HELP! Can't copy or archive emails in Mail.app!

[alcapone]

In Mail.app (Leopard) I've got 1409 messages in my "All Mail" folder which comes from Gmail IMAP. Now whenever i try to archive this mailbox i get a useless tiny 6MB file (instead of 355MB). Does anyone know why these happens? (All email is copied for viewing offline according to the advanced settings)

So i thought i could work around this by creating a folder "on my mac" and tried to copy all the email across onto my mac locally. However when i do this i just get a spinning circle next to the local folder "New Folder" and there is no hard drive activity at all. When i press the red button in the top left and then click on the mail icon in the dock again, the spinning circle is gone, with absolutely NO mail in the new folder. Does ANYONE know how to fix this? Now i cannot backup my email, and feel as though i could lose my email at any moment...

Thanks.

 

[Peace]

You need to go to Gmail's web interface and do that.

 

[Mal]

If you're using IMAP, the messages are all stored on the server. There's no need to worry about backing them up. That "All Mail" folder is actually the "All Mail" label on Gmail.

jW

 

[alcapone]

ok, so do you know how to create an .mbox file from the gmail web interface ? I just want to have a local copy of all my email just in case...

 

[swiftaw]

Mail->Mailbox->New Mailbox

Location: On my mac

Then drag and drop (or use a rule) to copy all mail over from your gmail:All Mail mailbox

 

[alcapone]

Mail->Mailbox->New Mailbox

Location: On my mac

Then drag and drop (or use a rule) to copy all mail over from your gmail:All Mail mailbox

Yes I did this. The reason why i'm posting on the forums is that IT DOESN'T WORK ! When i copy and paste, nothing happens...no disk activity...nothing...just a little spinning circle which disappears after hiding and then unhiding mail.app...

 

[swiftaw]

I know for a fact it works, because I actually just did exactly the same process last night with my gmail account.

 

[alcapone]

the thing is, if i copy every email one by one to the local mailbox, then it works, but if i copy 7 at a time or so, often it doesn't work. obviously doing this for over a thousand emails is not practical...

 

[Mal]

Mail->Mailbox->New Mailbox

Location: On my mac

Then drag and drop (or use a rule) to copy all mail over from your gmail:All Mail mailbox

I think the OP said he already tried that, it hung up Mail.app. That's a lot of mail to copy that way anyways.

I don't know that you can archive mail from within Gmail, though. There doesn't seem to be a way to do that that I can see.

jW