It should update when you delete from elsewhere (in fact, that's the only way to use it as imap client.. more about that later). But it won't notice until it re-scans, which may be 10 minutes later, or you can just close and re-start the application.

What it does not do though is to detect that an email has been read. There's apparently a flag for this in the IMAP protocol, but the built-in email client ignores it. Worst of all, Nokia has decided that this is not something important enough to fix. It makes the client useless as an IMAP client.

There are other 3party email applications, I use claws-mail which works ok with IMAP servers and other IMAP clients. Check out www.claws-mail.org/maemo/.

claws-mail (or any 3party app) isn't integrated the same way as the N800 client, so if you want notification you still have to leave the built-in client configured. Obviously the stupid thing will _stay_ in notification mode (those 'two guys' in the left of the display) because of the bug described above. Unless you always delete messages after you have read them. And, finally, although claws-mail is good for reading I have problems with replying to messages, if the To: and Cc: lists are of any size there's no screen estate left to write in. Maybe there's a way to make room but not one obvious to me. Still, it's good as a reader so I keep using it.

EDIT: I forgot to answer the part about folders. No, the built-in app. won't read them. But the above-mentioned claws-mail will.