Also, many email hosts — including Apple’s .Mac — have a setting allowing you to forward all incoming messages to another email address, while keeping them on the original server. That’s the better option, if you have it available, because none of the forwarded emails clutter up your Sent folder.

Maybe a dumb question, but how do I get Mail.app to automagically send a copy of my sent messages to GMail? I see the option to CC (or BCC) myself, but I just want them to go to my GMail account….

Mail (application menu) > Preferences > Rules > New Rule

Then choose from among the options.

The otherthing to do is to use http://www.indev.ca/MailActOn.htmlMail Act-On and create an Act-on Rule that will redirect the message on demand - This way you can pick and choose what messages get archived to gMail

This seems a little weird to me. Mail.app is a desktop program, giving you full search capability and as much storage as your HD can offer. Gmail is web-based, and although generally awesome, gives a finite amount of storage. So why are you doing your archiving on gmail? Seems like it should be the other way around.

Here’s an extra tweak: use the +label gmail hack (as suggested if setting up gmail as a notebook e.g. http://g04.com/html/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=52): 1. Set Mail.app to send instead to yourname+mailarchive@gmail.com 2. In gmail, create a Contact of that name (‘yourname+mailarchive@gmail.com’) 3. In gmail, create a Label called ‘mailarchive’ 4. Set up a rule to filter incoming mail from that Contact to that Label (tick the box to bypass the inbox)

Result: a searchable archive of your non-gmail that doesn’t clutter your gmail inbox. Add label:mailarchive to the searchbox to limit your search to this subset of mail.

@Peter: Harddrives die. Google (if their plans work out) never will.

Gah! My comment’s unreadable because the email addresses are parsed at html. The steps should read:

1. Set Mail.app to send instead to yourname+mailarchive[at]gmail.com
2. In gmail, create a Contact of that name (’yourname+mailarchive[at]gmail.com’)
3. In gmail, create a Label called ‘mailarchive’
4. Set up a rule to filter incoming mail from that Contact to that Label (tick the box to bypass the inbox)

Replaces [at] with @

I’d be getting things done, except that I’ve got to correct my comment because ‘Comment Preview’ isn’t high enough on Merlin’s GTD list…

Harddrives die. Google (if their plans work out) never will.

The average company lasts less time than a good hard drive. Granted, Google looks stable - but if it’s important to you, I’d keep it locally…

I can’t seem to get mail.app’s filters to forward email to my gmail address — when I set a “from” filter for my own email address, nothing happens. is it because i’m using IMAP, or am I doing something wrong?

For those, like me, stuck with Windows, it’s simple to set up a rule in Outlook to automatically forward incoming emails to another account (Tools->Rules and Alerts->New Rule) - just make sure to turn off the option to save forwarded messages to your sent items folder (Tools->Options->Email Options->Advanced Email Options) or you’ll find your sent items folder cluttered up in no time at all. Automatically BCCing yourself on all emails you send is a little trickier - you can buy a third party program to do it for you, or follow these instructions to do it in VBA.