Mail problems

[blimundus]

Bought an iMac yesterday, first mac ever. I'll dual boot with Ubuntu one day, but for now I want to try OSX.

I have some questions on the Mail program:

1. I configured Mail with my Gmail account. I wanted to test it by sending an e-mail to myself. I heard the "sent" sound, but it never reached my inbox in Mail. However, other e-mails seem to arrive just fine. Is there a rule that says Mail doesn't show the e-mails you've sent to yourself.

2. Afterwards, I imported my 750MB mbox file. I copied the e-mails from the 'imported' folder to the Inbox. Then, because of the problems described above under 1, I deleted the 'Gmail' account settings. Apparently, this also deleted the thousands of e-mails I had imported! How stupid is that? Why should there be a link between the settings and the e-mails you have received?

Thanks for any help!

 

[mklos]

Mail will always delete any mail in the inbox associated with the account. Depending on how you look at it, some people may think its silly for the emails to stay there. If I no longer have my .mac address for example and dont want any emails from it either, then thats a big time saver. I guess its just a preference thing.

Mail doesn't block emails from your account going into your account. So you should be able to email yourself from an email account in Mail and get your email message back in your inbox.

However....

It appears from looking on google's gmail website and seeing others with the same issue, that the issue is, gmail doesn't allow you to email yourself and receive it via pop in an email application. You have to go into webmail to see it. 

And you'll have to re-import all of your email messages to get them back. 

Congrats on the new Mac!

 

[blimundus]

Depending on how you look at it?!?

I don't throw away all my pictures when I buy a new camera. I don't destroy everything I've ever printed when I get a new printer. When I get a new telephone number, I don't throw away my address book. When I switch to a new e-mail account, that doesn't mean I want to destroy the e-mails.

Moreover, there is no warning at all. It's just data loss. (But it saves some space from my crowded 250GB harddisk! ... Not!)

(Unless the files are still saved somewhere where nobody will find them.)

Btw, I didn't lose any data myself, and I'm quite happy with my iMac indeed.

 

[mkrishnan]

Mmm, pretty much every program behaves this way, though. The inbox is supposed to be synchronized with the mail service. You can keep the mail. You just need to put it in an offline storage folder. Outlook, as far as I know, is exactly the same in this regard. I think T-bird is too. You can make an offline storage mailbox from the File menu (just make its location "On my mac").

 

[bearbo]

1. as already said... gmail doesn't let you use pop download email you send yourself from the same address... if you send it from another address, you'll get them just fine. there are ways of getting around it, but messy ways

2. since it's POP... it downloads a copy to your computer (and may or may not leave a copy on the server), namely to a folder in mail associated with the account... you can move the mails out to a "On my mac" folder( or something similar), which then will permanently stay there... however if you dont do that, when you delete the setting, they are all bundled together and get deleted.