One of my clients can’t connect to his UW IMAP server using Windows Mobile Outlook because of the kiss of death when using MBOX formats.

Solution? Use Maildir format. Duh!

Since UW IMAP doesn’t support Maildir format, it just makes sense to switch over to Dovecot.

But I had a problem finding the right combination for Dovecot and Maildir, especially when it comes to Outlook’s “Inbox’ folder. Well, here’s the magic incantation for getting Dovecot with maildirs to work with Outlook:

1. Get procmail to deliver the files in the maildir format. That’s easily done by putting a trailing slash on DEFAULT variable in /etc/procmailrc:

   
DEFAULT=~/Maildir/

   As you can see, I like putting the folders in the user’s directory. Place them where you like.

2. Put the following line in your dovecot.conf file:

   
mail_location=maildir:~/Maildir:INBOX=~/Maildir/:INDEX=~/Maildir/tmp/index

   The slashes or lack thereof are important!

3. Configure Outlook to connect to your Dovecot IMAP server and refresh the folders list. That should do it!

Technorati Tags: dovecot, IMAP, kiss of death, maildir, Microsoft Outlook

Tags: dovecot IMAP kiss of death maildir Microsoft Outlook

Posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 10:17 pm under system administration, system integration and tagged: dovecot > IMAP > kiss of death > maildir > Microsoft Outlook. Comment RSS 2.0 feed. Comment, or trackback.