macosmail.app
I have setup and email account on Mac mail. The account accesses email through IMAP. One of the settings for the account is not to keep any messages on the server under the advanced tab in Mac Mail.
However no emails are being deleted on the server once they are received on Mac mail client.
Any clue on where I can check the problem?
I did a little digging and found out a little of what OSX tries to do to auto-configure an email account.
In system preferences when adding a mail account, OSX makes a POST to https://mac-services.apple.com/iconfig/dconf the post parameters are:
domain: EMAIL_DOMAIN_THE_USER_ENTERED.com
version: 1
capabilities: MACOSX
For a service like gmail the following is returned:
<domain>
<name>gmail.com</name>
<description>Gmail</description>
<service>
<hostname>imap.gmail.com</hostname>
<port>993</port>
<protocol>IMAP</protocol>
<ssl/>
<requires>MACOSX</requires>
<authentication>PLAIN</authentication>
</service>
<service>
<hostname>smtp.gmail.com</hostname>
<port>587</port>
<protocol>SMTP</protocol>
<ssl/>
<requires>MACOSX</requires>
<authentication>PLAIN</authentication>
<usernameIncludesDomain/>
</service>
</domain>
Unfortunately, for my domain I receive the following response:
<domain>
<name>EMAIL_DOMAIN_THE_USER_ENTERED.com</name>
<unknown/>
</domain>
As far as I can tell after an unknown response OSX gives up and requires a user to enter the details manually. Capturing network packets I see no attempt by OSX to fallback to using SRV DNS records, or the Exchange Autodiscover.xml mechanism.
If I get a chance I will open a support ticket with apple to see how one gets added to their mac-services list.
Mail does have an action called "Archive" in the Message menu that moves the current message in to a directory called "Archive." I use it all day every day on my work IMAP account just like in Gmail. I stash everything in there and just rely on search to find what I need. It works great.
I don't think there's a way to remap the Delete key to perform an Archive action instead, but Archive does have a keyboard shortcut: control-command-A. If you find that as clunky as I do, you can remap it in System Preferences' Keyboard pane.
You can also add Archive to your toolbar if that's more your thing.
Best Answer
The only folders you can keep locally for IMAP are:
If you want to empty other IMAP mailboxes, you will want to set up local folders on the Mac - use the built in help and search for "Create Mailbox" to get the steps to make a local folder so you can move all the messages there and then send a delete command to the IMAP server to actually remove them if they don't auto purge.