Slowchildren.com: Tips on getting Mail.app to work with SquirrelMail

Tips on getting Mail.app to work with SquirrelMail

When I’m on my laptop, I use Apple’s wonderful Mail program (often called Mail.app). When I’m not at my laptop, I use the equally wonderful SquirrelMail to access my email from a web browser. Since I use an IMAP server, they both share the same the INBOX (it’s synchronized). If you use both of these programs, or any other IMAP program, you probably already knew this.

When you use SquirrelMail, it creates mailboxes in your IMAP account called Sent, Drafts, and Trash. Here’s how to set Mail to use those same folders :

1. In the Mailboxes sidepanel, select the mailbox you want to use (we’ll start with Trash). Make sure you select the mailbox with the ‘folder’ icon (see my red arrows) and not the giant ‘trash bin.’
   
2. Once Trash is highlighted, go to the menu bar and pull down Mailboxes
3. Select Use This Mailbox for->Trash
   
   What you should notice is that the Trash mailbox has disappeared. It’s not really gone, now you access by clicking on the other Trash (that has the giant ‘trash bin’.)

Now repeat the process for Sent and Drafts. It’s that easy! And you can use this process for any other IMAP client, like SilkyMail.

Why? If you set Mail.app to use these same folders, then you can access your Drafts or Sent mail from either program. This means that you can start writing a message in Mail.app, save it as a draft, and later find the same message in the Drafts folder for SquirrelMail.