I use dovecot 1.2.16 and I use . (dot) as the hierarchy separator. My user structure is like so: username/Maildir/.Folder1 username/Maildir/.Folder1.Subfolder The Inbox is right under: username/Maildir/cur & username/Maildir/new My namespace definition for the regular mail is: namespace private { separator = . prefix inbox = yes } In a separate directory, nfs mounted, I also hold full daily backups of each users entire Maildir. It has the following structure: /archive/username/.14.07.2011/.Folder1 /archive/username/.14.07.2011/.Folder1.Subfolder /archive/username/.15.07.2011/.Folder1 /archive/username/.15.07.2011/.Folder1.Subfolder What I'm trying to do is to make the Backups available to each user in their IMAP. I was thinking of symlinking like this: username/Maildir/Backups --> /archive/username/ Would that work ? What should my namespace look like for this situation ? Is there a better way to do this ?