I’ve been self hosting my email domain for years on a Linux. But there have been times when something went wrong with my server that had me out for days. During that time my email was nonfunctional as well. So I got tired of that issue and migrated to Outlook.com for my email provider. Since I’m a Multi-platform Systems Admin at a local University, I like to keep fluent it all the happenings of the various platforms. I already had an Outlook.com account I wasn’t using so I updated its email address to make it more in line with modern standards and then migrated all my email to it. I used Outlook for Windows as I figured use their native tools for the migration. I linked both accounts and copied and pasted my email folders one by one. I got everything over and then later found a problem. So for posterity and to help the community at large I’m posting this article.
The Problem
The issue was that on my iPhone with Apple Mail I couldn’t see all the folders. I have an extensive folder structure that I’ve used for many years. I like to keep emails and keep them organized for later retrieval. I also use my iPhone as my main access to my email. That way I always have it with me. For me to not see my folders was devastating. I spent many nights, over months, trying to figure out what went wrong. I have a day job and family obligations so couldn’t spend that much time at night to figure out what was going on. I found the following to be true.
These apps could see all the folders:
- Apple Mail on Mac
- Classic/New Outlook for Windows
- Outlook for the Web
These apps couldn’t see all the folders:
- Apple Mail on iOS
- Outlook on iOS
- New Outlook on Mac
Solution
To solve this problem I looked online and came up with articles that were not related as the keyword “outlook.com” in the search engines assumed I had problems with the Outlook app not the Outlook.com service. I eventually stumbled on this article that solved the problem. It seems my Googlefu is not that strong these days. I should have referenced it as IMAP Migration then it would have probably found this article faster.
It seems when I copied the email from an IMAP source to Outlook.com, Outlook(classic) for Windows set the folders “PF_CONTAINER_CLASS” to “IPF.Imap”. Which ActiveSync connections will filter as not supported. Since ActiveSync is used for Mobile connections that is why my iPhone and later my iPad both had the same problem. Also it seems that Outlook for Mobile also still uses that protocol as it didn’t see them either. After going over the above article and using the utility they referenced. I could see that any folders I created recently didn’t have that property. So I deleted it from all the folders that had it. Low and behold my folders started appearing again.
No Responses