If your email folders aren’t showing up properly in Apple Mail, or emails aren’t saving to your Drafts, Sent, or Deleted folders, this article will help you fix it in a few simple steps.
Prerequisites
- An active DomainsFoundry email account set up using IMAP
- Apple Mail macOS Ventura or later
On an older Mac? The steps are the same, but the menu will say Preferences instead of Settings.
Why This Happens
Apple Mail needs to know where your folders are stored on the server. DomainsFoundry uses cPanel’s mail system, which keeps folders under a path starting with INBOX., for example, INBOX.Sent or INBOX.Drafts.
Without the correct IMAP Path Prefix, Apple Mail looks in the wrong place. Setting it to INBOX tells Mail exactly where to find and create your folders.
How to Set the IMAP Path Prefix
- Open Apple Mail.
- From the menu bar, go to Mail → Settings.
- Click the Accounts tab.
- Select your DomainsFoundry email account from the left-hand list.
- Click the Server Settings tab.
- Click Advanced IMAP Settings…
- In the IMAP Path Prefix field, enter
INBOX(all uppercase). - Click OK, then click Save.
- Quit Apple Mail completely, then reopen it.
Your folders should now display correctly and sync properly with the server.
Troubleshooting
My folders have disappeared or are showing as duplicates.
After updating the prefix, Apple Mail re-maps your folder list. Give it a minute or two to re-sync. If a folder appears to be missing, check inside the INBOX section in the Mail sidebar, it will likely be there.
The problem is still happening after following these steps.
Make sure you fully quit and relaunched Apple Mail after saving the change, it won’t take effect until you do. If the issue continues, get in touch with our support team and we’ll be happy to help.
I’m not sure whether my account is set up as IMAP or POP.
In Apple Mail, go to Mail → Settings → Accounts and select your account. The account type is shown at the top of the Account Information tab. If it says POP, you’ll need to add your account again as IMAP. Go to Mail → Settings → Accounts, click + to add a new account, enter your DomainsFoundry email details, and choose IMAP when prompted. Once the new IMAP account is working, you can remove the old POP account by selecting it and clicking −.
Still stuck? Our support team is always here to help, visit domainsfoundry.co.uk/support to get in touch.
