Mail - Gmail IMAP folder synchronization

[DaLurker]

I've recently converted from Entourage to using Mail and I'm experiencing a couple of quarks.

1) The All Mail folder seems to get emails before the mail appear in my other folders. This is annoying since I have an unread mail smart box which checks the other folders, but not All Mail.
2) When I read an email message, the All Mail folder doesn't sync right away. So despite reading, it appears unread until the All Mail folder is sycned.

I was wondering if anybody else is experiencing this? And whether there is a tweak I can do to solve these peculiarities?

 

[Darth.Titan]

Yes I've experienced what you describe. No I don't know of a solution. (But would be willing to listen if someone did.) However I believe it's just a peculiarity with IMAP mail because I see the same type of thing in Outlook 2007.
You didn't mention in your post if you were using IMAP with Entourage. If so, did you not have these issues? I'd be curious to know.

 

[DaLurker]

Yes I've experienced what you describe. No I don't know of a solution. (But would be willing to listen if someone did.) However I believe it's just a peculiarity with IMAP mail because I see the same type of thing in Outlook 2007.
You didn't mention in your post if you were using IMAP with Entourage. If so, did you not have these issues? I'd be curious to know.

I had IMAP email accounts set up with Entourage but I never used them exclusively. The main reason I went to using Mail was the better IMAP support. I had too many POP emails in entourage to convert over to using IMAP mailboxes.

I've done a quick look around the net and found this: http://macapps.perniciouspenguins.com/imapcheck/ Looks like it fixes the IMAP sync by forcing syncing of all folders. I'm trying it out now (although I haven't gotten any emails.. yet 😉)

Also I believe there was supposed to be an option in Mail that says "Automatically synchronize changed mailboxes" which doesn't seem to be in my Mail. I found the option in the last screen shot of the Gmail tutorial for setting up IMAP with Mail. (http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77663)

 

[Dimwhit]

I've got a Gmail IMAP question, so I'll ask it here rather than start a new thread.

If I want to set it up in Mal (currently I just use the web interface), is it going to download ALL my current email that's sitting in my Gmail 'All Mail' folder? Is there a way to do a 'from here on out' IMAP syncing? I've got 1.1GB of mail in my Gmail account, so if using IMAP means having to download all the email and store it on my machine, I'll probably pass.

 

[Peabody]

If you want there is a setting in Mail to not download attachments, or even more restrictive, don't keep offline copies of any mail. Using either of those options will help the "glut" that is the Gmail "All Mail" folder.

These are really the only options until Gmail IMAP supports folder subscriptions.

I've got a Gmail IMAP question, so I'll ask it here rather than start a new thread.

If I want to set it up in Mal (currently I just use the web interface), is it going to download ALL my current email that's sitting in my Gmail 'All Mail' folder? Is there a way to do a 'from here on out' IMAP syncing? I've got 1.1GB of mail in my Gmail account, so if using IMAP means having to download all the email and store it on my machine, I'll probably pass.

 

[plinden]

However I believe it's just a peculiarity with IMAP mail because I see the same type of thing in Outlook 2007.

It's not because it's IMAP specifically, it's because of how GMail handles IMAP. In web based GMail, you don't have folders, but assign labels. You have only one copy of each message, but with one or more labels.

These labels are mapped to folders when using GMail's IMAP, but since you can't have a message in more than one folder, GMail actually creates a copy of the message in All Mail as well as each of the folders mapping to the labels assigned to the message.

So when you read a mail in your GMail Inbox, you're not actually reading the same message that's in All Mail, so it only marks it as read once you sync.

 

[DaLurker]

It's not because it's IMAP specifically, it's because of how GMail handles IMAP. In web based GMail, you don't have folders, but assign labels. You have only one copy of each message, but with one or more labels.

These labels are mapped to folders when using GMail's IMAP, but since you can't have a message in more than one folder, GMail actually creates a copy of the message in All Mail as well as each of the folders mapping to the labels assigned to the message.

So when you read a mail in your GMail Inbox, you're not actually reading the same message that's in All Mail, so it only marks it as read once you sync.

O gotcha, so Gmail will see that you've read the message in a separate folder and mark the one in All Mail read, but Mail believes they are two separate pieces of mail.

Here's the question though, if Mail synchronized the folders everytime there is a change, then it should be able to pick up the Gmail change right away?