Issue Mail from the Sent box is not imported with the import function

[carlsson]

Server operating system version

Ubuntu 20.04

Plesk version and microupdate number

18.0.58 Update #2

Hi folks,

I was just migrating three mailboxes from one provider to my Plesk server. I was using the "Import mail messages" function, and it worked awesome! – At least until I noticed that the mails from the Sent box hadn't been imported…

I have now copied all mails from the sent box with drag and drop, but I have a lot more mailboxes to move in the upcoming weeks, and this will be an issue.

Any idea what's up with that?

 

[carlsson]

Another mail server migration, and the same thing happened.

I recognize this behavior, but I don't know what to do about it, other than to manually move sent mails that you want to keep.

Any ideas?

 

[carlsson]

 

[ChristophRo]

Your source mailserver does use/have a different name for the "Sent" (and possibly other) folder than your Plesk server and the Mail Import tool is not able to correctly map the two folders.
This is a common problem with IMAP mailboxes, as different mail clients like Outlook, Thunderbird and Apple Mail do use different names for the "Sent" folder, on top of using localized names depending on the language of your computer.
And of course we should also not forget that mail clients may technically use the standardized folder name ("Sent") on the server, but just show you the localized name for it.

In short, there are so many uncontrollable variables when it comes to IMAP folder names, that for such cases you may need a more advanced IMAP migration tool like "imapsync", that allows you to manually map the source folder names to the destination folder names, in case they are different.

 

[Kaspar]

I *think* you maybe able to address this issue in the Namespace configuration of Dovecot too. By adding the local (Swedish) name of folder to the configuration. I don't have any example on hand, but I am sure that I you Google arround a bit you'll find more information on the topic.

 

[carlsson]

[snip]In short, there are so many uncontrollable variables when it comes to IMAP folder names, that for such cases you may need a more advanced IMAP migration tool like "imapsync", that allows you to manually map the source folder names to the destination folder names, in case they are different.

Yes, that is the logical answer. Thanks for the explanation!
One just have to be observant after an import, and another import I did (from another mail server) worked just as it should.

I *think* you maybe able to address this issue in the Namespace configuration of Dovecot too. By adding the local (Swedish) name of folder to the configuration. I don't have any example on hand, but I am sure that I you Google arround a bit you'll find more information on the topic.

That is unlikely. The server is still in english, the Mail app is just a shell interpreting the terms it get from the mail server.
Thanks for the input though.