[MlMt] newbie question about folders

[Robert Brenstein]

On 31 Jan 2020, at 0:45, Jo wrote:

> On 28 Jan 2020, at 7:53, Glenn Parker wrote:
>
>> First, a little nomenclature for the new user. What MailMate calls 
>> the “Account” or “Source” is what I normally call a 
>> “mailbox”, that is to say the folder hierarchically and messages 
>> accessed via a particular account on an IMAP server. To me, that 
>> whole thing is the mailbox. What MailMate calls a “IMAP Mailbox” 
>> is what I would normally call a “folder”. The core standard for 
>> IMAP, [RFC 3501](<https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501>), uses this 
>> terminology for mailboxes and folders, as does every other IMAP 
>> client I have used.
>
> OK, bear with me here… (I’ve actually closed my eyes to this whole 
> thing for a couple days to see if a clearer head will help) I’m 
> looking under Sources. The assorted email accounts that I have are 
> listed, with little globe icons. When I expand those, there are little 
> folder icons (draft, inbox, junk, sent, trash…if it’s a gmail 
> account, drafts becomes [gmail] with its own set up subfolders (folder 
> icons - the blue things).
>
>> You can then add rules to your INBOX folder that will automatically 
>> (or manually) move incoming messages to your new Mailbox as they 
>> arrive. You can add lots of rules for specific email senders, or for 
>> email from a particular domain, or many other criteria. You can even 
>> make a rule that recognizes email addresses found in an existing 
>> Mailbox.
>
> So what you’re saying is all of these little things that look like 
> folders to me are the IMAP mailboxes? Are you also saying that I can 
> MOVE messages into these mailboxes and they (the messages) will no 
> longer appear in any main inbox area? And I can do that by using the 
> move command, AND by filtering?

Yes, those globe things under sources are basically mail accounts and 
the folders inside are IMAP mailboxes. As you see from the discussion, 
they are called somewhat differently by different people, often 
following what they are used to from their previous mail clients, hence 
things can get easily confusing. I think of those folders under the 
globes as “physical” mailboxes (trays, folders if you will) for each 
mail account. Each server software has its own default names for them, 
as you noticed. Regardless of the names, there are 5 standard functional 
types as defined by IMAP. If you are not sure which type is a specific 
mailbox, right click on it and scroll down the menu to “mailbox 
type” - if a given mailbox is a standard mailbox, it will have a 
checkmark in front of its type. If there is no checkmark, it is a 
generic (user- or service-created) mailbox.

You can move messages between IMAP mailboxes using menus, icons on top 
of the window, or drag and drop. You can also set up action rules in 
smart mailboxes. Many people however leave all mail that is not spam or 
archive or trash in the inbox. You can create as many smart mailboxes as 
you need to group/filter your mails the way you need to handle them. 
Smart mailboxes are purely virtual and are just filtered or unfiltered 
views into one or more IMAP mailboxes. They can also use other smart 
mailboxes as the reference.

For example, I have a smart mailbox for each of my mailings lists. All 
of them sit inside of a smart mailbox that combines them all together 
into a all-mailing-lists mailbox. For some mailing lists, I have 
additional smart mailbox with suffix “new” which shows me only last 
so many days of unread mails from given list by doing additional 
filtering on the main mailing list mailbox. All the “new” mailboxes 
sit inside “mailing lists new” mailbox that combines all new 
messages together. For a few mailing lists, I have also a smart mailbox 
with suffix “recent” which shows me all mails, read and unread, that 
came within past so many days. For really busy lists (where I do not 
bother to read all), I also have a smart mailbox with suffix “old” 
to show me messages older than defined threshold, so I can trash them.

These are just a few examples of taking advantage of the smart folders. 
The beauty is that you can change, add, remove them as needed and the 
actual messages sit the same all the time and you can still go to combo 
inbox and search it for whatever if you are not sure where the message 
is.

If you read older threads, you will notice references to a zero-inbox. 
It is usually a smart mailbox that refers to the combined inbox 
subtracting mails shown in select smart folders. In other words, what is 
shown in it is the stuff that is not shown elsewhere. You process the 
messages in this mailbox by either putting them into spam, trash, 
archive, or amending one of smart mailboxes to include them. At the end 
of the day, you should (ideally) have that mailbox empty, hence its 
name. In POP world, you achieved the same by moving messages from inbox 
to other mailboxes/folders. My zero-inbox for example, excludes the 
smart mailbox combining all mailing lists, so I never see any mailing 
list posts in my “incoming mail”.

Important to note that besides having a set of standard IMAP mailboxes 
in the Sources group, MM creates combined mailboxes for these in the 
Mailboxes group. They also have blue folder icons like those under the 
globes (I haven’t seen yet how they changed in the most recent 
version). They combine a given type of IMAP mailbox across all your mail 
accounts.

Also important to note is that if you get a message in the inbox of 
account A and you click the button to archive it, the message is moved 
to the archive mailbox of account A. That is it remains within its 
account. The combined archive mailbox allows you to view all archives 
together and you can set it up to show submailboxes according to your 
criteria and/or you can set other smart mailboxes to filter/group the 
messages in archives for you as you wish.

It took me a few months to tailor my smart mailboxes to my needs but now 
I am using MM for a few years with only a few tweaks once a while and I 
do not spend any time on moving messages among mailboxes.

One thing to mention yet is that trashing messages moves them to the 
trash mailbox but they are not actually deleted. Trash mailbox is just 
another IMAP mailbox and you need to actually delete messages from it to 
remove them from the server. I thus have a smart mailbox called “Trash 
old” which shows messages that are in the trash for more than 12 
months. I actually count weeks, taking advantage of the option to update 
this mailbox only once a week, so I delete old mails only once a week. 
Yes, I keep messages in trash for a year just in case they got there by 
mistake or I change my mind.

Robert
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