We tried many “fixes” for this Outlook 2013 IMAP DRAFTS folder issue.
Situations were you might just have moved from Windows Vista/Outlook 2007 to Windows 8.1/Outlook 2013.If you are experiencing that emails remain stuck in the DRAFTS folder after sending the email for which the email was a draft.
Deleting, moving the emails all resulted in unexpected behaviors, in each case, copies would show up in the DELETED or other folders but the original email would remain in the DRAFTS folder. We did not see this type of issues when using Windows Vista and Outlook 2007.
We were skeptical that the recommended Microsoft fix would work and concerned that we could lose some email in the process. However, it did work just fine and our email files are fine.
The answer from Microsoft for this issue or fix is:
- Open “Account Settings”
- Highlight the IMAP account you were having problems with
- Choose “Change” on that menu (opens the “Change Account” window).
Everything on this screen should be fine - Click on “More settings…” (it opens the “Internet Email Settings” window)
- Go to the the “Advanced” tab
- Go to the “Folders” section of the window
- In the field following “Root folder path”…type in the word “inbox”
- Choose “OK” (closes the “Internet Email Settings” window)
- Click “Next” in the “Change Account” window
(opens the “Test Account Settings” window and run a test) - Close the the “Test Account Settings” window
- Click “Finish”
- Close the “Account Settings” window
- Close and reopen Outlook.
I suggest you close Outlook in step 13.
So, we closed Outlook, reopened it, and the DRAFTS folder was empty.
All should work fine now. My DRAFTS folder will be empty when it is supposed to be and had contents when it should. On an additional note, you can now test to save some emails to DRAFTS and see if they they are persisting in DRAFTS until you reopen and send them or or until you specifically delete them from DRAFTS.
