Squirrelmail Tip for enhanced Apple Mail compatibility

[John Lockwood]

Squirrelmail as included with Mac OS X Server lets you remotely access your Inbox via a web-browser. It also automatically creates sub-folders to store drafts, sent, and trashed emails as done during a Squirrelmail session.

These have a folder structure like this

Inbox
…Drafts
…Sent
…Trash

When you look at this in Apple mail you will see a triangle next to your Inbox and turning it down reveals the same sub-folders.

The purpose of this posting, is that this structure is not the same as the default Apple Mail structure and as such Apple Mail and Squirrelmail will not automatically be using the same IMAP folders to store drafts, sent and trash.

It is possible in Apple Mail to select one of these Squirrelmail created folders, and go to the Mailbox menu and select the “Use This Mailbox For…” command to make it the folder to use for that purpose. It is also possible to edit the Squirrelmail config.php file to adjust its settings which as default will be

$default_folder_prefix = ‘INBOX/’;
$trash_folder = ‘Trash’;
$sent_folder = ‘Sent’;
$draft_folder = ‘Drafts’;

My question is what if any, would be a better setting for Squirrelmail so that Squirrelmail puts the folders in the right place for Apple Mail and uses the right names for Apple Mail so that an Apple Mail user does not have to change anything?

The benefit would be that rather each and every user having to alter the Apple Mail setup, I could do one edit of the config file for Squirrelmail and this would then apply forever for all users.

Ok, I may have worked out the answer myself.

Apple Mail in the Apple Mail program uses the folder names

Drafts
Sent
Trash

However it appears to use on the server

Drafts
Sent Messages
Deleted Messages

So it appears that in order to get Squirrelmail to match the settings Apple Mail uses and therefore save the Apple Mail user the hassle at their end you need to do two things.

1. Change the IMAP folder path in Squirrelmail from the default ‘INBOX/’ to ” (nothing)
2. Change the special IMAP folder names in Squirrelmail from the default to match Apple Mail

Therefore in the the Squirrelmail config.php you will go from the default

$default_folder_prefix = ‘INBOX/’;
$trash_folder = ‘Trash’;
$sent_folder = ‘Sent’;
$draft_folder = ‘Drafts’;

to

$default_folder_prefix = ”;
$trash_folder = ‘Deleted Messages’;
$sent_folder = ‘Sent Messages’;
$draft_folder = ‘Drafts’;

which matches what Apple Mail is using.

PS. The iPhone as it also runs ‘Mac OS X’ and ‘Apple Mail’ will also benefit from this.

[John Lockwood]

Apple have now added this suggested change exactly as I detailed to the settings for Squirremail they ship with Mac OS X 10.5.1.

They obviously think it is a good idea 🙂

[Author]

Posts