I've been running 2013 Preview on both an Win8 RTM and customer preview system for a few months now. Works fine with exchange and outlook.com, but my IMAP account is driving me crazy. I uninstalled the office 2013 preview yesterday and replaced it with the RTM version to check and see if the problems were addressed, but at best they are the same and at worse, its non-functional. 

To wit: the basic problem with the IMAP account on office 2013 is that it never gets the IMAP folder structure correct. When I click the IMAP folders toolbar icon, the list of folders and subscribed folders shows up as expected, but they never show up correctly in the side bar of outlook. I either just get the inbox, outbox and trash folders that seem to be the outlook default, or I get an entire listing of my Linux home directory on the mail server (and even that appears corrupt. Duplicate folder structures seem to abound) When I can find my IMAP folders, I always get a "no items found" message when I try to look into them. On the Windows RTM system, I tried deleting the IMAP account and recreating it, but every time I tried, Outlook would crash and restart. Every time, and it did not matter whether it was from within Outlook or the control panel mail config utility.  On my Win8 Preview system, the account seemed to install OK (I never used the IMAP acct on that machine), but it does not come close to getting the folders correct.

What's going on? I've configured many systems for IMAP (including all versions of office on a PC from 95 on and several MAC versions as well) with no problems this bad. I realize that IMAP can be touchy to configure, but Office 2013 appears to be non-functional.  Help!

I cannot reproduce it. There is indeed changes of folder view in Outlook 2013 IMAP account as below:

Inbox
Drafts (This computer only)
Sent Items (This computer only)
Deleted Items (This computer only)
Junk Email (This computer only)   ----  (called Spam for Gmail users)
Outbox
RSS Feeds
Search Folders

Note: "This computer only" means this is a local data and not roaming.

In my Outlook 2013 RTM, Gmail IMAP account is working fine, except for duplicate Junk email folder... I deleted one of them.

For the Outlook crash, I would like confirm how did you install Office 2013? Clean install or upgrade from lower version? If it was upgrading, please check if there is any add-ins or other software remains which may cause the problem. Disable add-ins and turn off AVG/Firewall, included scanner module to setup IMAP again.

Let me know the result. Thanks.

Tony Chen
TechNet Community Support
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I have been having a lot of problems with Outlook 2013 and IMAP accounts.

See my post here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/officeitpro/thread/cd4c54cf-00f9-4ba9-b558-0fe69513f909

Basically the IMAP synchronization does crazy things and at some stage stops working. I never had this problems with 2007 or 2010.

I wonder if somebody from Microsoft monitors these forums. There are many posts referring to Outlook 2013 problems and no suggestions for resolutions.

I think this is something to do with the new OST structure that creates a variety of default "local computer only" folders.  If the IMAP4 server has a folder structure that conflicts with it, you get weirdness as described.  How it conflicts and how to resolve it I have no idea.

What does the sync log say?

• Edited by cybershooters Thursday, November 01, 2012 4:07 PM

I think this is something to do with the new OST structure that creates a variety of default "local computer only" folders.  If the IMAP4 server has a folder structure that conflicts with it, you get weirdness as described.  How it conflicts and how to resolve it I have no idea.

What does the sync log say?

• Edited by cybershooters Thursday, November 01, 2012 4:07 PM

I think this is something to do with the new OST structure that creates a variety of default "local computer only" folders.  If the IMAP4 server has a folder structure that conflicts with it, you get weirdness as described.  How it conflicts and how to resolve it I have no idea.

What does the sync log say?

• Edited by cybershooters Thursday, November 01, 2012 4:07 PM

I am having problems with my school imap email account.  Outlook 2013 lists the subfolders under the inbox folder, but cannot get the contents.  Besides, it also generates local sent, delete folders which do not sync with the remote corresponding folders.  Outlook 2013 cannot delete emails from remote inbox when the emails are moved to local junk-email folder.  Previous versions of Outlooks did not have such problems.  It looks like Outlook 2013 is doing pop3 style on imap for certain, like traditional, imap servers.  The only notable improvement I see is now it shows the number of unread emails properly in the Outlook's inbox favourites.

