Exchange server - BAD commands should be unbundled

[Uday Reddy]

Kyle Farrell reports (viewmail-info, 2013-07-23)

I was wondering why my deleted messages where getting cleared, then I
realized what was happening: I'd read, reply, file, and delete my
mail. Messages are marked "\deleted" and "filed" (or another imap
label Exchange doesn't recognize such as "junk"). Since Exchange
can't store the flag, the command fails so none of the flags are being
stored. VM then syncs flags from the server, so my deleted flag is
cleared from my inbox since the server rejected the store command.

Attempting to store any flag the server doesn't recognize is causing
none of the flags to be stored.

[Uday Reddy (reddyuday)]

Resolution:

VM should store standard flags and non-standard flags separately so that the server errors are localized.

[Uday Reddy (reddyuday)]

Here is a temporary work-around for this problem.

1. Set `vm-imap-sync-on-get' to nil, so that VM doesn't attempt to save
attributes when you get new mail.

2. Set `vm-expunge-before-save' and `vm-expunge-before-quit' to `t' so that
the deleted messages are expunged before saving.

3. Set `vm-delete-after-saving' to `t' so that filed messages get deleted.

4. Use `s' to save folders. Or you can quit using `q' which does an
automatic save.

5. I suppose you will refrain from adding any labels to messages because VM
will attempt to save them to the server, which will then misbehave. (The
"junk" flag is not created by VM. You will need to figure out how it got
there.)

6. There will still be some VM-specific flags such as "forwarded" and
"redistributed" which Exchange won't understand. Hopefully, they won't be
too many to get into trouble with Exchange.