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Searching Archived Gmail with Mail Client

J

jordii

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 9, 2008
243
130
When I go to the gmail web site and enter a search term, it searches through all my many years of mail, including inbox, sent, drafts, archived, etc.

Apple Mail, and other clients (Airmail, MailPlane, MailTabPro) only search local mail - mail that's come in since I started using those apps (I used the late lamented Eudora for years). I have to go to the gmail site for a thorough search.

Is this because I'm using POP? If I switched to Imap, would these clients search everything on the server?

If not, is there any way to do a complete mail server search via a local client?
 
GMail works differently the any other Email Server I have ever delt with. You have to get around the giant Inbox and start archiving your older email into Archive custom boxes and try to reach Inbox Zero. Then turn off labels in GMail because Labels will not transfer to OS X Mail and cause problems.

Plus IMAP leaves email on a server where POP takes the email and then deletes it from the server. An IMAP server will leave the message on the server and not delete it until you as a user deletes it. Hence in OS X Mail you have the email boxes the say" On My Mac".
 
jordii said:
Is this because I'm using POP? If I switched to Imap, would these clients search everything on the server?
Click to expand...

Yes... that's the problem. Use IMAP with Gmail and in the gmail.com settings make sure you have it set to show the "All Mail" folder in email clients then every message at gmail.com will be in your mail client and searchable like you want.

Once you set this up, leave Mail running for a day as it has to reindex all those messages and it can take a long time.
 
Ok. I set up Apple Mail (in Yosemite) with IMAP, and gave it a full day to index preexisting mail.

I selected "Archive" in the Mail sidebar, and entered a search term which I know occurred in my early mail. I got two hits - one from 2013, and one from 2014.

I went to the Gmail web site, and entered the same search term, and got 42 hits ranging back to 2007.

Any other ideas?
 
jordii said:
Ok. I set up Apple Mail (in Yosemite) with IMAP, and gave it a full day to index preexisting mail.

I selected "Archive" in the Mail sidebar, and entered a search term which I know occurred in my early mail. I got two hits - one from 2013, and one from 2014.

I went to the Gmail web site, and entered the same search term, and got 42 hits ranging back to 2007.

Any other ideas?
Click to expand...

Archive in Gmail running on the Mail app is basically the trash folder. When you search, click the "All" on my screenshot and you should see everything. Don't limit the search just to Archive.

cFSjVWO.png
 
Thanks for your reply, Weaselboy, but no joy. See shot below.

"Archive in Gmail running on the Mail app is basically the trash folder"
Click to expand...

Idunno, the archive folder shows 25K emails, and I don't send stuff to trash often.
 

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jordii said:
Thanks for your reply, Weaselboy, but no joy. See shot below.

Idunno, the archive folder shows 25K emails, and I don't send stuff to trash often.
Click to expand...

By default in the gmail.com IMAP settings a message from an IMAP client that is deleted goes to Archive.

ZRvZt5X.png


So you can see messages in that OS X Mail folder that don't come up with the relevant search? I mean are they making it into OS X Mail app?
 
You lost me. In the screen shot, I'm doing an "All" search, as you suggested. I'm finding two hits. Same search term, using gmail web page, delivers 42 hits. That's all I'm saying.
 
jordii said:
You lost me. In the screen shot, I'm doing an "All" search, as you suggested. I'm finding two hits. Same search term, using gmail web page, delivers 42 hits. That's all I'm saying.
Click to expand...

I understand what you are saying. What I am trying to get to is if the messages are really there in Mail app and just not being found by the search or if they are not there at all in the Mail app.

One would be an issue with the messages not all appearing and the other is related to search not working properly.
 
Is it helpful to note that Gmail reports 90,717 emails in my "all mail" folder, while Mail reports 25,008 in "archive"?

I know you said that archive's mostly trash, but not in my case. Going through that folder, it's all good stuff. And I rarely trash messages. And I've used both POP and IMAP with prefs configured to always leave all mail on server (precisely so I could make use of google's ultra-swift searching (much faster than I could ever search locally, thanks to their gigunda super computers).
 
jordii said:
Is it helpful to note that Gmail reports 90,717 emails in my "all mail" folder, while Mail reports 25,008 in "archive"?

I know you said that archive's mostly trash, but not in my case. Going through that folder, it's all good stuff. And I rarely trash messages. And I've used both POP and IMAP with prefs configured to always leave all mail on server (precisely so I could make use of google's ultra-swift searching (much faster than I could ever search locally, thanks to their gigunda super computers).
Click to expand...

Yep... that's the problem. Mail can't search what is not there.

Back in post #4 when you mentioned you switched to IMAP, did you just leave the gmail account in Mail, but change the settings from POP settings to IMAP?

I'm thinking you should have removed the account entirely and added it back as IMAP. That should pull in all the messages.

Try removing the account completely, then remove the envelope index folders described here, then add it back and wait for it to reindex.
 
No, I started fresh with Apple Mail in IMAP a couple days ago.
 
jordii said:
No, I started fresh with Apple Mail in IMAP a couple days ago.
Click to expand...

The only other thing I can think of to try is quit Mail and delete those envelope index files like described in that link in my last post. My think is that maybe there is leftover cruft in that index from the previous POP setup and be deleting those files a full reindex would occur and maybe help.
 
Weaselboy said:
The only other thing I can think of to try is quit Mail and delete those envelope index files like described in that link in my last post. My think is that maybe there is leftover cruft in that index from the previous POP setup and be deleting those files a full reindex would occur and maybe help.
Click to expand...


Thanks. But, again, I started fresh with IMAP a few days ago, after starting this thread. So no cruft.

Anyone else....?
 
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