Gmail IMAP, Mail.app and iPhone Mail in harmony
Hmmm…. Late to the party on this one, but still worth posting.
Derek Punsalan has posted 
a comprehensive guide to getting Gmail’s new IMAP service, Apple Mail and the iPhone’s Mail.app working together in perfect harmony.
He explains how to mail the special folders in Mail.app (Sent, Draft, Trash) to the correct ones in your Gmail account, and then how to match them in the Gmail account on your iPhone.
He also provides a summary of several clever tips that were left in the 212 comments to the post, including how to use Gmail without all the Gmail folder hierarchy, and how Mail.app flags and Gmail stars are the same thing.
Curiously, he doesn’t mention a tip for email hoarders. If you like to keep everything, select Gmail’s all mail folder and under Mail.app’s Mailbox > Use this mailbox for… menu option, select Trash.
Then your delete key becomes a quick archive shortcut.
Of course, there are many reasons why this might be a bad idea — See an earlier Hawk Wings post on Why the delete key is your best friend.
[Via just about everyone]
Tags: Apple Mail, Apple Mail Tips, folders, GMAIL, Google, imap, iphone, mail.appRelated posts
November 18th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
At least with Apple Mail on Tiger you should *not* store the drafts on the server. Otherwise drafts will multiply like heck and show up under “All Mail” by the dozen. (And, no, this isn’t resolved in any way by correctly mapping the Drafts folder …)
November 19th, 2007 at 10:55 am
Does no one realize that almost none of that setup is required? Mail automatically shows up in your “Inbox” and in “[Gmail]/All Mail”. Archiving is simply a matter of deleting the message from your mailbox. Also, sent messages are automatically placed into “[Gmail]/Sent Mail” simply by sending it via “smtp.gmail.com”.
People really ought to give this page a look:
https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77657
November 20th, 2007 at 3:37 am
I’m new to the whole imap game, having switched when gmail let me.
When I’m searching mail.app offline (10.4.x), I have many emails that haven’t been downloaded from the server. As I need to do a lot offline (I travel constantly; might not have a connection for weeks at a time) is there any way to guarantee all my mail gets downloaded?
Once again, Tim, thanks for a great resource here.
December 3rd, 2007 at 7:30 pm
I took your advice for making the “all mail” gmail folder the trash folder. I would like to undo this but I can’t seem to figure out how, any ideas?
December 3rd, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Select the mailbox that you would like to be the Trash folder instead, and then select from Mail’s Mailbox menu, Use this Mailbox for… and then Trash. All done.