Help regarding setting up Apple Mail

[iChanged]

Hey Peeps..
I am using Apple Mail 4.0 on Snow Leopard on Macbook Pro 2009, 2.26GHz, 13", 2GB. I have imported my Gmail account on Mail using IMAP server. The labels were correctly transferred as Mailboxes, with messages intact. But it's really inconsistent in its performance. Please help me sort out the following issues-

1. As is the case in Gmail, if an active thread is archived to a label, still with every incoming thread shows in the Inbox ( if auto archive has not been enabled) with the incoming message appended in the parent thread. It's not the case with Mail.. or rather I haven't been able to find out the appropriate preferences. After moving the thread to the mailbox, I received the new message in my inbox as an independent message. I was unable to append the message with the thread, as even after selecting them all, the option was not activated in the Edit menu. How do I do this, if at all I need to go through it every time?

2. I have set the Mail refresh period to 5 min. But, new mails do not show up, rather they show up earlier in Gmail instead, the 5 min buffer included. The next option is 1 min.. can't I set a value in between somehow? Does it eat up more memory if I set the refresh period to 1 min?

3. When I try to move a mail to some mailbox, after a secondary click, irrespective of whichever mailbox I want to move it to, but I see a tick mark against one specific mailbox, everytime. What would that mean?

4. Does the 'Reply with iChat' option work only when the contact is online? Can't offline messages be sent?

5. My signature appears at the end of the thread after each time I reply. How do I make it appear right below my message?

Another question... though not related to mail or any Mac app.. but I guess can be answered here as well :

How do I make Finder remember my viewing preferences? If I set different viewing options for separate folders, on return, it's all undone. I'd like it otherwise.

Thanks in advance.

 

[aristobrat]

With 1, gmail's thread thing is fairly unique to gmail and don't translate the same to traditional IMAP mail clients like Mail.app (or Outlook/Outlook Express/Windows Mail). Each message will show up independently.

2, gmail can push new mail directly to Mail.app. Mail.app will still go out and check gmail every 5 minutes (or whatever you have it set to), but gmail can still push new mail to it between checks. How frequently you have it set to check for shouldn't affect your memory at all. If anything, it'll just use a very little bit of your CPU each time it checks.

4, My iChat is setup to use AIM, and it lets me send offline messages. If you use jabber, I have no idea.

5, If you go into the Preferences of Mail.app, there appears to be an option on the Signature tab that says "Place signature above quoted text". Not sure if that's what you're looking for, but might be worth a try.

 

[iChanged]

With 1, gmail's thread thing is fairly unique to gmail and don't translate the same to traditional IMAP mail clients like Mail.app (or Outlook/Outlook Express/Windows Mail). Each message will show up independently.

Does that mean I cannot append the messages either? Because that ain't working

 

[aristobrat]

Does that mean I cannot append the messages either? Because that ain't working

Mail has a "view by thread" option, but I'm not sure if that's exactly what you're looking for.

A lot of the cool stuff google has implemented in gmail can't be directly emulated by a traditional mail client, unfortunately. Their "conversation threads" is one of htem.