Search Folders (say, Follow Up) and IMAP ...

[Guest]

I use Outlook for managing my email on our IMAP server. It appears that
Search Folders (i.e., in fact, view folders) work for only those folders
which are in the Personal Folders Directory, and cannot look thru IMAP
folders directory. At least, their Customize Option cannot browse beyond
Personal Folders. However, and it's really strange, that pre-instaled Large
Mail Folder works for IMAP l while Unread Mail and FollowUp folders do not.

I'd appreciate any suggestions on how to make Search Folders working for my
IMAP folders as well.

Thank you,

 

[Brian Tillman]

I'd appreciate any suggestions on how to make Search Folders working
for my IMAP folders as well.

I just tried creating a search folder and, during the process, when I
clicked the "Search mail in" drop-down, my IMAP store showed up and I was
able to select it. As soon as I pressed OK, though, I received a "Operation
failed - object could not be found" error. Subsequent to that, the IMAP
store no longer appeared in the drop-down until I stopped and restarted
Outlook. It did reappear in the drop-down, but the error merely repeated
itself.

The conclusion is that search folders just don't work on an IMAP message
store.

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

Search folders require a hidden folder in the Outlook store that is being
searched. Since IMAP messages are stored on the server you can't use search
folders with that store unless you download the messages into the primary
data store. You can't create the MAPI search folder on the IMAP server.
That's also the reason why search folders can't be created for public
folders, there is no Finder folder under the root folder where the hidden
search folder would have to live.

 

[Jeff Stephenson [MSFT]]

The conclusion is that search folders just don't work on an IMAP message
store.

Correct. There wasn't time to do the amount of work required to get them
working for IMAP before Outlook 2003 was released.