For me, the imap support on Outlook 2013 is going backwards rather improved as claimed.  I wish Microsoft would fix them rather than slapping "by design" on these "unwanted" behaviors.

• Edited by shimh Friday, November 02, 2012 5:12 PM

I am having problems with my school imap email account.  Outlook 2013 lists the subfolders under the inbox folder, but cannot get the contents.  Besides, it also generates local sent, delete folders which do not sync with the remote corresponding folders.  Outlook 2013 cannot delete emails from remote inbox when the emails are moved to local junk-email folder.  Previous versions of Outlooks did not have such problems.  It looks like Outlook 2013 is doing pop3 style on imap for certain, like traditional, imap servers.  The only notable improvement I see is now it shows the number of unread emails properly in the Outlook's inbox favourites.

For me, the imap support on Outlook 2013 is going backwards rather improved as claimed.  I wish Microsoft would fix them rather than slapping "by design" on these "unwanted" behaviors.

• Edited by shimh Friday, November 02, 2012 5:12 PM

I am having problems with my school imap email account.  Outlook 2013 lists the subfolders under the inbox folder, but cannot get the contents.  Besides, it also generates local sent, delete folders which do not sync with the remote corresponding folders.  Outlook 2013 cannot delete emails from remote inbox when the emails are moved to local junk-email folder.  Previous versions of Outlooks did not have such problems.  It looks like Outlook 2013 is doing pop3 style on imap for certain, like traditional, imap servers.  The only notable improvement I see is now it shows the number of unread emails properly in the Outlook's inbox favourites.

For me, the imap support on Outlook 2013 is going backwards rather improved as claimed.  I wish Microsoft would fix them rather than slapping "by design" on these "unwanted" behaviors.

• Edited by shimh Friday, November 02, 2012 5:12 PM

Well, I think I've tried all of the above. Initially, I uninstalled the Office2013 preview and installed the released version. This is where it crashed. I have since performed a fresh install of Windows 8 Enterprise along with Office 2013. Now, when I create my IMAP account (to a personal self-managed email account on a Linux server) there are two fundamental problems:

1. Even though I can see all of my IMAP folders when I use the IMAP folder tool in Outlook, no matter what I do, I can not get the folder listings in the Outlook sidebar to match my subscribed folders. I have an extensive list of folders I use to store my mail, and it flat-out is inaccessible to me. I get: inbox, drafts, sent, trash, drafts, Junk E-mail5(this computer only), October 2012, October 2012.lock, outbox,spam, Trash, Trash, Trash, Search Folders   (bold/italics are folders actually known to be on my server) Note that the drafts and trash folders show up multiple times. This is not what my subscribed folder list says I should see there.

2. Outlook will not automatically sync my IMAP inbox. When I start Outlook, it syncs my Exchange Account and Outlook.com account just fine. Nada on the IMAP. I can even tell OUtlook to send/receive and it still does not update. If I click on the first trash folder I get a message telling me that Trash is syncing, and if I then switch to my IMAP inbox, it starts to sync and seems to work after that.

I'm pretty clearly convinced that MS broke IMAP big time. It always had its quirks in the past, but this one is busted.

I've the some problem 

Try re-creating the OST.  That helped me, although it isn't a 100% solution.  I.e. delete the IMAP4 account you're using, recreate it with all the same settings and it should create a new OST file.  Then resync.

were is the 2013 sync log?

Outlook 2013 crashes a few times day for me. i'm down to bare bones, no add ins and an exchange and one imap account. it hangs when i goto another folder in exch to imap or imap to exch calendar.

Same problems just does not work propeley

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/officeitpro/thread/f7d95df3-56e0-41d6-8f18-437f570d8688

Hi, 

Same here, my outlook 2013 stop sync in September 2012. 

Well, I tried one other thing. First, while Outlook was running, I went in and selected all of the IMAP folders I wanted to sync and made sure I subscribed them. This made no difference to the list in the mail reader.Don't ask me why I did this, but the next thing I did was to shut down Outlook and find the OST file for my IMAP account. I deleted it and restarted Outlook. (Note that I did not delete the IMAP account itself, just got rid of its OST file) It looks like it rebuilt the OST with the correct subscribed IMAP folders.

