GMail issues, or: migrating from GMail to Mail.app

I am currently using GMail simply as a web-based mail client. I am not really using my GMail email, but rather I have my email forwarded to GMail and I write my emails as my alternate email identity from inside GMail. I recently found out that GMail, in fact, puts "me@gmail.com on the behalf of me@alternateemail.com" in the from field instead of just "me@alternateemail.com". This is not an option for me. I am very annoyed that I didn't find this out before. I have two options: find a way to make GMail just put me@alternateemail.com in the from field or leave GMail. So, does anyone know a way to make GMail do the from field as I want it? If not, then I'm leaving GMail for Mail.app. I have it up to here with GMail and its far too abundant limitations--I think it's time to say goodbye to GMail.

So, how do I export my mail from GMail into Mail.app? All I have found online is how to export mail to GMail from various mail clients, not the other way. It seems I am among a minority in wanting to leave GMail. But, I can't leave GMail until I have exported all my mail. Please help me leave GMail.

Thanks.

 

Thanks, but that is not quite good enough. How would I migrate my sent emails too?

 

Yes, yes, I realize that you can have multiple "Send mail as" accounts. But what you don't understand is that when using an alternate account to send as, in the "sender" tag of the email, GMail puts "whoever@gmail.com on the behalf of whoever@somewhereelse.com" and that some mail clients (notably the widely used Outlook) lie to you and where it says "From:" they put the "sender" tag. This cannot be changed (and it is irrelevant to the "make default" setting--it does it no matter what). It is definitely a problem because then it divulges my GMail account and makes people mistakenly use it when they should be contacting me through an email identity that is specific to the exchange (say, I have a work email and I want work correspondence to be through me@work.com and I've a filter that labels all email sent to me@work.com as "work"--then this ruins everything). The divulging of my GMail name isn't a biggie, but the problem is that the GMail name is first in the phrasing of the tag so people don't think and just use that. Google should at least rephrase it so that me@work.com or whatnot is the first thing in the sender tag.

In short, bad.

danny_w, thanks but I don't think you understand either--I want to copy all the letters I have in GMail under sent into Mail.app. But I've already realized how to do this: I just temporarily empty my inbox (put a label on all current inbox items, remove from inbox) and then highlight all sent and choose move to inbox, then download with POP3 into the appropriate folder, then remove from inbox, then replace all those with temporary label in inbox, remove label. Done.