When organizing email, there are times when a user will create subfolders for their Inbox, causing the folder structure to look something like this:
- Inbox
- Microsoft
- Follow-ups
- Archives
- Forum Replies
In the above example, you can see subfolders added to the Inbox, and even a couple of sub-folders of sub-folders (e.g., Office Subscriptions under Microsoft). From a webmail perspective, this is a perfectly acceptable way to organize emails. However, when attempting to synchronize these folders with a third-party email client, such as Apple Mail or Outlook, problems arise.
This is because virtually every email client handles the synchronization of these sub-folders differently. From a mail server perspective, this makes it difficult to account for every mobile and desktop email client. Therefore, SmarterMail is unable to support syncing sub-folders of a user's inbox with third-party clients. While you can create subfolders of the Inbox and access them via webmail, please understand that some email clients, like Apple Mail, may not sync subfolders under the Inbox properly.
Note: Folders and subfolders created outside of a user's inbox should sync properly.
If your preferred mail client is having trouble syncing nested Inbox folders, here's what we recommend:
- Remove the SmarterMail account from the mail client (Outlook, eM Client, Thunderbird, MacMail, etc.).
- Shut down the program to kill all connections.
- Log in to the SmarterMail interface and move the nested folders from the Inbox to either the root folder or a different custom folder.
- Once complete, start up your email client and add your account back.
- Wait for all folders to sync. Once this is complete, your Inbox should sync properly to/from your mail client.