UPDATE 11/18: inaequitas reminds us that in order to star messages on your iPhone, simply move the message the starred items directory.
UPDATE 10/26: RayL re-confirms the advantage of mapping your client-side Sent, Drafts, & Trash with server-side Gmail labels - no duplicate labels created in Gmail by your email client(s). Experiment with Gmail IMAP setup; if necessary reference the Google Group thread below.
UPDATE 10/25: If you start seeing duplicates, check this Google Group thread. Google may have made updates to Gmail IMAP access. YMMV.
The latest news on the street is that Google is slowly rolling out a much anticipated feature - IMAP support. If you point your browser to Gmail Help documentation outlining the steps necessary to get your mail clients setup for IMAP, you’ll soon realize the the directions are the bare minimum. It is recommended that you follow the directions from start to finish, but the actual configuration does not stop there.
Take a look at both IMAP support pages for Apple Mail and the iPhone. Both share similar steps including:
- Incoming Server: imap.gmail.com
- Outgoing Server: smtp.gmail.com
- Authentication: email@gmail.com + email password
- ‘Use secure Socket Layer (SSL)’
- Ports: 587 Outgoing, 993 Incoming
There is nothing wrong with leaving your email clients as-is exactly as the Gmail Help documents instruct. Unfortunately, you will start to see a little inconsistency between your email clients and your Gmail web interface.
Diligent Gmail "labelers" will soon discover that those handy "tags" that they had been assigning to emails are now recognized as Folders in their email client(s). Your email clients will sync this Folders without a problem. In order to ensure your Trashed, Sent, Drafts, and Junk mail messages are sorted properly between your iPhone, Apple Mail, and Gmail’s webmail interface, you will need to add a few more steps to the initial setup instructions offered by Google.
Properly sort Drafts, Deleted, and Sent mail on the iPhone
Assuming that you have followed the iPhone IMAP setup instructions, it is now time to properly configure your mobile Mail client so that Sent Mail, Deleted Mail, Drafts, and Junk are reflected properly after syncing back between the webmail client and any other desktop clients you may have.
- Open ‘Settings’ > ‘Mail’ > [Your Gmail IMAP account] > ‘Advanced’
- Select ‘Drafts Mailbox’ > ‘On the Server’ > ‘[Gmail] Drafts’. Return to the ‘Advanced’ view.
- Select ‘Sent Mailbox’ > ‘On the Server’ > ‘[Gmail] Sent Mail’. Return to the ‘Advanced’ view.
- Select ‘Deleted Mailbox’ > ‘On the Server’ > ‘[Gmail] Trash’. Return to the ‘Advanced’ view.
Any emails sent from your iPhone will appear in Gmail’s ‘Sent’ view, any saved drafts saved on your iPhone will appear in Gmail’s ‘Drafts’ view, and any deleted messages will be reflected in Gmail’s ‘Trash’ view.
Properly sort Drafts, Deleted, and Sent mail in Apple Mail
Similar steps must be taken to ensure that any emails sent, saved as drafts, or deleted are properly identified by Gmail’s servers. After completing the IMAP setup steps for Apple Mail, instructing Mail is a few simple clicks away. Once your Gmail IMAP account is added to Mail, you’ll notice your [Gmail account] in the left sidebar.
- Highlight ‘[Gmail] Sent Mail’ in the sidebar and select ‘Mailbox’ (menu bar) > ‘Use This Mailbox For’ > ‘Sent’.
- Highlight ‘[Gmail] Drafts’ in the sidebar and select ‘Mailbox’ (menu bar) > ‘Use This Mailbox For’ > ‘Drafts’
- Highlight ‘[Gmail] Trash’ in the sidebar and select ‘Mailbox’ (menu bar) > ‘Use This Mailbox For’ > ‘Trash’
- Highlight ‘[Gmail] Spam’ in the sidebar and select ‘Mailbox’ (menu bar) > ‘Use This Mailbox For’ > ‘Junk’
Once properly configured, managing email from Apple Mail or the iPhone will be no different from managing emails within the Gmail web client - sent, drafts, trash, and junk properly sorted between your various email clients and web interface. [Digg this]
IMAP Gmail gems for Apple Mail & iPhone
I am certain that Gmail’s IMAP documentation is far from complete. The following will serve as a running list of details I have noticed - found by sharp readers or myself - not yet included in the Help pages.
- Flagging messages in Apple Mail (CMD+SHIFT+L) is the same as adding a Star to a message in Gmail. Try it out for yourself. Flag a message in Mail and check your Gmail account online. The same message magically appears as ‘Starred’.
- In order to "label" messages multiple times from within Apple Mail or the iPhone, you must copy the message(s) to each respective ‘Folder’ which corresponds with your Gmail Label. I think it’s time to move back to the idea of Folders as opposed to Labels.
- If you wish to Archive mail from your iPhone, simply move the message to ‘[Gmail] All Mail’.
- gec added this comment: "when you ‘delete’ something from a folder other than trash, the message will effectively be archived, and not deleted. that means, the label corresponding to the folder you are deleting it from will be removed. if however you *move* it to Trash you will remove all labels assigned to it. bad for filter rules."
