Differences between revisions 15 and 16
Revision 15 as of 2012-12-13 02:31:34
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Editor: 41
Comment: changed iOS to the version where SPECIAL-USE support appeared and what mailbox names are used
Revision 16 as of 2012-12-13 20:48:19
Size: 2161
Editor: 8
Comment: Link to RFC6154 for special-use extension
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Traditionally IMAP clients have automatically created Sent, Spam, etc. mailboxes themselves and used various different names for them. This of course makes interoperability between clients difficult. So SPECIAL-USE IMAP extension was developed to allow clients to determine which mailboxes should be used for which purposes. Traditionally IMAP clients have automatically created Sent, Spam, etc. mailboxes themselves and used various different names for them. This of course makes interoperability between clients difficult. So [[http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6154|SPECIAL-USE IMAP extension]] was developed to allow clients to determine which mailboxes should be used for which purposes.

Mailboxes and SPECIAL-USE

Traditionally IMAP clients have automatically created Sent, Spam, etc. mailboxes themselves and used various different names for them. This of course makes interoperability between clients difficult. So SPECIAL-USE IMAP extension was developed to allow clients to determine which mailboxes should be used for which purposes.

This page could be helpful for IMAP server admins to figure out how all of this works in different IMAP clients. The columns mean:

  • SPECIAL-USE: Does the client support SPECIAL-USE, and when?
    • no: Not supported
    • once: When account is created. If the server adds/changes SPECIAL-USE configuration it's not picked up unless the account is recreated.
    • always: The client always (or periodically) checks for changes in the server's SPECIAL-USE configuration and either changes its own configuration or asks user what to do.
  • Lang: ISO language code, e.g. "en", "de", "it".
  • Configurable: Are the mailbox names configurable by user?
  • \Fields: Name of the mailboxes that the client creates when it doesn't use the server's SPECIAL-USE names.
    • \All and \Flagged not included, because I don't think any IMAP clients actually have them?

Please update the table with any clients you know of!

IMAP client

SPECIAL-USE

Lang

Configurable

\Sent

\Trash

\Drafts

\Junk

\Archive

Thunderbird

no

en

yes

Sent

Trash

Drafts

Junk

Archives

Outlook 2013

once/always?

en

yes?

Sent Items

?

Drafts

?

?

iOS 5.0

always

en

yes

Sent Messages

Deleted Messages

Drafts

Junk

Archive

Mail.app

?

en

yes

Sent Messages

Deleted Messages

Drafts

Junk

-

Roundcube

no

en

yes

Sent

Trash

Drafts

Junk

Archive

KMail

?

en

yes

Sent

Trash

Drafts

Spam

?

K9mail

?

en

yes

?

?

?

?

?

Open-Xchange IMAP Client

always

en

yes

?

?

?

?

?

IMP/horde

?

all

yes

Sent

Trash

Drafts

Spam

-

None: SpecialUse (last edited 2015-10-08 14:10:24 by 158)