At first glance, SmarterMail users will notice that their mailbox has five special-purpose, permanent folders that can't be removed or renamed. These folders will reside at the top of the folders list as well as being listed with any other folders a user creates. These include:
- Inbox - All incoming messages automatically go to your Inbox folder. You can read your mail in the Inbox, then delete it, move it to another folder or leave it in the Inbox. When creating folders, it's not recommended to create them within the Inbox as many email clients, especially mobile clients, have difficulty syncing folders created within the Inbox. Note: If you have set up content filtering for your mailbox, incoming messages may bypass your Inbox per your content filtering settings.
- Deleted Items - When you delete messages, by default they're moved to the Deleted Items folder. (Just know that this default action can change based on your settings - see Deleting Email Messages for more information). Messages in the Deleted Items folder can be deleted at any time without warning depending on any auto-clean settings your system administrator has in place, so it's best if you don't delete messages if you think you'll want them later. The Deleted Items folder is the default folder SmarterMail creates for deleted items. When migrating from other email systems to SmarterMail, the migration may create a different folder for deleted items based on what that email system uses as its default.
- Drafts - This folder holds messages that you've composed but haven't sent yet. A message saved in your Drafts folder stays there until you either send it or delete it.
- Junk Email - Messages SmarterMail believes to be junk mail bypass your inbox and go to the Junk Email folder. You should periodically check this folder to ensure that valid messages were not accidentally delivered to the Junk Email folder. If you find valid emails in your Junk Email folder, you can move them back to your Inbox by either dragging them to the Inbox or using the right-click context menu. If the sender is someone you know, you can also add them as a Trusted Sender using the right-click menu, thereby skipping most spam checks for messages from that sender in the future.
- Sent Items - All outgoing messages are automatically saved to your Sent Items folder, making it easy to review or resend a message if necessary. Note: Messages sent from a third-party client such as Outlook may or may not be saved in the Sent Items folder. It is dependent on the protocol used to connect that client.
Creating Email Folders
To make your email easy to manage, SmarterMail lets users create as many personal mail folders as they want. Personal folders help users organize incoming and outgoing messages in ways that make sense to the individual user. That being said, creating a very large number of folders that have large numbers of sub-folders can impact the performance of any email server, not to mention syncing your account with email clients. Note: When creating new folders, DO NOT create sub-folders within your Inbox. While technically possible, many third-party email clients and most mobile devices can not sync sub-folders that are part of a user's Inbox.
To create a new folder, click on the Menu icon at the bottom of the folders view. From that dropdown menu, select New Folder. This will open a new folder window. In the Parent Folder field, select the appropriate directory to save the folder to, or select "Root Folder" to create the new parent folder. Then, type the name of the new folder. Folder names can include letters, numbers, and the hyphen (-), space ( ), and underline (_) characters only.
To make your SmarterMail folders available from a third-party email client such as Microsoft Outlook, when you set up the account in your client you will need to set it up using IMAP as your incoming mail server type or use one of the add-on protocols: EAS and/or MAPI/EWS. If you use POP mail, you only have access to your SmarterMail inbox, not any personal mail folders you created to organize messages.
NOTE: SmarterMail does not allow the following characters to be used in folder names:
? | | : * ? < > " . u000 (a unicode null character) and leading/trailing spaces
When importing folders, it's likely SmarterMail will replace those characters with an underscore (_). For example, if a folder is named "Problems?", the folder would show up as "Problems_" in webmail after import. (Quotation marks are not part of the folder name in the example.) Folders in webmail can be renamed to remove the underscore characters, but none of the restricted characters can be used in the rename.
Moving Messages to Another Folder
Moving messages between folders in SmarterMail is easy. You can either move them using the Actions menu or right-click on one or more, messages and select "Move" from the context menu. It's also possible to drag one or more messages from one folder and drop them into another.
To move messages using the Actions menu, first open the folder containing the message(s) you want to move. Then select the desired message(s) and click the Actions menu in the content pane toolbar. Click Move and select the name of the destination folder. The message(s) will automatically move into the folder you selected.
Right-clicking and then using the Context menu works the same way: Select one or more messages, right-click on one of them, select "Move" and then choose the destination folder.
Renaming and Deleting Folders
You can change the name of a personal mail folder anytime or delete it completely when you no longer need it. NOTE: It's not possible to rename any default folders.
To rename a folder, select the appropriate folder in the navigation pane. Click the Menu icon at the bottom of your list of folders and select Rename Folder from the pop-out menu. In the New Folder Name field, type the new folder name you want to use. You can also change the directory that the folder is saved to by selecting another directory in the Parent field. Then click Save.
To delete a folder, select the appropriate folder in the navigation pane. Click the Menu icon at the bottom of your list of folders and select Delete Folder. Then click OK to delete the folder and all of its contents.
The right-click context menu can be used as well, both for renaming a folder as well as deleting a folder.