- Jonathan added this tip: "if you’d like to use a custom “from” address when sending from iPhone (not your Gmail address) — just pop it in the Email Address field (not the authentication fields) and it will use that address instead of your Gmail."
- Want to send mail as a different email address on a case-by-case basis with Apple Mail? Follow the directions outlined in this comment. YMMV
- MSK added: "if you want to get rid of that extra [Gmail] hierarchy. Go in to your advanced email settings and for “IMAP Path Prefix” type [Gmail] now go back and reassign your Sent, Deleted, and Draft mail boxes, if needed."
Similar rules apply for any other IMAP desktop or mobile client that you might be using. In order to prevent unnecessary labels from being created during synchronization, make sure that your Sent, Drafts, Junk, and Trash Mailboxes are configured properly.
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382 Comments
Awesome. Thanks for this. I would never have known how to map those folders.
You also have to do this:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77695&topic=12762
Hi can you do the same for Outlook?
THANK YOU! I was really pumped about IMAP with Gmail because using Apple Mail with it is kind of inconsistent to start and I’m buying an iPhone in a couple weeks. After enabling it through Mail, I was kind of disappointed. This fixes everything!
Phew. Thanks SO much for this. It would have taken me a while to figure it out.
Cheers,
James.
Any idea why i would have the option to enable it… have it enabled… and still it not work when everything entered correctly?
Cool. Thanks for the tips!
Another great step from Google.
> I think it’s time to move back to the idea of Folders as opposed to Labels.
Thanks for the hint! That comment however… So with folders you have to have multiple copies while Google allows multiple tags to one single instance of a message? It’s clear to me then that tags are a far superior tool, and that it should be mail clients the one adopting them instead of Google dropping tags.
This is goodnews for all of us who use Gmail thanks for the post it helps explain the process a bit easier for those of us who are not that tech savy
I do not see any IMAP settings in my Gmail account… only POP? Is this something that Google has not rolled out yet?
How do you get to join the fun? I don’t get the imap options on Gmail yet.
Help! I need this soooo bad! Hook a brother up! - dave
Thank you! This was the other half of the puzzle after Google gave us IMAP. Now my MBP and iPhone are completely in sync with Gmai.
I spent last night doing this when I first found out. One thing I realized, though, is that most people will probably want to set their trash folders to the “all mail” folder in Gmail, since this will send messages to the archive, rather than to the trash, where they’ll be deleted.
Nice. People have been ranting about this most of today.
Genius! Gonna check it out right now.
The comment was only made because I have not figured out a way to assign multiple labels to an email from the iPhone. Copying the message to different folders on the device seems like the only option right now.
Or keep the Trash set to [Gmail] Trash and sending all messages to All Mail when you want to archive them in Gmail.
note that when you ‘delete’ something from a folder other than trash, the message will effectively be archived, and not deleted. that means, the label corresponding to the folder you are deleting it from will be removed. if however you *move* it to Trash you will remove all labels assigned to it. bad for filter rules.
Great nugget of info gec, thanks. Added it to the other tips list above in the post.
Thanks Derek, this is extremely helpful. Keep up the good work!
Thanks Derek, this really helped with my first IMAP experience. I think this is going to be great!
I just wanted to add, if you’d like to use a custom “from” address when sending from iPhone (not your Gmail address) — just pop it in the Email Address field (not the authentication fields) and it will use that address instead of your Gmail.
Good tip about using a different From: address Jonathan. I’ll add that to the post tips above.
Small problem: I connected my “Drafts” to the “Drafts” on the gmail-server. Now Every time I compose a mail the drafts are auto-saved to “All Mail” on the gmail-server resulting in multiple copies of my mail in “All Mail”. Very annoying.
Good call on the From address, but is there a way to change the From for just one outgoing message. I have multiple accounts linked with my Gmail and sometimes I need to send a message as one of them.
No way to do this on the iPhone, but in Apple Mail you can do the following:
1. Open Apple Mail Preferences
2. Select your Gmail IMAP account in the left sidebar
3. On the right side in the ‘Email Address’ field, you’ll see your current Gmail account address. Add a comma followed by your other email addresses that you wish to send mail as.
4. When composing a new email, you should see a drop down menu underneath the Subject line allowing you to select what account the email appears to have been sent from.
Hope that helps to answer your question Ronald.
Yeah, that answers it perfectly. However, while the UI does work, the messages are still being sent as the first address. That may be because I’m sending the email to myself or *cough* there is a bug in Leopard Mail *cough*. Any ideas?
Well, I dug a little deeper and it appears no matter what I set the From field, it’s always sent from my default address. It appears Gmail is disregarding the From field when sending and replacing it with the default send address on the Accounts options page.
Is it possible to change a POP gmail account in Apple Mail to an IMAP account or do you have to crreate a new account?
To get smtp.gmail.com to accept a different from address it has to be registered and verified by gmail.
Have you been running the development version of Leopard? If not, how did you get your copy so early?!
About changing the From address, I just tested it a few times. One test was from my @5thirtyone.com Gmail account but with the from being a different address. Hotmail email header reads " From: [@5thirtyone.com address] on behalf of [other email address]". I guess Google may have changed things up a little bit?
