Managing Email Folders in TrekMail Webmail
Folders keep your mail organised — and in TrekMail webmail your custom folders now appear as a real nested tree in the sidebar that mirrors your IMAP folder structure. This guide covers creating, renaming, colour-coding, and deleting folders, expanding and collapsing the tree, subscribing shared folders, moving mail in bulk, emptying Trash or Spam in one click, and searching across your folders.
System folders vs. custom folders
Every mailbox starts with a set of system folders that TrekMail manages for you: Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Junk (spam), Trash, Archive, and Scheduled. These always appear at the top of the sidebar in a fixed order and can't be renamed or deleted — they're where webmail automatically files outgoing, deleted, scheduled, and flagged-as-spam mail.
Everything you make yourself is a custom folder. Custom folders live in their own Folders section in the sidebar, below the system folders, and that's where the new tree view lives.
The folder tree
Custom folders now show as a nested tree that mirrors your real IMAP hierarchy, instead of one flat list. If a folder contains subfolders — say Clients with Clients/Acme and Clients/Globex underneath it — webmail draws them nested under their parent, with indentation that grows for each level of depth, so you can see at a glance how your folders relate to each other.
- Expand and collapse. Any folder that has subfolders shows a chevron next to it. Click the chevron to expand that branch and reveal its children, or collapse it to tuck them away. The chevron only appears where there's actually something nested to show.
- Unread counts roll up. When a parent folder is collapsed, its unread badge shows the combined unread count of the whole subtree — so you can tell a branch has new mail without expanding it. Expand the branch and each subfolder shows its own count.
- Expand all / Collapse all. The Folders section header has controls to expand all or collapse all branches at once, which is handy when you want to either survey everything or get back to a clean top-level view.
- Stays tidy by default. On mailboxes with a lot of folders, the tree starts collapsed below the top level so the sidebar isn't overwhelming on first load. Expand just the branches you're working in.
Creating folders and subfolders
To make a new top-level folder, click the + button in the Folders section header, type a name, and confirm. The folder appears in your sidebar and is created on the mail server over IMAP at the same time.
To make a subfolder, hover over the parent folder in the sidebar — a small + appears on that row. Click it and name the child folder; webmail nests it under the parent and adds it to the tree automatically. You can nest as deeply as your mail server allows.
Naming rules
A folder name can't match a reserved system name (Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Junk, Trash, Archive, Scheduled) and can't contain your mail server's path separator character — that separator is what builds the hierarchy itself, so using it in a name would break nesting. If a name is rejected, pick a different one or create the folder as a subfolder using the per-folder + instead.
Renaming, deleting, and colour-coding
Custom folders are managed from folder management in your webmail settings. From there you can rename a folder, delete one you no longer need, and give each folder a custom colour so it's easy to spot in the sidebar at a glance.
Your folders follow you across devices
Folder colours and your expand/collapse state now sync to your account, so they travel with you across devices and browsers. Previously these were stored per-browser only — set them once on your laptop and they'll look the same on your phone or a different machine.
Deleting a custom folder removes it from the mail server. System folders can't be renamed or deleted — they're protected because webmail relies on them to file Sent, Drafts, Junk, Trash, and scheduled mail.
Subscribing and hiding folders
IMAP lets you subscribe to folders — that's how you choose which ones show in the sidebar. If you have folders you don't want cluttering the list (for example shared or rarely-used folders), unsubscribe to hide them, and subscribe again whenever you want them back. Hiding a folder this way doesn't delete it or its mail; it just removes it from view.
This is also how you bring in folders created elsewhere — by another client or shared into your account — so they appear in your tree alongside the ones you made here. As always, system folders can't be unsubscribed, renamed, or deleted.
Moving mail into folders
To file a message, open it (or select it in the list) and use the Move action to pick a destination folder. The destination picker shows your full folder tree, so you can move mail straight into a subfolder, not just a top-level folder.
- Bulk move. Tick several messages in the list, then choose Move once to relocate them all to the same folder in a single step.
- Empty Trash or Junk. When you're viewing Trash or Junk, an Empty action clears the whole folder at once instead of deleting messages one by one. This permanently removes everything in that folder, so use it when you're sure.
Searching across your folders
By default the search box searches the folder you currently have open. When you start typing, the search suggestions also offer two wider scopes so you can reach beyond it:
- This folder — only the open folder (the default).
- This folder + subfolders — the open folder and everything nested beneath it in the tree.
- All mail — every folder in your mailbox.
When you search wider than the current folder, results are merged newest-first and each one carries a small folder chip showing where it lives. Clicking a result opens it inside its own folder, so replying, moving, or deleting always acts in the right place.
Good to know
A very large mailbox can hold hundreds of folders, so an All mail search covers a generous batch of folders rather than every last one in a single pass; webmail tells you when it has done so. Narrow the scope to "This folder + subfolders" — or open the branch you care about — for a focused search.
The same folders in any mail client
Because TrekMail folders are real IMAP folders, the exact same hierarchy is visible over IMAP in any external mail client — Apple Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, your phone's mail app — with subfolders nested just as they are in webmail. Create a folder in one place and it shows up everywhere your mailbox is connected.
In webmail itself, the folder tree fully supports colours, dark mode, and right-to-left languages, so it stays readable and well laid out however you've set up your account.