion of how the results worked out?

[gomer43]

Jonathan, this might also be fixed by, after setting the Prefix, going to your home folder > Library > Mail, and moving that folder to the desktop. Restart Mail. It will rebuild the info which might have been corrupted (something Mail in 10.5 is prone to do on occasion).

[501user]

Jonathan,

As well as filling in the "IMAP Path Prefix", there's something else you need to do. You will also need to tell Mail.app which "mailfolder" to use for which purpose.

For example, highlight the "Sent Items" mailfolder and select from the Menubar:

Mailbox > Use this mailbox for > Sent

I really don't know why Apple chooses to do this in such an odd roundabout way when it could use a menu similar to the one you've got there for Entourage in the image you show. But that's what you need to do. Afterwards, mailfolders such as "Sent" and "Drafts" will appear listed in the left-hand pane by function rather than under the specific account.

A word of warning: Anyone using a Gmail IMAP account had best NOT do this -- and had best watch what they check in the Preferences, too. Gmail works in its own peculiar way. Here are Google's recommendations:

http://mail.google.c...892&topic=12815

But that's down to Gmail and there are similar instructions for other mail clients.

Mail is a fine IMAP client. Unlike Mulberry, for example, it can't search an IMAP account server-side. It also has no support for IMSP. But it now supports IMAP-idle, which many clients don't. Not all clients perform equally well with all servers -- which is often the fault of the server. But Mail's IMAP performance has been consistently improving, and I should think it's at least as efficient at IMAP as the sadly dated and now obsolete Eudora -- and, unlike Eudora, it can handle UTF-8.

[coolfactor]

Excellent post, 501user!

[mcroft]

Jon,
You may want to keep an eye on Infinity Data System's Odysseus, which is a Eudora workalike replacement that is currently in Beta Testing.