I’m not sure if this has always been the case. I recall having sent mail as a different address via POP using the same method of adding additional aliases to the Email Address field.
I couldn’t wait for my preorder so I torrented the Gold Master. My copy should be here Friday, so I will have an actual copy of the disc.
Anyway, I guess I’ll have to mess around with Gmail’s account settings. I’ll let you know if I figure it out.
I can’t find where to enable IMAP in my gmail account. The help says to go to the tab “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” then enable. My tab however just says “Forwarding and POP” and has no option for enabling IMAP. Is there something I’m missing?
As someone who’s accustomed to never deleting email (aside from spam) from my GMail account, I think it’s better (for me) to map the deleted messages to the Trash folder ON the iPhone. That way, whenever you delete something from the iPhone mail client, it simply goes to the archives in GMail, rather than to trash. The other suggestions, however, are spot on for me. Thanks!
No worries. Google has not yet deployed the feature to its entire user base.
A little more investigation confirms my findings; Gmail will only use your default account’s address for sending mail. So that whole From this is pointless, Gmail overwrites it.
All, here is a tip if you want to get rid of that extra [Gmail] hierarchy. Go in to your advanced email settigns and for “IMAP Path Prefix” type [Gmail] now go back and reassign your Sent, Deleted, and Draft mail boxes, if needed.
Another great thing about IMAP for gMail is that we can use our email client to sort emails by size, which gMail cannot do. This lets us get rid of huge emails that we don’t want hitting our quota or that we want to archive locally. gMail gives us a lot of space, but it’s not unlimited.
Just a note about #1 for the iPhone and #3 for Apple Mail: according to Google’s documentation ( http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=78892 ), you should not assign a “Sent” folder in the clients if you are sending your mail through Gmail’s SMTP server. Gmail’s SMTP automatically saves a copy of the sent message in your Sent folder, so if your client is set to save sent messages too, you will end up with two copies of your sent message.
The above referenced page also suggests that you not set a Trash folder. Instead of mapping a Trash folder and having the messages sent there when you “delete” them, if you simply delete the messages from the inbox with your IMAP client, Gmail removes any labels the message may have and archives them to All Mail (which is how I and probably many others would like it to behave). If you map a Trash folder, deleting that message will send it to the Trash (messages there for 30 days are automatically deleted by Gmail). With 4GB+ of storage space now, there really is no reason to permanently delete messages when you can just archive them.
Duplicates messages do not show up in your Gmail account. By reassigning the mailboxes correctly, you eliminate having to see multiple ‘Sent’ folders in your desktop Mail client.
I am sure I did everything right, but I seem to be having a problem with the Sent mail not being in my sent folders…and I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that I am using different outgoing settings?
I am using my work email as the outgoing settings on the iPhone and Mail.app…long story short I use gmail to filter out the TONS of spam I get in my work email.
Do you think that matters and that’s why my sent mail isn’t ending up in my sent folders in Mail, gmail and iPhone?
You do need to use Gmail SMTP settings in order for Sent Mail to show in Gmails sent view.
Wait, no!…I just deleted my accounts and started over from scratch….incoming gmails server, outgoing my work server….set the folders up like you said…and sent mails are now in my sent folders in gmail, Mail.app and iPhone!…and on the receiving end it is as if I am using my work email. It looks like it was sent from there, and reply goes to my work address.
I have been using work email forwarded to gmail forwarded to my domain (which supports IMAP) for a while now and it always worked using this setup…I was just scared that gmail IMAP was messing it up.
But it all works!
So back to the matter at hand….after setting up the folders (Sent, Drafts, Deleted, etc) on the iPhone and Mail.app, I still have a “Deleted Messages” and “Sent Messages” folder. I am talking about FOLDERS, not the “Sent” and “Trash” boxes.
They aren’t doing anything. Can I delete them?
Thanks so much for all your help!
I assure you that it works. That article was from 2005 and I have been doing it the way I described for about 5 months now.
Also, this was in the same article…
I’m aware of that. I’m looking to change my From address on a per message basis in Mail, which apparently can’t be done.
Oh I see, sorry.
The only way I know you can do that is if you have two accounts set up in Mail. Then you are able to select which account you want to send from on a per message basis.
There are a lot of great tips here, and thanks to everyone who has contributed. My question is if there is any way to utilize folders already set-up in Apple mail with the Gmail POP access. I’ve been using the POP access to gmail and I have my e-mails organized very neatly, and I would like to somehow use this existing organization without having to go through all of my messages and recreate it for the new account set-up with IMAP. Is there any way to transfer these folders, and subsequently have them show up as folders on my iphone and labels in gmail?
Thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide with this.
Thanks Derek, worked like a charm!
Thanks !!
How can we get gmail like conversations in Apple mail ?
I am aware of the basic way where you select inbox and sent folders and enable threading in view menu. But that displays all sent some of which are not part of a conversation but just one off emails that you sent to someone
Hooray for Google! And here I was about to make the leap to Yahoo mail or some paid IMAP service for synced up mail between all my machines. Great tutorial - will set up now…
The closest thing is enabling threaded view in Apple Mail. But like you have already pointed out, viewing emails this way is not entirely accurate. All that Mail is doing is matching emails that share the same Subject line. True threaded email conversations is what makes Gmail’s web interface so great. If you want to retain the accurate message threading, you’ll need to stick with the webmail interface.
