Q:

A: YOU CAN’T!

It’s another mystery of life. Why in the world can’t you create a folder in the iPhone Mail app!!?? You can move an eMail message, or a group of messages from one folder to another, but you can’t create a Mail folder on the iPhone. It’s just another of the glaring oddities of the iPhone.

I can understand not being able to do this with a POP account, because iPhone Mail doesn’t sync the mail messages themselves via iTunes. So it would follow, you couldn’t sync newly created folders with moved messages from the iPhone.

One would think though, it could be done with an IMAP eMail account. But it’s just not so.

It’s an enigma wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a burrito …

My only suggestion to all offended and incredulous iPhone user, is to make your voice heard with Apple. Go to the Apple Support Forum and suggest they add folder creation ability there. You can also contact Apple directly and give them iPhone Feedback. Be polite and to the point. Ranting might make you feel good, but anything past “WTF” might be ignored by readers. You can get more folders with honey … if that’s what you’re looking for. Leave a comment here if you care to.

I’ve seen Google send so many people to my blog looking for an answer to this question, I figured I owed it to those folks to give a quick and probably unsatisfying  answer.

Even with its flaws, the iPhone is still my only phone. Don’t think I would want to use another.

There are some quirks involved with setting up IMAP mail on the iPhone. Especially for those ISPs or mail providers who don’t support SSL (secure sockets layer). The default for iPhone is to create any account with SSL on. Some of the biggest confusion for first time users is how long it takes SSL to be negotiated the first time the IMAP account is set up, especially if your are doing it over Edge or 3G and not a Wi-Fi connection. But even with Wi-Fi the wait can seem like an eternity! And all the confusing error dialogs that are popped up for you to act upon. Hopefully I’ve documented all those situations.

Things you will need:
> Your iPhone
> A working eMail account set up with your hosting company.
> Your eMail account settings written down.
> Patients.

So here we go ….

1. Select “Settings”.

2. Select “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”.

3. Select “Add Account…”.

4. Select “Other”.

5. Select “Add Mail Account”.

6. Fill in account info & save”.

TIP: With most eMail providers, your username will always be your FULL eMail address, unless otherwise noted.

Select the IMAP tab.

Here’s where the “tricky bits” start.

Be certain to enter all information correctly.

Be sure the Host Name for both Incoming Mail Server (IMAP) and Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) do not contain the “@” symbol and instead use a period “.” as in: imap.yourdomain.com or smtp.yourdomain.com.

Once all information entry is complete select the Save button.

Now wait for iPhone Mail to negotiate your IMAP and SMTP settings with the mail server, depending on the network connection speed … this may take a while.

If your mail provider does not do SLS you will get two error dialogs. One for IMAP and one for SMTP. PLEASE WAIT FOR EACH. No matter how long they take. See steps 8 and 9.

If your mail provider does do SLS, you will get no errors. Unless you’ve typing errors. Move to step 10.

7. Fill in all eMail account information.

8. Error 1: IMAP SSL Certificate error. Press Continue.

9. Error 2: SMTP SSL Certificate error. Press Continue.

Okay. So now there is a new IMAP account on your iPhone. But the fun doesn’t stop there. Depending on your situation there are a few steps that you may or may not need to do. Those will be covered in the next few section.

We will need to also check that the IMAP folders are correctly associated with the iPhone folders for Drafts Mailbox, Sent Mailbox, and Deleted Mailbox.

If your mail provider does not support SSL follow from step 11.

If you mail provider (gMail) does support SSL jump to step 15.

10. Your completed IMAP account.

11. Select your new account.

12. Scroll and select Advanced.

13. Set Use SSL to OFF. Go back one screen.

14. Scroll and select Drafts Mailbox.

15. Select your new SMTP server.

16. Set Use SLS to OFF. Go back one screen.

17. Select Drafts Mailbox.

18. Select your Drafts folder on the server. Go back one screen.

19. Select Sent Mailbox.

20. Select your Sent folder on the server. Go back one screen.

21. Select Deleted Mailbox.

22. Select your Trash or Deleted Items folder on the server. Go back one screen.

When matching up folders on the server, your folder names may not be the same as my folders … but I think you’ll know which are which.

There are only a few other items you can set. But I won’t go into great detail. You can select how long to hold onto delete items. On my Mac, I empty the Deleted Items when I quit Mail.app. On the iPhone I have mine set for 1 day. This way I don’t end up with thousands of eMails taking up space in the Trash on the server.

One other issue you may face. If when you launch iPhone Mail and you don’t see your folder hierarchy you may need to go to the Advanced settings of your account (on your iPhone) and in the field for “IMAP Path Prefix” enter the word INBOX in caps. That should allow you to see all your folders.

Other than that … you’re done! Press the physical Home button on your iPhone and launch iPhone Mail. That’s it.

Finally. You can only have one signature for your iPhone Mail, even if you have several eMail accounts. Hopefully Apple will address this in s future release. But until then, there are some great utilities out there that can get you through. Two of my faves are Pastebot from Tapbots LLC & TextExpander Touch from Smile on My Mac. I may do posts on some of these at a later date.

For now …. go send some mail from your iPhone! Have fun!

Okay. That may be a little harsh … but you would think after paying for a system upgrade, that was supposed to be rewritten from the ground up … a major bug like the IMAP/PHP bug would have been fixed. I know this problem is still effecting people. They are still logging complaints at Apple’s Discussion Groups. I was hoping … but no go!