So, if you want to try this, be careful and back stuff up first. My conclusion so far is that Outlook just does not permit editing the IMAP folder list correctly. Looks to me like when you create the account, it makes a set of default folders and never lets you edit them. However, if you edit the IMAP subscriptions and completely rebuild the IMAP OST file for that account, it seems to work. Also, I don't think you can create IMAP folders on the server from Outlook, and every time you want  to change the subscription list, you need to completely rebuild the OST, which can be quite a time consuming task depending on how big your IMAP storage is.

IMHO, its a bug, not a feature and IMAP is still pretty broken. In any event, it doesn't seem to work like all of the other IMAP solutions I've used over the years....

I deleted my OST file, and it did rebuild everything. After that I was able to create folders in Outlook and they were also created on the server. Everything got messed up originally when I tried to move a folder in Outlook.

If you delete your OST file, all of your rules for that account will disappear, so make sure to back them up first if you have any.

• Proposed as answer by Pete041 Sunday, March 03, 2013 3:43 PM
• Unproposed as answer by Pete041 Sunday, March 03, 2013 3:43 PM

I deleted my OST file, and it did rebuild everything. After that I was able to create folders in Outlook and they were also created on the server. Everything got messed up originally when I tried to move a folder in Outlook.

If you delete your OST file, all of your rules for that account will disappear, so make sure to back them up first if you have any.

• Proposed as answer by Pete041 Sunday, March 03, 2013 3:43 PM
• Unproposed as answer by Pete041 Sunday, March 03, 2013 3:43 PM

I deleted my OST file, and it did rebuild everything. After that I was able to create folders in Outlook and they were also created on the server. Everything got messed up originally when I tried to move a folder in Outlook.

If you delete your OST file, all of your rules for that account will disappear, so make sure to back them up first if you have any.

• Proposed as answer by Pete041 Sunday, March 03, 2013 3:43 PM
• Unproposed as answer by Pete041 Sunday, March 03, 2013 3:43 PM

Try to use eM Client instead (http://www.emclient.com), much better than Outlook 2013, particularly with the current lack of IMAP integration. 

I have the same problem with Outlook 2013 IMAP and my mail provider, these folders don't sync...

Drafts (This computer only)
Sent Items (This computer only)
Deleted Items (This computer only)

I have tried everything but have to give up, the latest windows update today 3/12/13 with a lot off office 2013 fixes didn't change anything...

Just installed Outlook 2013. I have about 4 Email Imap adresses with 3 computers. Office 1 (Desktop), Office 2 (Laptop) and Privat Computer. Some IMAP Adresses are from partners. Additionally exchange Accounts cost definitly more money, that's why, and IMAP works quite well.

Now, beacuse of Outlook 2013(!), all IMAP Accounts are storing their send, delete, drafts mails(in german language) LOCALLY on the computer (?!?) - because it ist no more possible to adjust the IMAP Folders for the accounts. (It was a standard function till Outlook 2010!!! and worked quite well)

I really can not believe that Mircosoft has removed this option! The work an handling is getting worse with Outlook 2013. It is so disappointing to pay for such an service. Since 11/2012 - No Solution? 

I am no more sure that MS will change this. Bad, very bad and dissappinting.

Now searching for a new solution for handling my daily work- faster - withoud stupid handling of mails in local folders. (The new state of the art?).

Greetings,

Erwin

This is exactly what I found to be true,and then found your post .I hope this helps others,but what if you have multiple accounts? You can't do it in outlook 2013

I have now uninstalled the connection for Outlook 2013 to all my IMAP accounts. 

I have to remove the OST file every week and re-sync all contacts. It is not a sustainable solution. Sometimes it hangs and does not re-create the OST file even. I have had the PC on nights to give it time.

With exactly the same IMAP accounts, Thunderbird and eMail client works like a dream.

Sorry, but if this is the level Outlook 2013 is at, I have no choice but remove the whole lot. I need to work, not care for Microsoft's bad development.

I had exactly the same issue. Do you have an English version of Office 2013? I could fix the problem by deactivating and reactivating the IMAP feature in the Gmail settings and switching the display language in Gmail from German to English - not sure if both steps are necessary to fix it.