Great post! Thanks… while I’m still confused about the problem of mapping Apple Mail folders to Gmail, I’m more concerned about the 13,000! messages that appeared in Apple Mail inbox after switching over to IMAP. I usually keep the inbox mostly empty.
Where can I move these “read” message to ensure they’re not permanently deleted?
Should I select all and move to Gmail/All Mail folder? Or will “delete” in Apple Mail do the same thing?
You can move the messages to [Gmail] All Mail to "archive" them.
If you’re like me and you’re used to always archiving any email when you’re done with it instead of trashing it, you can assign GMail’s All Mail as your trash folder instead. That way when you hit the little trash icon in the iPhone mail app, it’ll archive your email instead of sending it to the Trash. This is better than simply using the default Trash behavior because you don’t have extra copies of your message hanging out in a local trash can.
i’m having this same problem — and now things are going haywire. i have duplicates of all of my flagged messages, which apple mail is seeing as quadruplicates (!)
i can’t figure out which messages i can delete, and what needs to stay, but the clutter is making me long for days of POP again, which can’t be right. thoughts?
Just curious is anyone who is having issues with duplicates in their All Mail or Drafts still has POP access enabled?
Hi,
I inadvertently set up imap path prefix to [gmail] on my iphone. it resulted in the lost of syncing with gmail servers…. then I setup again the path prefix to the default /, but now I have duplicate folders in my iphone mailboxes and I don’t know how to erase them, or reset the mail app, because I think those duplicate folders come from the cache…
I need some help.
Thanks
pop is disabled. also. i just tried an experiment: i wrote an email with drafts set to save on the server, and left time for it to auto save, and the duplicate went to my allmail box. _the same thing_ happens when i set it to not save on the server. now i’m freaked out.
I’m beginning to think that these duplicate message issues dealing with drafts are Gmail IMAP bugs. It may be worth investing a little time trying to contact Gmail support about the issue. I’ve tested on two different Gmail IMAP accounts saving emails as drafts with Apple Mail and noticed only one copy reflected online for ‘Drafts’.
* Apple Mail preferences > Store draft messages on server is enabled.
* Both accounts tested are Google Hosted Gmail accounts (unsure if this would result in different results than what you are seeing).
Any folders associated with a given email account will be removed if the entire account is removed from Settings > Mail > [Account name]. Select ‘Delete Account’. Just to be safe you can restart your iPhone before adding the account back in.
i think you may be right. not only drafts are duplicating, but other stuff, too, which may or may not be a result of my setting and resetting the sent/drafts/trash from sync and back again.
as it happens, i think i’ve finally found what works for me: drafts on server is disabled (no more duplicates!), sent on server is enabled (no more duplicates!), and trash on server is disabled, which allows me to delete from apple mail and iphone, but archive the message in gmail.
phew.
Is anyone else noticing how bloody f-ing long it takes to download all your mail in Apple Mail? Maybe this is a one-time thing, who knows. Apple Mail recognizes all of the headers/subject lines and displays them in the program, but has to individually retrieve the actual message off the server.
I have set up my IMAP account for about 20 minutes now, and it is currently “caching 172 of 1287″ in just my Sent Mail folder. That’s what it says in my ‘Activity Viewer,’ anyways. I have so many folders, and so much mail! Ahh! I guess it seems logical, as it has about 1GB of mail to download. Is anyone else noticing this?
Also, is my account now only linked to the server? With POP, my mail was stored on my computer, making browsing seemingly much quicker.
I have been longing for IMAP for so long … and now, like Matt, I’m wondering if I should switch back :/
The initial setup will take quite some time to download all of your messages. I believe it’s a one time deal because my setup took awhile but now loads much faster.
Not sure I understand? If you are using IMAP you are now communicating directly with Gmail servers. Mail is still stored on your computer, but now when changes are made through Mail they are made globally - including Gmail and any other clients you may have.
When I use the [Gmail] hierarchy “IMAP Path Prefix” fix the label folder aren’t accessible, anyone know how to use them without seeing the hierarchy?
Neeeeever mind. I was commenting when the majority of my mail had not yet downloaded and it took forever to load each individual message because it had to be retrieved from the server. Still, an hour later, it’s about halfway. And I think those are just my ’sent’ messages.
Also, before dicking around and getting duplicates everywhere, I’ve made sure to disable all of the sent, drafts, and trash syncing to the server. But, now my question is, what does that mean? Will the changes I make in my mail client not be reflected in the web version of Gmail?
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-POP-and-Forwarding/msg/34ad1395f673e27d
I am surprised to hear that having Apple Mail settings sync with server preference option would cause problems? I guess with or without the option enabled, your experience may vary? I’m going to add the Google Groups link to the post above for those that are experiencing duplicate messages.
The instructions about how to use Gmail IMAP are quite good (thank you!) but I’m having difficulty understanding how to convert my existing POP organization scheme in Mail.app.
