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Use a rule to ignore Gmail spam emails in Mail Apps
I use Mail.app to get my GMail via IMAP. The official recommendations for using GMail this way suggest that I shouldn't let Mail automatically move messages it detects as junk -- because GMail already does most of the legwork for you. I tend to agree, but this is quite frustrating in terms of my other accounts, as this is an application-wide setting.

However, there is a solution! By adding a simple mail rule, you can continue to set "Move it to the junk mailbox" in Mail's preferences, but have Mail ignore messages in GMail that it thinks are spam. First, make sure that, in Mail's preferences on the Junk Mail tab, Filter junk mail before applying my rules is unticked. Without this, the rule won't be applied. Now, add a new rule that says:

If all of the following conditions are met:
  • Message is Junk Mail
  • Account: GMail
Perform the following actions:
  • Stop evaluating rules
And there you go! You can have a perfectly valid Junk folder, but Mail won't attempt to fill it up.
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Use a rule to ignore Gmail spam emails in Mail | 4 comments | Create New Account
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Use a rule to ignore Gmail spam emails in Mail
Authored by: skribble on Jun 12, '08 08:15:02AM

Why not just select Googles Spam mail box and then "Mailbox -> Use This Mailbox For... -> Junk" ? That way all the GMail Spam is already Junk and any thing that get through GMail's filters get Junked there as well?

The added bonus is that this will move the Gmail Spam folder from the long list of mailboxes under "GMAIL" to a special "gmail" folder under Junk?



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Use a rule to ignore Gmail spam emails in Mail
Authored by: fracai on Jun 12, '08 08:22:07AM

At least one problem with this that I've run into is the case of false positives. If Mail thinks a message is junk, it marks it as spam and moves the message. If it wasn't really spam and you unmark it, I've found that the Inbox and All Mail folders get out of sync for that message. I think I recall that the message will show up in your Inbox but not in All Mail.

I did something similar, where I altered the Junk Filter to only apply to my non-Gmail account. This works because I only use Mail.app with my Gmail account and my one non-Gmail account. The method detailed in the hint probably scales better towards multiple non-Gmail accounts.

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Use a rule to ignore Gmail spam emails in Mail
Authored by: ikioi on Jun 12, '08 10:46:28AM
Why not just select Googles Spam mail box and then "Mailbox -> Use This Mailbox For... -> Junk" ?

If you use Google's Spam folder, then you also need to use their Trash folder, because if you use their Spam folder without using their Trash folder, then deleting a message in the spam folder in your mail client tells Google that that message is not spam, and that messages like it should not be filtered as spam in the future for you or for others. On the other hand, if you do use Google's Trash folder, then you get other bizarre and counterintuitive consequences, like the fact that deleting a message from one folder causes it to disappear from every folder.

The best way I've found to use Mail.app with GMail is to use GMail's Sent and Drafts folders and custom "IMAP-Spam" and "IMAP-Trash" tags for my Spam and Trash folders. Then Mail.app's "Delete" button essentially becomes Google's "Archive" button, and if you ever want to really delete a message (from all folders including All Mail), then you can drag that message to Google's Trash folder.



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Use a rule to ignore Gmail spam emails in Mail
Authored by: samthor on Jun 12, '08 04:57:05PM

It doesn't actually matter what folder you select, but of course it makes the most sense to choose GMail's spam folder. The idea being that messages Mail thinks are junk will never actually leave the inbox. This way, you're relying entirely on GMail to process what is junk and what is not.



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