DISQUS

Le Big Mac · 1 year ago

Could you give us a description of precisely what this is doing to the gmail and mail interfaces? For example, are drafts now stored locally? Because why not store them on the server, where one can access them home and away?

Franklin · 1 year ago

With the settings above Drafts will be stored locally as you mention. You can create a /IMAP/Drafts and assign the mailbox to Drafts. After doing so Drafts will be stored on the Gmail servers.

This tip will create /IMAP/Trash and /IMAP/Sent lables in the Gmail interface and will map the 'extra' Trash and Sent folders to the default ones in the Mail.app interface.

DRQ · 1 year ago

Hi Franklin,

Great post, well explained and described. I just have one question for you.

I had emails in my apple mail inbox before doing this. Now the emails have disappeared from the inbox. Any new email comes into my apple mail inbox. Is there a way of getting the other emails back into my inbox?

Thank you.

Franklin · 1 year ago

are you sure you aren't using POP3 instead of IMAP?

g-man · 11 months ago

you can try importing your old POP mailboxes and see if the old messages are there (mine were). Use Apple Mail "Import" and go to your home Library/Mail folder and look for the subfolder with your old POP mail name and select it. Another dialog screen comes up and lets you check which boxes you want imported (inbox, sent, deleted, drafts, etc.). You can chose what you want. Apple Mail will then import these selected boxes under an "Import" box in Mail.

Dan · 1 year ago

What happened to the rest of my folders - all mail, starred etc. totally changed the way everything works.

Franklin · 1 year ago

Apple Mail.app will now only show the messages contained within Gmail's Inbox (not the All Messages box). Is this what you mean? Any message you 'flag' in Apple Mail with show up as 'starred' in Gmail. Perhaps if you tell me more about your setup, I could be of more assistance ...

dan · 1 year ago

Have you figured out a workable way to use Notes and/or Todos without rampant multiplication and weirdness?

Franklin · 1 year ago

Not yet, for your own sanity I recommend keeping Notes and Todos locally.

Joe Willett · 1 year ago

Excellent! I'm not using GMail but just a hosted POP/IMAP e-mail service through 1&1.com. The bit under "Assign IMAP Folders" really helped me out tonight when I took the plunge from POP to IMAP. That's not the most intuitive way to assign Sent and Trash folders. I kept looking for a drop-down box in the Preferences section of Mail.app for those two things. Thanks a ton!

Michael · 10 months ago

Others may deem this important... According to Google, this is not how it should be set up. When I followed the setting above, it deleted my gmail inbox (locally) and I had to re-download all 3700 messages. This may work for some, but it certainly didn't work for me.

According to Google...

Apple Mail
From the Mail menu, click Preferences > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviors

Drafts:
Store draft messages on the server > checked

Sent:
Store sent messages on the server > do NOT check

Junk:
Store junk messages on the server > checked
Delete junk messages when > Never

Trash:
Move deleted messages to the Trash mailbox > do NOT check
Store deleted messages on the server > do NOT check

Franklin · 10 months ago

I agree, Google's new advanced imap features have made this tip less relevant (I've stopped using it myself).

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-la...

Now I simply remove any IMAP prefix (before the changes described in the link this would have made a mess of folders in Mail.app) and then use Assign folders action for my Sent, Drafts, and Trash mailboxes.

Franklin · 9 months ago

you are correct - see changes above.

benboles · 10 months ago

Thanks for the clear instructions on how to set up IMAP in Mail. They are easy to understand and follow, unlike others I've seen.

Franklin · 9 months ago

Everyone,

I've updated this post significantly so beware that previous comments may no longer apply!

Cheers,

Franklin

Lee · 9 months ago

I am interested in doing this, sending my four other pop accounts through gmail as you suggest, and having just the one google account sent to desktop, but can i ask...
Can i then reply to emails from the correct address? IE: is a get a work email to say me@work.com and its sent to my desk via my google account, if i then reply to this work email, will it be sent from "me@work.com" or from "me@google.com" ? If you get my understanding..

As i dont want to reply to all emails from my personal google email address?

Thanks

Franklin · 9 months ago

YES, gmail will give you the option to send mail from those other addresses. In fact I believe the default is that when replying gmail will use the address that the email was sent to as the 'from' address. make sense? Personally, I'd be afraid of making a mistake and sending an email from the wrong address but that decision is up to you I suppose. Let me know how it works for you ...

.c · 6 months ago

any idea on how to NOT have mail.app sync gmails spam folder? I.e. I do not want to see any spam count in mail.app.

gene_sheerin · 4 months ago

To Do s

Not sure if you know this already ... mail/preferences/composing ... there is a way to force using either gmail or local to store the To Do s ... if you force it to "On My Mac" the Gmail copy may stay deleted ... I have not tried it ...

If you do nothing with that setting it defaults to the "Account of last used mailbox" ... which would certainly confuse me.

gene_sheerin · 4 months ago

You may know this already ... but since you asked a question and never mentioned the composing tab, I thought I'd throw this out ... sorry if it does not help.

To Do list

use mail/preferences/composing tab
set the Create Notes and To Do s to "On My Mac" (other choices are GMail or the default)

The default is to create To Do s on the "Account of last viewed mailbox" which would confuse me unless your To Dos and Notes are mailbox specific.

I expect if you choose "On My Mac", then empty and delete the GMail "Apple Mail To Do" folder it should stay deleted ... but I have not tried this ...

gene_sheerin · 4 months ago

Thanks for this post by the way ... I just set up my Gmail IMAP (previously I had it set up on a PC) ... My Apple Mail defaults were quite different from yours ... I considered each difference but just accepted the defaults and everything worked.

"enable storing Sent mail on the server" is now the default on a fresh install.

It's not clear to me what "use this mailbox for" does - it seems to change the folder indent level for some (e.g. Trash), and nothing at all for others (e.g. Junk E-mail) ... but my IMAP was previously (in fact still is) sync'd to Outlook on a PC. It also seemed to move some messages (drafts) without changing the default folder where drafts are created ... all a bit too X-files-like for me.