I have made about 70 folders nested under five main categories and have rules that move Gmail POP messages into them as they’re received. If I create labels that match these existing folder names, will Gmail IMAP use the ones already created or will it duplicate/recreate them?
Anytime I get an email sent to me, the email ends up in my sent mail, my inbox and my all mail. I realize that inbox and all mail are the same email. But the one in the Sent mail is a duplicate. Besides, why the hell would it be put in sent mail when I receive it?
Ugh!
derek, thanks for posting the tips, they helped a lot.
my question: how to setup my apple mail and iphone mail settings so that when i delete a message in inbox (either mail.app or iphone mail) it goes to trash in gmail server? i don’t want the message i delete to go archive.
thanks in advance.
Yes! The Information in the Google Groups Link did the trick! Everything works as expected now.
An idea for the people having their Gmail-address showing up instead of some other address they would like to use: In Gmail you can verify that you are the owner of alternate mail-addresses. I did this and my mail shows up as being sent from other addresses, even if I send them from Apple Mail.
Hi this page was very helpful, however a few clarifications.
1. The first time you set up gmail imap Apple mail by default downloads all your gmail to your local hardisk. Now for some this may be ok but for those of us with large accounts this could take ages.
If you set ‘Don’t keep copies of any messages’ under advanced settings in you mail app then the sync with gmail happens in seconds and all your mail is not downloaded to your local machine. This is default behavior for instance with Thunderbird and your local mail directory will be a few hundred kb rather than 800-1200mb.
2. If you put your IMAP path prefix in mail app as suggested you will lose your label folders.
3. Mapping your sent mail, junk mail, trash and draft is the way to go for total consistency across gmail, Apple mail app and other mail clients you are using. If you don’t do this you will get new folders in gmail under the label ‘imap/trash’ etc
Hope that helps.
From my understanding the folders would need their corresponding labels re-created, and their respective filters setup through Gmail.
File a bug with Gmail Support. Remember, this is a new feature.
Follow the tutorial and map your iPhone Trash to [Gmail] Trash.
That is the main reason why the tutorial extending Gmail’s Help Documents to map client-side folders with their respective server-side labels. I couldn’t stand the extra labels being created!
Switched over to IMAP this week in order to sync the account better with my iPhone.
Everything is working fine, except that when I close and reopen Mail I lose all of the reply arrows that show what messages I have replied to. I do not lose the “forwarded” arrows, just the “replied” ones. I can replicate the problem by rebuilding the mailbox while Mail is open
– it just strips the arrows away.
I rebuild the Mail.app database, removed gmail from my accounts list, restarted the computer; I’ve done everything that I could on the local end and am fairly sure that it’s not a Mail.app bug. It seems to be something in the sync with the gmail server. Is anybody else having this problem? If I can’t fix it I’ll have to go back to POP — I just can’t afford not to know what messages I’ve replied to.
Derek,
Thanks for your response to my inquiry regarding orphan Gmail folders that I inadvertently created in my iphone mailboxes by playing with the imap path prefix in the advanced mail settings in my iphone,.. but it did not answer my problem. After doing a lot of google searching, I found out that these additional mailboxes were also created on my gmail server, and the only way to erase them is to go in your google gmail account and look at the labels. I found out that all my orphaned gmail boxes were actually created as labels on my gmail account at google. I just had to edit my labels and remove the unwanted labels, and once the iphone synced with the gmail server, they were gone in my iphone mailboxes…Et voilà,.. problem solved…
Thanks for the great post anyway and for supporting breast cancer awareness!
Matt,
I am finding I’m having the same problem as well.
I can suggest maybe … using threaded view? But, then again — that only tells you which emails are with the same subject line and not everyone follows that.
… grumble … are we crawling back to POP?
Hello there!
Excellent article!
I wonder however how can I archive some mail locally on my iphone using gmails IMAP.
After all, sometimes we are somewhere without an Internet connection and it would be good to read some email.
Cheers,
Francis
Francis, I believe you misunderstand what IMAP is. Read through the article on Wikipedia for more info. Even without a data connection, you will still be able to read email (latest download of emails). IMAP allows for changes to be synced between email clients.
Multiple Email Accounts & Sent Folder:
When I sent a couple of emails to myself from my non-gmail account to make sure messages were landing in the right places I discovered a copy of the message was appearing in my gmail-sent folder. I realized a while back I had enabled my gmail account to be able to send messages as other addresses (this option is in gmail Settings > Accounts > Send mail as) When I deleted all the other addresses and tried again - problem fixed, emails from myself were no longer landing in my Sent box, just my Inbox. (Perhaps this is what is happen with GPZBC)
This is great. I’m still waiting on my account to support IMAP but I can’t wait! Thanks again.
Am I the only one who can’t assign “[Gmail] Spam” as the junk mail folder for gmail using the “use this mailbox for junk?”
Make sure that Junk Mail filtering enabled is enabled under Mail Preferences.
Cool, It was enabled, but I had “leave in my inbox” checked.
Thanks!
OK, so I set up my iPhone for IMAP Gmail access as recommended. My “Email address” is not my gmail address, but it’s the same address I have GMail set up to send from. Everything basically works, except that mail I send from my iPhone doesn’t end up anywhere on GMail, not in the sent mail or anywhere else. It gets sent, but I don’t get a record of it anywhere. Any ideas?
