Webmail folder structure - problem with sent items

[#1]

@spraxyt - Yes, exactly like your example: INBOX >> INBOX >> Sent 

[#2]

@Paul_Beck Using telnet to access the imap server it would be possible to sort out the folder structure by entering standard imap commands. However I'm uncertain whether those would work because you were unable to create a new "testfolder" using webmail when you tried earlier.

It might be possible for you to change access permissions to your folders, but I feel a full understanding of what these are and do is desirable before anyone attempts that (am I correct in assuming you lack that level of understanding?).

An alternative approach might be to create a new mailbox using Manage My Mail, then log into it using webmail to set up the initial folder structure. Then create "testfolder" (say) to verify new folder creation works.

Using Thunderbird, or an alternative email client which can open multiple mailboxes, you could copy messages from the old to new mailbox if desired.

Is the mailbox you currently have problems with the default mailbox or an additional one?

[#3]

@spraxyt -

David,

Replies will be a bit intermittent as I am on holiday. The problematic mailbox is username+paul, created a long time ago, and it's the one I have always used as my default address.

Telnet doesn't sound like my sort of territory, I must say.

So to take your other suggestion, if I create a new mailbox in Manage My Mail (say username+test), then succeed in creating folders to duplicate the existing structure so I can copy my messages across in a heavyweight email client (Outlook 2016?), would I ultimately be able to delete username+paul and rename username+test in order to keep my existing email address?

Many thanks for keeping on thinking about this. 

Paul

[#4]

@Paul_Beck

Do you currently have any additional mailboxes apart from your personal one that has problems? If you do can webmail create a "testfolder" with parent folder "--" in one of those?

Alternatively creating a new mailbox called "test" (as you suggested), then accessing it using webmail and sending a message to set up its folder structure would establish a fresh environment for checking if "testfolder" with parent folder "--" could be created.

For replacing your personal mailbox, it isn't possible to do that by a copy elsewhere, delete and rename process because Manage My Mail does not support renaming.. After delete the process would have to be recreate and copy back, or recreate as alias.

However I think taking this forward is best done when you are back from holiday, I suggest picking this up again then.

[#5]

@HarryB

The need to reset a user’s email folder permissions has cropped up before. Might that apply here?

[#6]

@spraxyt - A thought about renaming (if the resetting of permissions is not possible):

I never use my default mailbox, which is username@username.plus.com, and 'rename' is there as an option for that in Manage My Mail. Can I recreate folders and copy mails across to that, then delete paul@username.plus.com and rename the default?  

[#7 · Accepted solution]

@Paul_Beck Yes, you could use the rename capability with the default mailbox to achieve what you described. An alternative is to allocate a new mailbox (or use an existing one), create the folder structure and copy emails across, then delete and reallocate your existing mailbox as an alias of the new one. This would void needing to copy the emails back.

Have you checked that you can create new folders (eg "testfolder") with parent "--" in mailboxes other than your personal one?

[#8]

@spraxyt Many thanks for your help in fixing this. Here's how it worked, set out in steps in case anyone else needs to do something like this.

In Webmail, I logged into my (unused) default account - username@username.plus.com - and created subject folders (children of [---]) to match the structure of my corrupted personal mailbox paul@username.plus.com.

In Outlook 2016, which is able to display more than one account at a time (Thunderbird and emClient can do this too) I added the default account and moved all my stored emails across to it. (This was not 100% simple as some of them copied instead of moving and I had to compare each folder carefully to make sure nothing was lost.) 

In Member Centre > Email settings > Manage My Mail > Mailboxes, I took a deep breath and deleted the mailbox paul@username.plus.com then renamed the default mailbox to give it that name.

NB Important note on username and password: To log in to the renamed default mailbox in Webmail, I found I had to use the same username and password as for the Member Centre - it felt wrong because the username is not a complete email address.

In Outlook 2016, I took another deep breath and removed both accounts, then added my new account using the Member Centre username and password and paul@username.plus.com as the email address.

I now have everything working as it did before anything went wrong, except that my email username and password have changed. (And they have to stay changed because the default mailbox shares username and password with Member Centre login.) It doesn't matter when using an email client, because it remembers the account particulars, but if I need to log into Webmail I have to remember to use the Member Centre username and password not my email address as I always used to.

NB2 Note on email client: This works in Outlook 2016 because it allows you to add an email account (manually) with a username that is not your email address. The free Outlook Mail app built in to Windows 10 and Windows 10 mobile allows this now, using Advanced setup > Internet mail, though it didn't when first released.

I hope that is clear enough. Thanks again.

Moderator's note by Mike (Mav): Post released from Spam Filter.