File formats:

Status:

PROPOSED STANDARD

Obsoletes:

RFC 2060

Obsoleted by:

RFC 9051

Updated by:

RFC 4466, RFC 4469, RFC 4551, RFC 5032, RFC 5182, RFC 5738, RFC 6186, RFC 6858, RFC 7817, RFC 8314, RFC 8437, RFC 8474, RFC 8996

Author:

M. Crispin

Stream:

IETF

Source:

NON WORKING GROUP

Cite this RFC: TXT  |  XML  |   BibTeX

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.17487/RFC3501

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Abstract

The Internet Message Access Protocol, Version 4rev1 (IMAP4rev1) allows a client to access and manipulate electronic mail messages on a server. IMAP4rev1 permits manipulation of mailboxes (remote message folders) in a way that is functionally equivalent to local folders. IMAP4rev1 also provides the capability for an offline client to resynchronize with the server. IMAP4rev1 includes operations for creating, deleting, and renaming mailboxes, checking for new messages, permanently removing messages, setting and clearing flags, RFC 2822 and RFC 2045 parsing, searching, and selective fetching of message attributes, texts, and portions thereof. Messages in IMAP4rev1 are accessed by the use of numbers. These numbers are either message sequence numbers or unique identifiers. IMAP4rev1 supports a single server. A mechanism for accessing configuration information to support multiple IMAP4rev1 servers is discussed in RFC 2244. IMAP4rev1 does not specify a means of posting mail; this function is handled by a mail transfer protocol such as RFC 2821. [STANDARDS-TRACK]

For the definition of Status, see RFC 2026.

For the definition of Stream, see RFC 8729.