THANKYOU SO MUCH!!! I was looking for these settings, I love you!
regarding the “replied” status being stripped away: looks like it’s one feature of IMAP gmail does not currently support. personally, knowing which e-mails i’ve replied is a *big* enough feature to make me consider sticking with pop!
see below, taken from https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=78761&topic=12762:
Does Gmail support all IMAP features?
Gmail IMAP is a fairly complete implementation of IMAP, but the following features are currently unsupported:
* \Answered and \Recent flags on messages.
* Folder subscriptions. All folders are always in the ‘Subscribed’ list.
* Substring search. All searches are assumed to be words.
* Searching arbitrary headers. Only some headers are available for searches: From/CC/BCC/To/Subject.
* There is no SIEVE interface to Gmail filters.
* Only plain-text LOGIN over SSL tunneled connections are supported.
People who haven’t gotten IMAP-Access in their preferences yet: try logging out and then logging back in to your Gmail account.
Is it normal for the iPhone to take years to download messages from the server once imap has been enabled?
Adding [Gmail]/ to your labels seems to work around this - i.e. rename your ‘Work’ label to ‘[Gmail]/Work’, and the folder is visible in Mail. Not an ideal solution though.
Trevor, it took forever and a day to do it on my computer with a DSL connection, so I would assume it is the same on the iPhone, especially if you’ve had your Gmail account for a while and have a lot to download. I guess it would be advisable to hop onto a WiFi network as opposed to downloading using data?
=======
Also … I’m very disappointed in the lack of “reply” flags. I saw the Gmail support link and I still am deeply annoyed by it and am even considering switching back! For you email-philes, do you think this can be enabled in the future, or is it an inherent flaw of Gmail’s IMAP?
seriously! replied flags should be the first thing that had support. i’m confounded as to why it was so difficult that gmail wouldn’t implement it.
and yet, the “forward” flags do persist–who cares more about forwarding than replying?!
Uh-oh, something else …
Last night, I wrote an e-mail with a .jpg attachment and saved it as a draft. I disabled the “save draft on server” function (or whatever it is that duplicates your drafts everywhere) and it saved itself nicely in my local ‘Drafts’ folder in Apple Mail.
When I woke up this morning, I went to send the e-mail I’d saved. I went to double-click on it, but lo and behold, nothing was in it. It ‘previewed’ my message (i.e. when you highlight the message and the contents appear below) but in order to send it, I had to actually open it. All of my recipients, reply-to information, and subject line were there, along with my e-mail signature, but all of the text and the .jpg attachment were gone.
Any ideas?
why disable “save draft on server”?
i have it turned on, and mapped gmail’s draft folder as apple mail’s draft folder (for my gmail account) and everything seems fine.
just now i did a little test, composing a new e-mail, attaching a file, saving it as a draft, then quitting apple mail. i logged into gmail (web) and confirmed that the e-mail (along with the attachment! nifty) was in my drafts folder, then re-launched apple mail and confirmed that it was still there.
but that was somewhat different than what you did.
Andrew,
I was having issues with duplicate drafts, and that began to be too much of a pain … so upon the recommendation of other users, I disabled the saving on the server. Also, I think when I turned on “save draft on server” and assigned it to my Apple Mail draft folder, the folder would go right back to being under Gmail/Drafts if I quit and restarted the program.
Did you experience duplicates when you enabled “save draft on server” ?
I tried to send sms messages from my phone, and recieve the replies, all on my computer.
I went to (in gmail) settings, then accounts.
i clicked add account, and since a cingular phone number can be sms’ed at #PHONE#@cingularme.com, i used that as the email address to verify to send emails as.
I got the message soon on my phone, and put the verification number online, so now i can send messages from it.
I used the trick that i am quoting to set the same thing to work through mail.
Now i can send sms messages to others from my iPhone.
When it is replied to, i get the reply on my computer.
i will work towards getting all recieved sms on my computer, not just ones replied to.
any questions - email me at ekmavs@gmail.com.
So has anyone been able to get GMail IMAP to “push” to the iphone or is that another IMAP feature that is not supported?
Thx,
Hotoru
hi vanessa,
nope, i experienced no such issue! how odd. i have “store draft messages on server” checked, and mapped apple mail’s “drafts” folder to [Gmail]/Drafts.
maybe if you try it again?
Odd, maybe they fixed the glitch. I shut down Mail and restarted it up again with “Store Draft Messages on Server” and it worked. Thanks
Now if only they could figure out how to get “replied to” arrows in there …
glad it worked!
that is my last remaining qualm with gmail imap. i mentioned the “replied” arrows on gmail’s feature request form.
Derek,
I am still confused about this. Only latest mail gets saved locally, or every mail I completely fetch from the server also gets saved on the iPhone?
Cheers,
Francis
Francis, mail is saved on your phone. When changes are made - folder change, deletion, etc - those changes get synced to the server so that your other clients reflect the same changes.
Thanks for the tips. I’ve found that "Store draft messages on the server" works perfectly with Tiger’s Mail, but with Leopard’s Mail, it generates duplicate messages every time you save a draft. Weird.
