Old IMAP folders won't go away

[mrmacman]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel
Email Client: imap

After cleaning up some of the IMAP folders on my server, I have one account where Entourage has a bunch of account folders that don't exist any more on the server. They have no messages in them. I can't delete them in Entourage because it complains it can't find them on the server: "SELECT cannot access folder".

How do I get Entourage to recognize these folders are gone, or force- delete them?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Adam Bailey]

After cleaning up some of the IMAP folders on my server, I have one account
where Entourage has a bunch of account folders that don't exist any more on
the server. They have no messages in them. I can't delete them in Entourage
because it complains it can't find them on the server: "SELECT cannot access
folder".

How do I get Entourage to recognize these folders are gone, or force- delete them?

Click on your Account's name in the folder list. On the right you
should now see a list of folders, you can highlight one and click
"Unsubscribe" to make it stop appearing on the left.

 

[mrmacman]

Thanks for the suggestion, it's a logical choice. I looked at this before, but oddly my contextual menu shows the choice "Subscribe" as available instead of "Unsubscribe".

 

[Diane Ross]

Thanks for the suggestion, it's a logical choice. I looked at this before, but
oddly my contextual menu shows the choice "Subscribe" as available instead of
"Unsubscribe".

Try deleting the account under Tools --> Accounts in the Menu bar. When you
add it back, hopefully the folders will be gone. If not, test in a new
Identity. If they are gone in the new Identity and not in your Main
Identity, this indicates database corruption.

How to rebuild:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/database/rebuild.html>

Make a duplicate in the Finder first as additional backup. A rebuild does
make a duplicate, but sometimes in the process the original and backup get
merged resulting in total disaster. It's rare but it happens.

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

Thanks for the suggestion, it's a logical choice. I looked at this
before, but oddly my contextual menu shows the choice "Subscribe" as
available instead of "Unsubscribe".

This sounds like you're already unsubscribed from these folders, which
is possibly why you can't delete them.

Select your account (click on the account header) in the folder list on
the left and this will show you all your sub-folders on the right.
Yellow folders are subscribed and gray folders are unsubscribed.

If you find that the folders you can't delete are unsubscribed then
select them and select Edit --> Subscribe. After these turn yellow then
delete them.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>
Twitter: follow <http://twitter.com/meck>

 

[mrmacman]

This sounds like you're already unsubscribed from these folders, which
is possibly why you can't delete them.

Select your account (click on the account header) in the folder list on
the left and this will show you all your sub-folders on the right.
Yellow folders are subscribed and gray folders are unsubscribed.

If you find that the folders you can't delete are unsubscribed then
select them and select Edit --> Subscribe. After these turn yellow then
delete them.

Thanks for all the suggestions. My next step was going to be to actually create the folders again directly on the IMAP server (via its web interface) and then delete them from Entourage. But for whatever reason, Entourage decided to correct the problem on its own this weekend and the ghost folders finally disappeared from the account.