topic Greenby email - IMAP deleted emails purged - no longer available in trash folder in Email

Greenby email - IMAP deleted emails purged - no longer available in trash folder

geoffers — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 15:00:30 GMT

Hi - I've just been migrated to Greenby, with mail set up as IMAP

Prior to the move, whenever I deleted an email from my inbox on any device, it was moved to the Trash folder and still visible there on various devices (using different clients eg Outlook; K9-mail etc)

Since the migration, the deletion from inbox is being replicated across devices (in the same way as crearing new/sent emails etc) as expected

However a deleted email now seems to be gone forever - the actual deletion is being replicated/synched across devices, but the deleted/trash folder is empty across all devices as if the trash folder is being immediately purged to permanently delete them

Is it just me, or is there some setting which will stop the trash folder being purged? TIA

Re: Greenby email - IMAP deleted emails purged - no longer available in trash folder

MisterW — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 17:33:18 GMT

Check that you don't have multiple Trash folders and you're subscribed to the wrong one. On the Plusnet system all folders were under the INBOX but the migration seems to create some folders under the root directory under some circumstances

See this thread for an example of how to find folders with webmail https://community.plus.net/t5/Email/Greenby-Migration-Questions/m-p/2032680#M56559

Re: Greenby email - IMAP deleted emails purged - no longer available in trash folder

geoffers — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 15:10:05 GMT

@MisterW wrote:

Check that you don't have multiple Trash folders and you're subscribed to the wrong one. On the Plusnet system all folders were under the INBOX but the migration seems to create some folders under the root directory under some circumstances

Still haven't resolved this - my Greenby Webmail structure now looks like this, with 3 new folders = drafts/sent/trash under inbox, and the original drafts; sent and trash plus some additional rules-based folders I'd set up myself

Since the migration...

Using MS-Outlook on the PC now populates the sent & trash under Inbox
Other eMail clients (eg GMail on the phone) populate the main sent & trash folders, which we're the ones used by everything prior to the migration

It's not the end of the world, but depending on where I'm accessing my eMails causes different folders to be used which can be a pain when trying to look back for things: was not a problem before Greenby migration

Re: Greenby email - IMAP deleted emails purged - no longer available in trash folder

MisterW — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 15:48:58 GMT

@geoffers

Since the migration...

Using MS-Outlook on the PC now populates the sent & trash under Inbox
Other eMail clients (eg GMail on the phone) populate the main sent & trash folders, which we're the ones used by everything prior to the migration

It sounds like you need to change the IMAP root folder path in Outlook from INBOX to root. How you do that I'm afraid I dont know as I've never used Outlook.

AI says

In Classic Outlook, the IMAP root folder path is typically configured as

INBOX to ensure subfolders sync correctly, adjustable via File > Account Settings > Advanced Settings > Folders. The root is often displayed as the email address or "Mailbox - username" in the navigation pane

but whether that bears any resemblence to the truth , who knows ...

Re: Greenby email - IMAP deleted emails purged - no longer available in trash folder

geoffers — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 18:22:44 GMT

@MisterW wrote:

It sounds like you need to change the IMAP root folder path in Outlook from INBOX to root. How you do that I'm afraid I don't know as I've never used Outlook.

Brilliant - that helped a lot 👍... I've got a clunky old version of MS Outlook (2010 - which came with MS Office Professional), so digging for the necessary folder change was not intuitive, but I found it eventually.

Drilling down to Settings>More Settings there were tabs for <sent items> and <deleted items> with the current folder (subfolder of inbox) selected, so it was just a case of selecting the other folder to get that set as the default.

Thanks for your advice - I would probably never have found it without having this conversation 😀