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You may lose archiving this way
Authored by: googoo on Apr 17, '08 11:56:47AM
One of the things I really like about Gmail is the ability to archive E-mail, and it looks like you will lose some of the archiving functionality with these settings (although there is a workaround). What you have to remember about Gmail IMAP is that it functions differently than standard IMAP. In Gmail, an E-mail message has labels, which translate to folders in Mail.app (or other IMAP clients). The real difference between Gmail and standard IMAP is that a message can have multiple labels. That means the same message will appear in multiple folders in Mail.app. When you delete a message in Mail.app, Gmail removes the label representing your current folder from that message. If the message still has other labels, it remains in those folders.

The [Gmail]/All Mail folder is special. All messages reside in it, except for messages in [Gmail]/Trash or [Gmail]/Spam. Deleting a message from [Gmail]/All Mail does nothing. It will show up again next time Mail.app syncs the folder with Gmail.

How do you delete a message? Move it into the [Gmail]/Trash folder. Messages deleted from within this folder are immediately deleted. Otherwise they will be deleted automatically in 30 days. (The [Gmail]/Spam folder functions similarly.)

The IMAP settings suggested by Gmail work well with this non-standard IMAP behavior. When you delete a message from your Inbox, it is still archived in [Gmail]/All Mail. That way, your Inbox remains clean and messages are archived by default. That works for me!

-Mark

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Gmail suggestion
Authored by: chris_on_hints on Apr 17, '08 11:53:21PM

if you follow these suggestions, you seem unable to delete anything (Mail in Leopard). Unchecking the "Move deleted messages to the Trash mailbox" item stopped me being able to delete things.

i guess this is because to actually delete an email, you need to add the 'Trash' label to it, by moving it to that folder.



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Gmail suggestion
Authored by: googoo on Apr 18, '08 06:48:49AM

That is correct. If you use these suggestions you delete something by moving it into the [Gmail]/Trash folder.

-Mark



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Gmail suggestion
Authored by: hodgjy on Apr 18, '08 09:19:40AM

Sorry about the confusion. I never permanently delete messages in Gmail (part of the attraction of Gmail), so I never mapped the Gmail Trash folder in Mail.app. You are right and it seems like you figured it out.



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You may lose archiving this way
Authored by: hodgjy on Apr 18, '08 09:14:07AM

You don't lose archiving. Every message that is ever sent or deleted remains in Gmail's "All Mail" folder. The duplicates in IMAP/Sent and IMAP/Trash are removed, but the originals remain in All Mail. You do lose the ability to drag a message from a folder to Gmail's Trash folder to permanently delete it from within Mail.app, but this doesn't affect me. I don't delete any messages, which is part of the allure of Gmail. YMMV.



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You may lose archiving this way
Authored by: kvdv on Apr 19, '08 12:11:15PM
Mark, There's something confusing about the things you're saying:
The [Gmail]/All Mail folder is special. All messages reside in it, except for messages in [Gmail]/Trash or [Gmail]/Spam. Deleting a message from [Gmail]/All Mail does nothing. It will show up again next time Mail.app syncs the folder with Gmail.
How do you delete a message? Move it into the [Gmail]/Trash folder. Messages deleted from within this folder are immediately deleted.
When you delete a message from your Inbox, it is still archived in [Gmail]/All Mail. That way, your Inbox remains clean and messages are archived by default. That works for me!

So, if i delete a message (using the delete key on my keyboard), the message goes to where? The Gmail trash? And it will be deleted after 30 days, right? But if i move it to the GmailTrash folder it will be deleted immediately? That's strange.
But...even stranger... you say that when i "delete a message from my Inbox, the Inbox remains clean while the message remains archived in GmailAll Mails". That's confusing, because you also wrote : "All messages reside in All Mail, except for messages in [Gmail]/Trash".
So, if i just deleted a message from the Inbox, that means it's going to the trash and it won't reside in All Mail? So then it's not archived after all?
-Kris

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You may lose archiving this way (not!)
Authored by: googoo on Apr 21, '08 10:51:09AM

Sorry my post was not clear. To answer Kris' questions, when you delete a message from Gmail using your delete key in Mail.app, the Gmail removes that label (folder) association from that message. For example, when you delete a message from your Inbox, it is removed from the Inbox, but it still appears in the other labels (folders) in which it previously resided. There are three exceptions: [Gmail]/All Mail, [Gmail]/Trash, and [Gmail]/Spam. All messages in your Gmail account that are NOT in [Gmail]/Trash or [Gmail]/Spam are also in [Gmail]/All Mail. When you delete a message from [Gmail]/All Mail, it reappears in [Gmail]/All Mail when Mail.app syncs with Gmail. When you delete a message from [Gmail]/Trash or [Gmail]/Spam, it is permanently deleted. Gmail automatically deletes messages that have been in [Gmail]/Trash and [Gmail]/Spam after 30 days. How do you remove a message from [Gmail]/All Mail? By moving it into [Gmail]/Trash or [Gmail]/Spam. (Of course, you can configure Mail.app to do just that when you delete a message, but you really would lose archiving that way.)

I misunderstood the configuration represented in the original post. Since that configuration sets up an alternate trash folder IMAP/Trash, it does not behave like [Gmail]/Trash. When Mail.app deletes the trashed messages inside that folder, they remain in [Gmail]/All Mail. Archiving is preserved!

Does that answer your questions?

-Mark



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