People who check their IMAP e-mail through Outlook Express sometimes go looking for a folder that is supposed to exist, but is not listed in the “Folders” pane on the side of the screen. I hear this all time time — a particular culprit is the spam folder. Sometimes people want to sift through their spam folder and look for false positives, but can’t figure out where to look.

If you cannot find a certain IMAP e-mail folder in Outlook Express, you may need to change a few settings. Here is what you should do:

Open the Show/Hide IMAP Folders Dialog

In Outlook Express, right-click once on the name of the account to which we are adding folders.

This will bring up the “Show/Hide IMAP Folders” dialog window, which will show you all of your IMAP folders.

Show the Hidden Folder

If the name of a folder does not have a little folder icon () next to it, it has been hidden from view. Click once on the name of that folder, then click the “show” button.

Finally, click the “OK” button and Outlook Express will show that newly un-hidden folder in your list.

If you want to hide some unnecessary folders from view, just follow this exact process and use the “Hide” button. Right-click on your e-mail account in the Outlook Express sidebar, choose “IMAP Folders…”, click once on the name of the folder to be hidden, and click the “Hide” button.

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