Andrew, thanks for the link off and explanation of Google’s incompleteness vis-a-vis reply flags. And yes, I guess this means I’m crawling back to POP, at least for now. Hopefully it’s something they rectify in the future. Grumble indeed.
What still does not make sense to me is mapping the Gmail Trash folder to the Apple Mail Trash folder. Sure it does get rid of the duplicate trash folder, but if you click delete on any message in the inbox or any folder it then sends it to the Gmail Trash which insures it to be deleted in 30 days. I would rather have “delete”ing and email in the inbox to archive the email rather than an actual delete.
What about mapping the “All Mail” folder to the Apple Mail Trash folder. That way all deleted emails would be effectively archived.
When I send a message from apple mail, instead of going to my sent messages folder, it goes to the trash (this happens when I send directly from gmail.com too). Anybody know how to fix this?
Thanks.
Brian,
Simply uncheck the “Move deleted messages to the trash mailbox” option for your account preferences. This causes Mail to delete the message from the current “folder” and not perform any moves. Thus “deleting” a message from the inbox still keeps it in gmail’s archive. If you want to permanently delete a message (including from gmail), simply drag the message to [Gmail]\Trash. Of course, this also means you will see [Gmail]\Trash as a folder; you can’t map it because it has nothing to map to.
Basically, if you want to archive as a norm, set your client to not use a trash folder and delete permanently by moving items to [Gmail]\Trash. If you want to delete as a norm, set your client to use [Gmail]\Trash as the trash folder and archive by moving messages to [Gmail]\All Mail.
Just a note: mapping Gmail -> Trash to your Trash will move the items to the trash _on Gmail’s server_, not archive them.
I’d set up my account in Apple Mail but thought maybe I’d test out Thunderbird. Everyone seems to be abuzz about Apple Mail settings …
I’ve been trying to figure out how to ‘map’ folders in Thunderbird. Any suggestions, or is it unnecessary?
TX for the reply. That’s the same conclusion I finally came to. Nice to see confirmation of my thoughts.
Also, when you de-select “Move deleted messages to the trash mailbox,” and restart Mail, Apple Mail removes the Apple Mail Trash icon (assuming your gmail imap is your only account) so you only have the [Gmail]/Trash folder and no two Trash cans.
I fired up Apple Mail today and the reply arrows next to emails showed up for some messages. Not sure if it is an early sign of things to come.
P-IMAP is not (yet) supported by Gmail IMAP.
I set up IMAP now for both Google Apps for Your Domain and also for Gmail. I have the same mailbox behaviors for both Gmail and my Domain and they both are linked to Drafts, Sent, etc. However, Apps makes a duplicate copy of my mail in my sent folder and all mail while email sent from Gmail is only stored in sent mail. Are others experiencing this. I’m using Leopard’s Apple Mail.
Thanks!
Robb, I’m having the same problem with my Google Apps account. mail sent from Apple Mail (Leopard) goes to “all mail” (drafts, sent, etc are properly linked as well). does anyone know a way to fix this?
I did go thru the steps but it still annoying to get several copies of the same message…And by the way you cant map the Mail.app notes… they get sync’ed to gmail and then downloaded again…twice, so you’ll end up with three copies of the same notes…
But try switching your Main Display Language to English [US] if it isn’t already.
I just switched from English [UK] and IMAP options popped up in gmail settings a couple of hours later.
One annoyance I’ve found -
I have a lot of mail in my mail.app pop inbox. Meaning, I haven’t archived them yet in my local archive folders.
I’m wanting to duplicate that in imap. Meaning, move the contents of my local archive folders to All Mail, and my mail.app inbox contents to my imap inbox. So, I take the pop account offline, create a new imap version of the account, and start dragging stuff from the pop inbox to the imap inbox.
Which works great except for one thing. I drag the (thousands) of messages from the pop inbox to the imap inbox - I do it a few hundred at a time. Unfortunately, the iphone “get 25 most recent” seems to be the 25 most recent added, rather than the 25 most recent by date header. That sucks, because on my iphone, I only have visible the messages I received since yesterday, and then a bunch from January.
iPhone’s 25-most-recent SHOULD be the 25 most recent by date header, but it’s not. Drat. If anyone knows a workaround, let me know.
I just found this neat little trick. You can create sub folders, “labels”, within gmail via the iPhone or Apple Mail. All you need to do is create a label, in you gmail account through the web interface, with the master folder as the first word and the sub-folder as the second word separated by a “/”. So an example label would be “Master / Sub”. Now you can create a hierarchy within your gmail labels. Enjoy!
The downside to syncing your iPhone drafts/sent/trash to gmail is that when iPhone crashes while you are doing stuff in those folders, content in that folder vanishes from everywhere!
When I mean everywhere, I MEAN everywhere!! You will not be able to find that message in either iPhone or in GMail!
I was moving a message from all mail to my ‘newsletter’ folder/label in iPhone. For some reason my mail application froze and the mail app crashes and returned to home screen.
When I returned to my mail app in iPhone, that message was nowhere to be found!
I went to the web interface of gmail and did a search for that message in gmail. I could not find it anywhere!
My trash folder in GMail had been emptied. It had a few messages before.
