Outlook 2003 with IMAP

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In the company that I work we are using three Email Servers. Two Exchange 2003 and a Linux box configured with postfix and dovecot for the mobile users. Those accounts configured with postfix are getting their emails through POP3 (using Outlook-2003-2007-2010 or Mozilla Thunderbird). What I want is to switch from POP3 to IMAP. In order to do this I have to give the users the same user experience when working in Outlook with IMAP as when working with POP3. Below are the things I did in order to accomplish this.

— Subscribe to all IMAP folders and download full messages (not only headers). I had to do this because users where used to wait for all the messages to download-the default behavior with IMAP folders is to download only headers and only when opening the message or the attachment to download the rest of it. So in Outlook 2003 I have to go to Tools->Options->Mail Setup->Send/Receive   and there after pressing Edit check all the IMAP folders for synchronization and for every folder check the “Download complete items including attachments”.

Start Outlook in the Inbox folder of IMAP. Go to Tools–>Options–>Other–>Advanced Options and in “Start up in this folder” choose your IMAP Inbox  folder.

Hide deleted items. If you “delete” a message in an IMAP email account accessed through Outlook, neither is it deleted immediately nor does Outlook move it to the Deleted Items folder but instead is “marked for deletion” until you purge the folder. In order to purge the deleted items, you have to go to Edit–>Purge Deleted Messages. For Outlook to purge deleted items automatically you have to select the folder (you have to do this for every folder) and go to ????. In the default view used by Outlook for IMAP accounts,”deleted” messages are displayed grayed out and with a strike-through line but they are still visible. To hide messages already marked for deletion go to View–>Arrange by–>Current View–>Hide messages marked for deletion.

Move Sent items to IMAP Sent items folder.By default Outlook 2003 puts all of the Sent emails into the default PST folder “Sent Items”. In order to move them to the IMAP folder you have to create a rule (I am not going to describe that as it is really straightforward). If you want to avoid having a duplicate sent email in the Sent folder of the PST you have to go to Tools–>Options–>Preferences–>Email Options and deselect “Save copies of messages in Sent Items folder

 

 

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