Using Apple Mail with Gmail - What the heck??

[AdiosVista]

I'm trying to setup my Gmail account on Apple mail (leopard) and first off, what is the with my tags and all mail showing up in separate folders below the trash can in the sidebar? I don't want all of that crap, it looks it's duplicating my e-mails. All I want is to have my gmail messages go to Inbox, Sent, Trash, and Junk, that's it.

The other problem is it's insanely slow loading new messages (I'm on DSL, not other speed issues whatsoever). Apple mail just sits there with the spinner forever, trying to import a few messages. What am I doing wrong? I don't remember having these issues when I used Thunderbird.

 

[MurphyM]

You didn't mention if you're using pop or imap. I would suggest using imap. You can read about imap in the Google Help.

 

[richard.mac]

all email clients have folders popping up in the sidebar when using IMAP. but Apple Mail handles this surprisingly well by allowing you to set Gmail's Drafts, Sent, Bin and Junk folders as Mail's Drafts, Sent, Trash and Junk mailboxes using
"Use This Mailbox For" from the "Mailbox Menu".

Apple Mail handles Gmail labels as folders. so if you dont want the folders showing up either collapse "GMAIL" in the sidebar or delete the labels.

 

[plinden]

Mail, like Thunderbird and every other IMAP client out there, just displays what GMail tells it to display. When you enable IMAP and set up your client, GMail itself creates the IMAP folders based on what tags you've set up in GMail. Apple's Mail gets a list of these folders and displays them.

And yes, it does duplicate your email, since, once again, that's what GMail does. It creates a duplicate of your tagged email in the Folders corresponding to your tags, and it also keeps a copy in All Mail.

I use both Thunderbird on my Windows PC and Mail on my Mac, and both behave in exactly the same way.

As for the spinner - Mail is downloading your email headers - depending on how much mail you have, it'll take some time to complete. Once it has a record of all your current mail, it'll be much faster to update.

 

[AdiosVista]

You didn't mention if you're using pop or imap. I would suggest using imap. You can read about imap in the Google Help.

Sorry about that. I first tried POP but that didn't import all of my messages so then I tried IMAP, which is what I'm trying to figure out.

 

[AdiosVista]

Thanks everyone. So it sounds like if I want to ditch the folders in the sidebar then I have to set up the common Gmail folders (sent, drafts, junk, etc.) to use Apple folders and then stop using labels to clean everything else up.