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Gmail IMAP Settings, Straight from the Google's Mouth
Matt Wood | Nov 19 2007
This may not count as a real find since it’s on the Google’s own support site, but this list of recommended IMAP client settings is interesting in that it differs from many of the Gmail IMAP how-to’s I’ve seen so far. Regarding Sent mail: Do NOT save sent messages on the server. If your client is sending mail through Gmail’s SMTP server, your sent messages will be automatically copied to the [Gmail]/Sent Mail folder. …and Junk folders: Do NOT enable your client’s junk mail filters. Gmail’s spam filters also work in your IMAP client, and we recommend turning off any additional anti-spam or junk mail filters within your client. Your client’s filter will attempt to download and classify all of your existing messages, which may slow down your client until the process is complete. I adjusted my Mail.app settings and noticed some marginal improvements. A big difference is that their advice for Trash results in archiving every single message in All Mail, whether you delete it from your client or not. POSTED IN:
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Rebuttal on Gmail folder mapping advice
The Sent Mail folders advice is fine, but only if you do use Gmail’s own SMTP servers. My desktop bound computers are set to my ISP’s SMTP server, so saving sent mail to [Gmail]/Sent Mail is a must in those situations.
Also Google’s recommendation to not save Trash to the [Gmail]/Trash folder doesn’t make sense.
If you move an item to the trash in Gmail itself, it removes it from all “folders” (tags, actally) as well. Google’s advice is based on the assumption that you want your client to archive all trash, when Gmail doesn’t even do that.
I map my clients trash to [Gmail]/Trash with the full understanding that trashed items will not be saved in [Gmail]/All Mail.
To archive without trashing I move items from the inbox to the [Gmail]/All Mail folder, contrary to Google’s recommendation. I’ve yet to see any negative effects of doing this. I’d imagine the worst that would happen would be multiple copies of the e-mail in [Gmail]/All Mail, but haven’t even seen that.