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!

It may be strong-arming the situation, but it gives you back use of your blog or website.

In my previous post, I said I sent this to MacFixIt. They never published or followed up on the eMail I sent. But I’ve also formally sent this as an issue via Apple Support. With any luck it will be fixed with the 10.5.7 update when it comes out.

If you have not made a formal report to Apple I strongly suggest you go to the Mac OS X Feedback page & file a detailed report of the issue you are having with IMAP processes & Mail.app. Reporting in the Apple support forums may not be enough to get the full attention of Apple.

This little tutorial will help you change the images used for the RSS icon & the Mail icon and their position on your page. It’s up to you whether you work with the file live. It’s not brain surgery, but as always … back up any files you may alter before you start.

We will be working with these files:

style-one.css (or)
style-two.css
header.php
index.php

To move the RSS & The Mail Icons to the positions I have them in … open either the style-one.css or the style-two.css file depending on which you are using. What you need to change are around lines 79 & 80 in the CSS file.

Find:
img#rss-link{position:absolute;top:172px;left:-105px;}
img#contact-link{position:absolute;top:275px;left:-140px;}

Change to:
img#rss-link{position:absolute;top: 210px;left: 800px;}
img#contact-link{position:absolute;top: 280px;left: 825px;}

This will put the icons in the position I have them. But if you play with the top and left positions you can put them wherever you like.

To change the icons to other images as I did, find icons you like, there are plenty of free ones on the web. Open the header.php file go to this section:

<– RSS Link –>
<a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); ?>”><img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘stylesheet_directory’); ?>/images/rss.png” border=”0″ id=”rss-link” class=”correct-png” alt=”RSS” /></a>
<a href=”mailto:contact@instantshift.com”><img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘stylesheet_directory’); ?>/images/contact.jpg” border=”0″ id=”contact-link” alt=”Contact” /></a>

Change:
mailto:contact@instantshift.com
to
mailto:youreMailAddress@YourDomain.com

And as in my case I changed both icons to images that I wanted and they were both .png files. Of course if you name your icon files to something other than rss.png or contact.jpg you will also need to change the corresponding file paths in the RSS Link section (above) … i.e.: /images/contact.jpg  to /images/myfilename.jpg

Also remeber to keep backups of any changed or added files. If InstantShift updates this theme, you will have to make these changes all over again … or just re-upload your changed file after the update.

Hope this helps.

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!