How can I configure / change Standard-IMAP-Folders in Outlook 2013

In Outlook 2010 you could select your prefered server folder for "Sent" and "Deleted" to store mails directly on the server.

In 2013 the Tabs are Missing. All other imap settings are exactly the same.

Is this a bug or did you move this setting to a different place? Are there some Reg-Keys to fix the Issue?

Especially all Non-US-Users will find it very hard to be forced to switch to Standard-US-English expressions for their Standard Mail Folders (sent, junk, draft...). Plus: we want to save our (sent) Mails on the IMAP server and not on the client. Even the MS Mail-App in Win8 leaves us this option, why ist Outlook so harsh to its Users.

Is there a chance to get a fix in previous service packs?

Thank's a lot.



February 26th, 2013 3:34am

In outlook 2013, outlook gets the list / xlist property from the server and uses it to identify the folders. If your folders are non-English, can you set a different folder on the server? http://www.slipstick.com/how-to-outlook/configuring-special-imap-folders-outlook-2013/ 

At this time there is no way to bring back the ability to select the folders in outlook. Whether it will come back in SP1 remains to be seen.

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February 26th, 2013 8:29am

Thanks for your comments Diane. I appreciate your answer personally, and I know Slipstick.com since Sue Mosher published their first posts there. But My Webmailer / Provider simply does not support changing the IMAP-Foldernames, so this is not an option for me.

In the past I did not even have to think about workarounds like that. I just chose the right server folder for my drafts, sent and deleted mails and I had the same behavior and folders configured in Outlook and in any other mailer I used - even KMail lets you do the choice yourself. This is user-friendly as I would call it.

It seems that the behavior of Outlook 2013 has been willingly changed and it is now not at all user-friendly in this respect. So I will have to use Outlook 2010, or MS Mail-App or any other Product that lets ME choose what mail folders I want to sync when checking my emails.

I think the intention behind that is to bring users to either switch to an Exchange account ($) or to use an outlook.com account with MAPI-Functionality (MS-bound), which is plain stupid, because most of us would have to switch Providers and/or mailadresses only to stay with a very expensive Office product!

But if that is what MS forces us to do, we just have to stick to the old stuff or to switch to more user-friendly and more configurable products which are definitely out there... and they are functional.... and they are often FOR FREE.

So I once again beg you Diane, the MS Product Managers and all MS Staff for Outlook product development, in the name of all outlook users out there: bring us back the choice or we will have to choose!

February 26th, 2013 11:46am

The MVPs have brought this to their attention several times - but they don't tell us too much about future changes so I can't say if it will be added or not.

Outlook gets the folder names from the server but apparently there is a problem with non-English folder name matching.

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February 26th, 2013 5:38pm

Outlook gets the folder names from the server but apparently there is a problem with non-English folder name matching.

Thanks again for your reply. I think that really could be the underlying technical issue.

But again: That would not be a problem for customers if it was still configurable by users. Maybe the easiest way for MS to deal with it, would be to revert it to the old way of dealing with IMAP Folders, and coming up later with a quality-insured solution, where an X-List query of an IMAP Server in a German version of the product accepts "Gesendet" equally as a Standard Folder containing "sent items" an so on.

Formerly we called that kind of software "Banana-Software", because it ripens at the customers desk!

thx for addressing this issue again in the name of all non us-citizen Outlook-Users, as it seem to be an issue of interest on the internet that is quiet often discussed and also a source of bad reputation for MS.


February 27th, 2013 4:54pm

I think that really could be the underlying technical issue.

The X-List query is language independent, that's actually the Point of X-List. But if the Server does not support x-list (and many Server don't, including Exchange), then Outlook falls back on pattern matching. This seems to be seriously broken: The English Default names are mostly recognized, but not all (e.g. the "Junk" Folder doesn't seem to be recognized properly).

The only way at the moment seems to be to rename the special folders manually to their English default names (or automatically, if you can e.g. use Outlook Web Access), and then re-create the Outlook Profile from scratch. The folders need to be subscribed-to before creating the profile, otherwise the pattern matching won't work either.

Regards, Martin

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February 27th, 2013 5:31pm

...and changing the folder names is not possible for all users (and its a hassle for those that can do it).

I have a note into support about this.

February 27th, 2013 7:32pm

Can any of you guys who are affected open a support case?  That will help them investigate. For RTM installs, you should have free support calls available.
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February 27th, 2013 10:56pm

Would it be fair to call this a disaster?  What on God's green earth was MS thinking removing this basic, fundamental, essential functionality!?!?  There should be no waiting until a SP, this should be fixed immediately as it is absolutely, unimaginably stupid.

Can someone with coding skills create a plugin that will fix this abomination?

How do we open a "support case?'

March 7th, 2013 12:10am

well, for me, that is pure ignorance and on the other way the left Hand doesn't know what the right Hand does...

have big Problems with that new "Feature" in Outlook 2013 and really unhappy with it... didn't find any Workaround yet to set my sent Folders (non-english of course) ...  hope for a update soon

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August 8th, 2013 5:31am

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