Gmail's IMAP, should I even bother keeping local files?

[fourcolourblack]

So I'd been storing my mail into various folders for years now. None of it is serious/life changing stuff (thats all at work), but it has been bothering my my Gmail at work/at Home were never sync'd.

After resetting up my Gmail account as IMAP I'm already reapong the benefits and have copied all my old folders back onto the IMAP account so they can stay there, catergorized online.

My question is… is there actually any point in even creating folders for mail "on my mac" rather than "IMAP Account"? Yeah sure having things locally is always a safe bet, but its just means between work/home nothing in synced anymore?

If I was hosting this myself I would have thought this sounded a little dodgy but surely leaving it all on Gmail can't be a problem?

 

[larkost]

IMAP usually has 2 copies of the message for disaster recovery purposes (different than: "woops I accidentally deleted/overwrote that"), one on the server and one on the client. Local copies only have one copy.

Everything I have is on IMAP servers, and I periodically back up the mail store from the server that I keep at home onto CD.

 

[RedTomato]

IMAP is very badly explained for newbies - I've been looking for a decent explanation and either my google-fu is lacking or there is just nothing out there aimed at the typical sort of user who is just now moving to IMAP.

By typical user, I mean someone who is a pretty hefty email user, with thousands of mails in local storage, who now has an iphone or net book as well as their main computer or laptop, and needs to keep the two in sync, without wanting to become an IMAP scientist.

Take me, I have 10 years of email on my macbook, 5 email accounts, I get around 30 a day, most of which goes to into various groups, I now have an iPhone.

How do I shift from POP to IMAP while still keeping my workflow?

All email on my macbook is auto backed up to two different places (two time capsules, one at home and one at work) - how do I keep that going in IMAP?

How do I automatically move old mail off the IMAP server so as not to fill it up?

How do I do this on Mail.app and iPhone?

These aren't exotic questions, they're pretty standard for anyone seeking to shift to IMAP. But the explanations out there are useless, especially as more and more people access their email from multiple devices.

 

[BobZune]

While this may not answer all questions fully, there is a good explanation and discussion of quirks at http://db.tidbits.com/article/10253

 

[fourcolourblack]

Thanks Red Tomato, thats pretty much what I need. I've only got about 4 years of emails with this current account. To be completely honest the ones that are work related have been filed, the rest are just there. I just search if I need something.

I do check my email from My Nokia SmartPhone.

But I also have TimeMachine, I suppose it is backing up periodically, I'm just not controlling it. Perhaps the best thing to do is delete a few old emails and see how it easy this is to retrieve them.

Also BobZune, I'll check out that hefty page, thanks for that.

 

[fourcolourblack]

I've been messing around for the last 6 hours now, and after going through the details of "Achieving Email Bliss".

I've got it to this state. But, I still get emails in the Gmail and All Mail, I have to click everything twice arghhhhh!!!! ANyone been here and figured it out. Setting up IMAP really isn't as obvious as it should be. Especially when Googles instructions are somewhat incomplete.

 

[RedTomato]

While this may not answer all questions fully, there is a good explanation and discussion of quirks at http://db.tidbits.com/article/10253

Thanks, that's a fantastic article that answers about 80% of my questions, and gives me a big lead on the rest.

Cos of my job, I have to learn how to implent IMAP at some point in the near future, and this will help me to shift my email over and start eating my own dogfood.

Hmm, with this many quirks, it seems IMAP just isn't ready for the big time yet.

 

[fourcolourblack]

You're right… not for the bigtime yet. it'll probably be the next big buzzword to sell phones or something. "oh, do yo have imap?"

I've actually got it all perfect now (apart from every email still comes into All Mail as well as Inbox and I'm convinced theres nothing I can do about that.

The main problem is Googles own advice on their setup pages. Its just wrong. Tells you to have so many thing unchecked so they aren't stored on the server it doesn't act as it should.

I should write them an email and ask why they've got this backwards