Why is Trash getting rid of my mail?

[Lankyman]

I have a puzzle I can't seem to get to the bottom of any wondered if anyone has come across this?

I am using Mac Mail as client in Lion with Gmail as my email provider (IMAP). All the boxes/folders appear to be working OK with the exception of Trash. Now as with all the others I expand the Gmail IMAP folders in the bar on the left and I have a label marked as Trash. I highlight the Trash label (Mac lists them as folders) then go to the Mac Mail toolbar > Mailbox > use this Mailbox for and select Trash. No problem, Trash label disappears from Gmail and a Trash icon then appears in my Mac Mail folder list.

If I delete an email the email goes into Trash without issue and it's still there when I shut Mail down. However, when I restart Mail the mail is still in Trash until the server syncs with Mac Mail and at this point the email disappears. My question is why is it disappearing? I know the mail is still there in the "All Mail" folder but I can't understand where the command to move the mail is coming from. I have gone through all my mail settings both on the Mac and on Gmail yet I can't find any command or rule that should be emptying Trash in this way.

Anyone?

 

[gyorpb]

Make sure you don't have Mail set to empty the Trash upon quit:

.tsooJ

 

[Lankyman]

Make sure you don't have Mail set to empty the Trash upon quit:

Image

.tsooJ

Yep, the screen shot is exactly as per mine. I have also changed the setting in Gmail re: not to immediately expunge deleted items to see if that would make a difference - it didn't. As said earlier the Trash items do stay in Trash until I close Mail. They are still there on re-opening, that is until Mail finishes synching with Gmail and it is the synching operation that clears them out of Trash. The items are still there in All Mail though.

I would simply like the ability to manually empty the Trash box at a time of my choosing.

 

[Lankyman]

Update - Mac Mail and Gmail have now started to play nicely with each other. I have just put a few items in Trash closed the application then restarted and the deleted items are still there in Trash?

I have no idea why this hasn't been working before as I have changed not one setting since yesterday yet it is now working OK? I can only assume that Gmail was playing up - again. I do like Gmail but have found that because of the quirky and sometimes confusing way Google uses Labels email clients such as Mac Mail doesn't always interact as intended. Having said that I've known Outlook get tripped up too on occasions.

 

[gyorpb]

GMail is wonky in its IMAP implementation, to say the least. Makes sense, when you think about it: Google's interest is in luring you to their online interfaces so they can harvest your data for their profiling needs. Using a user agent defies that somewhat (they still get to read your email so they do get at least some profiling data).

In my experience, the way to make GMail work correctly with a Mail program is to muck around with settings (somtimes somewhat counter-intuitively) until it works.

.tsooJ