Store Gmail Locally in Apple Mail, Delete Online

[AdiosVista]

I recently lost one of my Gmail accounts to a hacker and it was an enlightening experience. I like to keep all of my gmail messages because it's a useful history to search if I ever need to look up an old thread. However, the obvious problem is a hacker who gets in also has all that knowledge.

What I'd like to be able to do is store my full Gmail account with all messages locally in Apple mail where I can backup as often as I want, then I'd like to purge my online Gmail messages. The idea is if someone hacked my Gmail account, they'd see very little messages but I would still have all e-mail copies saved on my machine.

What would be the best way to go about doing this? Thanks in advance.

 

[miles01110]

Create a folder (the plus sign in the lower left corner) and choose "On My Mac." Drag your messages from the inbox to said folder.

 

[dissolve]

This is actually a lot trickier as it sounds because Gmail has an unfortunate desire to archive every email in your inbox. You need to set your local folders in Apple Mail as the actual destination for the Trash. If Trash doesn't show up in your Mail sidebar, you have to enable advanced IMAP features in Google Labs (a section in your account). Then, select the Trash under the Gmail heading, choose Mailbox (in menu bar) > use this mailbox for > trash. I think that's all you need to do. Try that, send yourself an email, delete it and check if it moved to your Gmail trash. Now you just set the interval you want Gmail to delete your Trash and you're set. Hope that was clear.