I haven't been able to find anything with Google yet. I've been using IMAP for a long time now with a few of my email accounts. Everything had been going smoothly until last week sometime when I updated my Mac to Lion (new mail program) and added the Sparrow email client on my iPhone.

The current issue is that I've deleted some unused IMAP folders, but they keep coming back. One per account, that I created in the first place. ie. they are not part of the basic list of standard folders (inbox, sent, etc..)

I have deleted them using the Mac mail client and confirmed they disappeared from the server by checking the IMAP folder list with Sparrow and SquirrelMail (web mail at the host). I have deleted the mailboxes with SquirrelMail and then confirmed they disappeared from the Mac (and Sparrow). I have quit the Mac's mail program, manually deleted the folders from disk and in SuirrelMail.

They're gone for days and then one day I flip back to the Mac's mail program and there they are again.

Particulars: The folders are both named "Older" and it's where I would toss older mail. Essentially an archive folder. When I installed Sparrow it didn't start up with the correct folder assignments and didn't ask me up front. So it went ahead and created an Archive folder and some other folders which were duplicates of Sent, Drafts. etc. I fixed up all the assignments and decided that I would use "Archive" in place of my custom 'Older' folder since it was officially recognized by Sparrow and my Mac's email program as "special" with a nice color icon.

So I moved the desired messages into the Archive folders, made sure they were being used for their purpose and confirmed the "Older" folders were empty. Then I deleted them. Again and again over the past 1.5 weeks.

I have no idea how they're coming back. Whether it's something on the server re-creating them or if it's the Mac mail program doing it. Or even Sparrow on iOS. I haven't been able to pinpoint a trigger/action yet that causes it to happen. I just see them at what seems like a random time when I switch over to check my email on the Mac.