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6.3.4 CREATE Command

Arguments: mailbox name

Responses: OPTIONAL untagged response: LIST

Result:

  • OK - create completed
  • NO - create failure: can't create mailbox with that name
  • BAD - command unknown or arguments invalid

The CREATE command creates a mailbox with the given name. An OK response is returned only if a new mailbox with that name has been created. It is an error to attempt to create INBOX or a mailbox with a name that refers to an extant mailbox. Any error in creation will return a tagged NO response. If a client attempts to create a UTF-8 mailbox name that is not a valid Net-Unicode name, the server MUST reject the creation or convert the name to Net-Unicode prior to creating the mailbox. If the server decides to convert (normalize) the name, it SHOULD return an untagged LIST with an OLDNAME extended data item, with the OLDNAME value being the supplied mailbox name and the name parameter being the normalized mailbox name. (See Section 6.3.9.7 for more details.)

Mailboxes created in one IMAP session MAY be announced to other IMAP sessions using an unsolicited LIST response. If the server automatically subscribes a mailbox when it is created, then the unsolicited LIST response for each affected subscribed mailbox name MUST include the \Subscribed attribute.

If the mailbox name is suffixed with the server's hierarchy separator character (as returned from the server by a LIST command), this is a declaration that the client intends to create mailbox names under this name in the hierarchy. Server implementations that do not require this declaration MUST ignore the declaration. In any case, the name created is without the trailing hierarchy delimiter.

If the server's hierarchy separator character appears elsewhere in the name, the server SHOULD create any superior hierarchical names that are needed for the CREATE command to be successfully completed. In other words, an attempt to create "foo/bar/zap" on a server in which "/" is the hierarchy separator character SHOULD create foo/ and foo/bar/ if they do not already exist.

If a new mailbox is created with the same name as a mailbox that was deleted, its unique identifiers MUST be greater than any unique identifiers used in the previous incarnation of the mailbox unless the new incarnation has a different unique identifier validity value. See the description of the UID command in Section 6.4.9 for more detail.

Example:

C: A003 CREATE owatagusiam/
S: A003 OK CREATE completed
C: A004 CREATE owatagusiam/blurdybloop
S: A004 OK CREATE completed
C: A005 CREATE NonNormalized
S: * LIST () "/" "Normalized" ("OLDNAME" ("NonNormalized"))
S: A005 OK CREATE completed

(In the last example, imagine that "NonNormalized" is a non-NFC normalized Unicode mailbox name and that "Normalized" is its NFC normalized version.)

Note: The interpretation of this example depends on whether "/" was returned as the hierarchy separator from LIST. If "/" is the hierarchy separator, a new level of hierarchy named "owatagusiam" with a member called "blurdybloop" is created. Otherwise, two mailboxes at the same hierarchy level are created.

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