This post is no more than what it is. Another mile marker showing that this bug has driven me and other crazy through Mac OS X 10.5 and now 10.6.

I’ve already documented the entire thing in three other posts:
A process to a kill
Mail.app & IMAP Process Update
Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update (No IMAP Fix)

There is nothing more that I can do. None of the Mac blogs out there have picked up the story. Not TUAW. Not MacWorld. Not MacNN. No one.

So unless something else breaks … oh like Apple’s resolve NOT to fix this problem. Or one of the Mac news sites reports on the problem or fix … I think I’m done here. Well at least with this issue.

Good luck!

Apple just released Mac OS X 10.5.7 update. Being a consultant I always have to do updates on the day they arrive. I do this to try to see what my clients might have to deal with if they choose to do it on their own. Though most of my clients will wait for me to “feel the pain” so they don’t have to.

This update, I did feel the pain! Since I bought my new MacBook Pro, I have been doing updates via Software Update. This time around I chose to download the Combo Updater & give it a whirl. Once downloaded I opened the image and started the process. When the 729 MB update was finished, I restarted the computer. Or at least tried to. On completion the update stayed at the “blue screen” with the progress indicator spinning and spinning. After about 15 minutes, I just forced a shut down, and restarted, After about 2 reboots of its own, the computer started up and booted into the Finder. Once there, I rebooted once more for good measure, to be certain things were working okay.

I looked around for any obvious “newness” but didn’t see anything I could identify as new. So my first stop after that was to launch Safari and go to my BlueHOST cPanel. I started the process manager and finally launched Mail.app.

I was hoping that the infernal and internal IMAP process bug was fixed. Upon going back to Safari and refreshing the process manager, to my horror and profanity, there they were … the 16 IMAP processes that I hoped would not be there. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

So the one thing I was hoping to be fixed was not. I immediatly went to the Apple Forum and posted to the “Topic : Mail is killing the processes on my server with IMAP” thread and posted my findings. I also wrote up the issue AGAIN and sent it to MacFixIt, who also promptly ignored my eMail and did not report the issue. And today I made a comment on the Troubleshooting Roundup: Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update article on TUAW about the issue. With any luck they will look into it further.

I’m not going to deal with any of the other bugs introduced, or not fixed, because so many of the other online mags & blogs have covered these ad nauseam. I have my axe to grind and this IMAP issue is mine. Double Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

At this point I feel like I’m talking to myself. Though there are those on the Apple Forums who are also feeling the pain … because Apple’s not listening. I guess I could switch eMail clients, but I WANT to use Mail.app. I even looked into a few other mail applications … but none have the features I can get with Mail.app and 3rd party plug-ins. So I’ll bare my cross and stick with my mission … to get someone else to lay into Apple to fix the problem.

I discovered this issue while working on a clients website. Each time I tried to connect to their blog I’d get a server side page that said, to many processes try again later. Or something to that effect. I called blueHOST.com but got a 1st level tech who had to put me on hold, ask someone questions then come back with not many answers. To be fair to blueHOST this was an exception to always stellar tech support.

I ended up doing my own research. I called my client, had them quit Mail.app on all 3 computers in that office. I went to their cPanel & killed any remaining processes. I then screen shared with each computer & started each remotely. For each user relaunched they created around 8 + processes each. And these IMAP processes would not die until Mail was quit, or killed manually. There were some IMAP processes that didn’t die and had to be killed manually.

I called BlueHost again today and got an amazing tech. I again explained the issue to him. “How odd” he said, “let’s see what we can find.” So we spent 30 minutes on the phone trying many different things. He on his end and me on mine. I even tried Entourage using IMAP. Entourage only opened 1 connection, and that was it. No multiples.

In searching Apple Support Forum I found this thread “Topic : Mail is killing the processes on my server with IMAP” talking about the very same issue. There were multiple people with different web hosting companies reporting the same behavior. So I’m not alone in this and the problem does indeed exist. The thread showed no “solution” to the issue yet. Bummer!

Now I hope Apple is listening, and fixes the issue very soon.

(I also sent this to MacFixtIt)

Pop eMail:

For those of you who have only one POP eMail account, the procedure is very straight forward.

Step 1:

At the bottom left corner of the Mail window click on the “+” pop-up menu. Select menu item “New Mailbox…”

Step 2:

You will then see a drop down sheet. Enter the name of your folder, mine is named “First Level” and click “OK”.

A new folder/mailbox has been created. To create a sub-folder, a folder within a folder, single click on the folder you just created, or any other you have created and repeat steps 1 and 2. You will have created a first level folder and a sub-folder within the first level folder.

IMAP eMail:

IMAP mail is a mail protocol that keeps all mail on a server, rather than delivering it to your computers mailbox and deleting it from the server. There are many advantages to using IMAP. If you have multiple computers or an iPhone, you would be able to see the same mail on each device. And if you delete an eMail from one device, this update will be seen by all of your devices. This includes all archiving folders created on the server too.

Here is how to create a folder/mailbox using a single or multiple IMAP eMail accounts.

Step 1:

Select the account mailbox you would like to create a folder in.

Step 2:

At the bottom left corner of the Mail window click on the “+” pop-up menu. Select menu item “New Mailbox…”

Step 3:

You will then see a drop down sheet. Enter the name of your folder, mine is named “First Level” and click “OK”.

Step 4:

If you were successful you should see something similar to this:

And that’s it! You now know how to create folders/mailboxes in Apple’s Mail.app.

If this was helpful to you … please leave a comment. Thanks!