Question

I need an alternative for IMAP search command “A search 1:* unseen not deleted” since the email server is forbidding the search command. I tried using “A status (unseen)” but it always returns zero though there’s an unread message. Is there any alternative for the command? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Is your problem that the IMAP server doesn’t support SEARCH at all, or that it doesn’t like your particular SEARCH command? If it’s the latter, we can simplify:

A SEARCH UNSEEN UNDELETED

(as 1:* is implicit). Even simpler — just in case the server doesn’t like and-ing SEARCH terms together at all — would be:

A SEARCH UNSEEN
B SEARCH DELETED

and logically doing the AND in your code.

The brute-force way of doing it is:

C UID FETCH 1:* FLAGS

and then picking out all the ones with neither \Seen nor \Deleted. (I’m suggesting UID FETCH because a similar FETCH command will return BAD on an empty folder.)

Also, you’re not supposed to call the STATUS command on the currently-selected folder:

Note: The STATUS command is intended to access the
status of mailboxes other than the currently selected
mailbox. Because the STATUS command can cause the
mailbox to be opened internally, and because this
information is available by other means on the selected
mailbox, the STATUS command SHOULD NOT be used on the
currently selected mailbox.