MAIL

Preparing a mail file for IMAP access
To support access from IMAP clients, mail files must be specially modified to store IMAP folder and message attributes as database items. If you used the IBM® Lotus® Domino® registration process to create a user, and set the user's mail system type to IMAP, Domino automatically performs the steps required to prepare the mail file for IMAP use. Otherwise, you must complete several tasks to prepare a mail file to support IMAP access.

To prepare a mail file for IMAP access

1. Verify that you have:

2. If you are upgrading a mail file, you have the option to run Compact on the mail file to ensure that it uses the IBM® Lotus® Notes® ODS (on-disk structure) version 41 or greater. If you are running Domino 6 or newer, you are using an acceptable ODS version.
3. Run the Fixup task on the mail file.

4. Run the mail conversion utility on the mail file to enable it for IMAP access.

5. If this is not a new mail file, run the mail conversion utility with the -h option to increase the speed of header downloads when clients log in.

The IMAP service does not rely on template views to store IMAP folder and message data; you can enable mail files created from any mail template.

For users with multiple mail file replicas -- for example, users with mail files on clustered servers -- you must independently enable each replica for IMAP access. Because Domino does not replicate IMAP database items between databases, by default, when you create a new replica of an IMAP-enabled mail file, it is not enabled for IMAP use.

Differences when viewing mail files from IMAP clients and Notes client

Some aspects of a mail file are structured in template items that are visible only to a IBM® Lotus® Notes® client, and as such are not available to IMAP clients. As a result, IMAP clients display certain folders and views in a mail file differently from Notes clients. For instance, from an IMAP client, the Inbox and Trash folders, and any public folders, appear as IMAP mailboxes. Also, hidden and private folders are not visible to IMAP clients. And finally, IMAP clients do not display views that are part of the Notes mail file template, such as the Draft and Sent view.

The Domino IMAP service does not support renaming of the Inbox folder in a Notes mail file from an IMAP client.

For users who access their mail files from both an IMAP client and a Notes client, Domino synchronizes unread message marks between the two. Thus, a message marked as read in Notes is also marked as read for an IMAP client, and vice versa.

IMAP clients cannot read messages that use IBM® Lotus® Notes® encryption. IMAP clients do not have access to the Notes private key needed to decrypt messages encrypted with a user's Notes public key certificate. As a result, when a user opens an encrypted Notes message from an IMAP client, only the unencrypted header information is available. The server replaces the blank message body with the following text:


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