I think what happened was when m mail app in iPhone crashed the trash folder of iPhone was emptied out when I restarted mail app.
Since the trash folder is set to sync with GMail, my trash folder was synced with that in GMail, effectively erasing my stuff in Trash.
I hope I am making sense.
Robb/Brad, I was having a similar issue. I was trying to send mail to one of my other accounts and the message kept showing up in my sent mail and inbox. It was very annoying.
I realized that I had “linked” those email addresses in my gmail to be able to send mail from those addresses. When I removed them from the linked accounts, my test emails only showed up in the sent mail label. I hope this helps.
Does anyone know if Gmail’s IMAP implementation supports the IDLE function? That would allow for push-like email delivery. iPhone supports IMAP-IDLE, so it’s possible this could be enabled, right?
Is there a way not to download the “All Mail” folder that basically duplicates my Inbox and sent items ?
I now have duplicates between the Inbox and the All Mail which are absolutely not useful !
All Mail should stay on the server but shouldn’t be downloaded locally since there is no need for that. The best place for archives is certainly online not offline.
Thanks for your help !
Thomas
Using Leopard Apple Mail
Anyone else getting tons of spam since enabling IMAP on the iPhone? Annoying! It wasn’t an issue before.
If I do what MSK suggests I lose my label folders. How can I do as he suggests and keep them?
I posted a workaround for this:
http://5thirtyone.com/archives/862#comment-52981
Ooops. Missed that. Thanks.
ok so i tried to setup IMAP in mail.app on leopard. i got it to download all of my mail just fine but the outgoing refuses to work. here are my settings, am i doing something wrong?
Just an extra tip related to Dylan’s post. I already had been using "/"’s in my labels previously (for example, I had a eBay/PP label). Well, as Dylan accurately noted, when I setup IMAP on my iPhone, I got a bunch of sub-folders for all of those labels (which I didn’t want). So, for those people who want slashes in their labels, but don’t want a sub-folder, I found out you can use a back-slash "\" instead of a forward slash "/" to do the trick. Just click to rename your labels in Gmail and now I have a label "eBay\PP", without a subfolder being created. Looks slightly more odd than a backslash, but it works.
A question about assigning multiple labels from an IMAP client:
How do you "copy" messages to another folder on the iPhone? I can only "move" the message to a folder, which creates that new label, but removes whatever label it had before the move, since it is no longer in the old folder.
TUNESMITH - Same problem here. I uploaded 8 years of POP email to Google’s IMAP and my iPhone pulls only the latest uploaded, not the latest received. I’ve had to change the display to 200 messages and “Load 50 more..” until all 9700 message headers were stored on the phone. Fun times!
I have a couple of questions which having read many of the comments on this post I believe you guys will be able to help with.
When I use Mail to send an email after hitting send it goes to the Outbox in mail, but is sent and goes to sent mail in Gmail online.
Additionally when I get a new message in Mail, it doesn’t appear in the Inbox folder, only in the All Mail folder
I don’t understand either of these, can anyone explain? Maybe I have a setting wrong or something?
many thanks!
Hey Guys,
Using Gmail IMAP,
1) Is there a way in Apple Mail to have it so that an unread email shows up in the Account’s Inbox in MAILBOXES but NOT the All Mail folder in [Gmail] ?? It is quite annoying to have Mail tell me that I have 2 unread messages to find out they are both the same.
2) Why does my local Gmail inbox in Apple Mail only have 92 messages downloaded? The All Mail folder in [Gmail] has everything (about 7,500 messages) but Apple Mail never tries to download them to my local inbox. Of course it saves the new messages that come in, but there are 7,400 other messages I would like to have downloaded and accessible whether I am connected to the internet or not.
and 3) Does anyone else’ Apple Mail show 1 unread message (in the dock) when there ISNT any unread messages?
Any or all questions tackled would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys!
NICK,
>Robb, I’m having the same problem with my Google Apps account. mail sent from >Apple Mail (Leopard) goes to “all mail” (drafts, sent, etc are properly linked as >well). does anyone know a way to fix this?
>Robb/Brad, I was having a similar issue. I was trying to send mail to one of my >other accounts and the message kept showing up in my sent mail and inbox. It >was very annoying.
>I realized that I had “linked” those email addresses in my gmail to be able to send >mail from those addresses. When I removed them from the linked accounts, my >test emails only showed up in the sent mail label. I hope this helps.
Nick, I don’t have my Google App account linked to my gmail account so I can send mail from Gmail with my Google App Domain as the “from” sender if that is what you mean. Anyone else using Google Apps and having these issues?
I’m concerned that you advise people to set their “Deleted Mailbox” to be “[Gmail]/Trash”, without warning them that this will cause those messages to be deleted PERMANENTLY after 30 days. Some people may want that, but it’s not the behavior that most gmail users, who are used to Archiving messages, will expect. I worry that most people will just follow your instructions without reading the fine print or thinking it through. IMHO you should put some warning text around that advice; for most people the default trash setting should work fine.
Thanks!
@Jamie: Surely this is logical behavior. You want the message deleting it goes in trash where it’s deleted. You archive it, it goes in All Mail! Perfect sense!