I've forgotten the details.

Post #434,106 by Another Scott 5/22/20 8:13:23 AM 5/22/20 8:13:23 AM Reply	I've forgotten the details. And I may have garbled what I've been told. Indeed "we will be transitioning to a MS Exchange-based email system in the next few months"... I recently had to fix some signature and encryption certificates and set up Outlook as a client (for the first time ever). My local networking guru said I could continue to use IMAP Thunderbird (at least until the transition) but he said: "To avoid problems within Thunderbird, make sure that 'Server supports folders that contain sub-folders and messages' is unchecked in the Thunderbird settings." So, maybe the issue is that the future Exchange server (and/or IMAP) doesn't support mixing messages and subfolders in the same folder. That seems to be the (at least desired) case already. (I had no issues with this in POP3 and freely put subfolders and messages in the same folder, so of course I had hundreds of examples.) Anyway, maybe I'll be retired before the grand changeover happens... ;-) Thanks very much. Cheers, Scott.
Post #434,107 by pwhysall 5/22/20 9:39:05 AM 5/22/20 9:41:30 AM Reply	Exchange is awesome at folders. (ETA: and yes, Outlook/Exchange fully supports having folders and messages in the same container) Unfortunately, the world we live in means that for large organisations (and small tbh) the ability to enforce document and email retention policy (because lawyers) is paramount. Outlook/Exchange is a known-good solution to that issue. Edited by pwhysall May 22, 2020, 09:41:30 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #434,110 by Another Scott 5/22/20 12:45:47 PM 5/22/20 12:45:47 PM Reply	Thanks. I've been very happy with Thunderbird for ages, and while I see the advantages of IMAP I don't like the "can't put a message in a subfolder that has other subfolders" stuff limitation. I don't know if it's an e-mail archiving issue or what in our case, but it's annoying. Just today I read on Balloon-Juice that someone is having to rebuild their Outlook store because it got corrupted. After all these years, stuff like that continues to make me look less-than-happily on having to move. Maybe the Exchange Server is less fragile now... We'll see what happens. Exciting!!1 Thanks again. Cheers, Scott.
Post #434,114 by scoenye 5/22/20 6:03:29 PM 5/22/20 6:03:29 PM Reply	It is more an Outlook + Exchange thing v. IMAP Outlook + Exchange are joined at the hip and their native communication protocols are MS proprietary, not standard. IMAP, OTOH, is standard and so has to work across a swath of mail servers with varying capabilities. MS has never quite gotten a handle on the problems with Outlook's local mail stores. If you leave everything on the server, things work well. Enable syncing to local storage and things are bound to go off the rails. (And it is not limited to mail stores, the Global Address List is obnoxious too if local sync is enabled.)
Post #434,118 by rcareaga 5/22/20 6:46:53 PM 5/22/20 6:46:53 PM Reply	I’m gratified to have seeded a thread… particularly one within IWT’s initial remit, that has extended this far. cordially,
Post #434,132 by pwhysall 5/23/20 5:49:31 AM 5/23/20 5:49:31 AM Reply	Annoyingly, everything is proprietary now For statistically-significant values of "everything", that is :D Exchange and Gmail are both highly proprietary (despite both exposing kindasorta compliant IMAP interfaces), and they own roughly two-thirds of the email server market between them. Godaddy's mail hosting is in third place with another ~20% - it seems to be some IMAP/POP3 solution, but I can't find details.
Post #434,302 by jake123 6/3/20 9:04:24 AM 6/3/20 9:04:24 AM Reply	Coming late to the party but I can tell you that as a person that got to deal with godaddy mail not too long ago that it fuckin' blows.
Post #434,122 by static 5/22/20 7:56:48 PM 5/22/20 7:56:48 PM Reply	Sounds like it might be a subtle bug in Thunderbird. Years ago I talked the IT guy into telling me the name of the IMAP connector on our Exchange server. I connected quite happily with Opera's email client on Linux for quite a long time and had no problems with folders and messages in folders with sub-folders. Wade.
Post #434,123 by drook 5/22/20 10:01:48 PM 5/22/20 10:01:48 PM Reply	When connecting with MS using an open standard, I wouldn't assume the OSS app has the bug -- Drew
Post #434,126 by static 5/22/20 11:44:31 PM 5/22/20 11:44:31 PM Reply	Or could be two bugs, one in each. :-) IMAP is a fussy protocol, for all it is fully documented. I've written an IMAP server and yeah, we found bugs in a variety of clients. But I do agree with your sentiment. Least buggy IMAP server I've found was an open-source one, consciously written very closely to the spec. Wade.
Post #434,306 by Another Scott 6/3/20 11:27:28 AM 6/3/20 11:27:28 AM Reply	Found out the reason, finally... It has to do with the authentication that's required going forward. POP and IMAP can't do (or at least are not allowed to do) what is going to be required (P I V), so we're moving to Exchange. It's not clear whether Outlook is going to be required, or if that's only what's going to be supported. (Linux users are looking at other client options.) I pity the people who are having to study STIGs, though having it all written down in one place has advantages... Cheers, Scott.
Post #434,316 by boxley 6/3/20 3:23:37 PM 6/3/20 3:23:37 PM Reply	stigs are pretty dumb they have to be to deal with ISSO's "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

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