"Apple Mail To Do" and IMAP

Question

I have an IMAP email account (with fastmail) that I use with Apple Mail (Version 3.5 (929.4/929.2)), and Mail has been creating (and recreating) an 'Apple Mail To Do' folder in my folder list.
http://problems.physci.sent.com/imapscreenshot
http://problems.physci.sent.com/mailscreenshot.png
I deleted the folder from my IMAP web-account, and when I quit and reopen Mail, all is well at both Mail.app and my IMAP web-account. No folders/subfolders in IMAP.
But that is only until the next time I reopen Mail. The next time I reopen Mail, Mail recreates a new copy of the "Apple Mail To Do" folder, but now nested within two "Inbox" folders (on my IMAP account). In attempt to solve this, I've tried various settings and changes and in so doing, I've tried to delete the folder(s), but all attempts were to no avail. Each time Mail reopens, the "Apple Mail To Do" keeps getting created and nested inside two, three, four, five, six, and more "Inbox" folders.
http://problems.physci.sent.com/imapscreenshot
Changing the preference settings in Mail to store Notes and To Do's "on my mac" has no influence on these happenings. My IMAP Path Prefix preferences is set to: INBOX. I'm afraid to change it to anything else because the last time I did that, Mail froze up my Inbox, automatically moved emails to unintended folders, and gave me an annoying pop-up every single time I opened Mail, asking me if I wanted to change my IMAP path preferences.
I also noticed that when an Apple Mail To Do is created, I lose the unread mail count of my Inbox.
http://problems.physci.sent.com/InboxUnreadCount
But my dock unread count is accurate.
http://problems.physci.sent.com/DockUnreadCount
I would love to use Apple Mail To Do, and I think for its integrated functionality (to be able to select a sentence in a particular email and make a To Do), it requires a folder in my IMAP email account. I don't know why it creates nested folders, but more importantly I'm just not sure how to go about resolving this. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

In case someone else finds themselves in the same spot as I was, a fastmail pro (Rob) found a solution for this that works quite well. It's a long winded one, and I unfortunately don't quite have the time to go into all the details here, but it involves leaving the IMAP path prefix as "blank", and using alternate namespace IMAP ports. Rob has this detailed out in his blog at:
http://blog.fastmail.fm/2008/08/11/alternate-namespace-imap-port-may-help-outloo k-ol-express-apple-mail-and-bis-users/
and
http://blog.fastmail.fm/2008/08/28/proxy-servers-for-alternate-imap-port-may-be- useful-for-blackberry-bis-users/
For those that are not familiar with fastmail, imho, it is the way to go for professional imap emails. Lightning fast, 'customizable-galore', extremely reliable, and with an excellent support team. But more importantly they are very mac friendly, and works like awesome with Mac OS X Mail. For example, we have business email accounts hosted at fastmail, and I can share a designated "folder" of emails with 2 (or more) business partners, so much so that if one of us clicks an email, it comes up as being 'read' on all of our accounts, and with many many more functions. Really cool. Works well with family accounts (1, 2 or more users), and is simply customizable like crazy.
http://www.fastmail.fm/
They also have an awesome beta web-interface with heavy keyboard shortcuts, and they keep enhancing on it, increasing capability, efficiency and functions.
Beta: http://www.fastmail.fm/beta
Wow, I feel like a fastmail sales rep, heh?
Anyway just wanted to post an update, that's all. Didn't mean to go on a tangent there.