Un-favouriting folders in Soup Mail web app and the subsequent impact on their presence in Outlook

This article will look at answering some of the questions related to un-favouriting (toggle star next to folder to gray colour) folders in Soup Mail web app and the subsequent impact it has on the presence of such folders in Outlook.

I have un-favourited a folder in Soup Mail web app but it still doesn't get deleted from my mailbox (Outlook)

There are several reasons that folders may have been left behind in a user's mailbox after being un-favourited in Soup Mail on the web. Here is a summary of them, with notes about the appropriate action to take.

1. Soup Mail doesn't delete folders from the mailbox if it hasn't finished saving all emails yet: it may be that there are lots of emails in the folder, and Soup Mail hasn't finished saving them all. Sometimes it takes several sync cycles to save all the emails. Once this has been done, the folder will be removed from the mailbox.
2. Soup Mail doesn't delete folders from the mailbox if unprocessable items exist in the folder in the mailbox: sometimes meeting invites or other non-email type items are dragged into sync folders (including subfolders). Soup Mail doesn't save those item types (or process the contents of subfolders), and to ensure that we never delete anything unilaterally, Soup Mail instead ignores those items, but leaves the folder intact, in the user's mailbox. Once such items are removed from the folder in the mailbox, Soup Mail will remove the (empty) folder from the mailbox.
3. Soup Mail may not remove folders if duplicate folders are present in the mailbox: if there are multiple folders with the same name in a user's mailbox, Soup Mail may not process the contents of one of them, and therefore will not delete the folders. To resolve this, move all contents from any set of duplicates to one of the folders, and manually delete the (now empty) duplicate(s). Soup Mail will then process the contents and clean up as normal. Soup Mail does not create duplicate folders, so another process (possibly an issue syncing Outlook with the Exchange server) will have created the duplicate.
4. Soup Mail may not be able to fully process and clear up folders if they contain many 1000s of items: if a folder contains 1000s of items, sync may not be able to fully process the folder. In such cases, temporarily move contents to another folder such that there are less than 1000 items in the folder, and let Soup Mail sync/clear up the folder, then re-favourite the folder and move the contents back, in sets of 1000 or less items.
5. Soup Mail will not delete a folder if it has been deleted and no longer exists on Soup Mail: this is part of our policy not to delete anything from users' mailboxes if we don't know what it is or can't process it. In this case, Soup Mail doesn't know that it was once a folder but has been deleted from the Soup Mail team. If this has occurred, please manually delete the folder from Outlook.

Note: Check that Outlook (on your desktop computer) is showing the same folders as the ones on the OWA (Outlook web access). OWA is the 'canonical' reference for the contents of someone's mailbox, and shows exactly what Soup Mail sees when it performs sync operations. Sometimes issues with Outlook syncing with the Exchange server can cause issues and leave behind objects/items in Outlook that aren't in fact on the server.