Gmail and Apple’s Mail Program

We find that e-mail is most effective when accessed via the “IMAP” protocol: which keeps a copy of all messages on the mail server.
Copies are stored your computer so you can see your email at any time.

This guide published as a service to our clients, and is intended to be a reinforcement to a consult with our staff. Should you have any questions while following these steps, please contact us.

When setting up access to Gmail based accounts, the following tweaks will enhance your experience using Apple’s Mail.app program has some with Gmail.

Gmail uses a massive “All Mail” folder which stores a copy of every message you send or received. Even if you never intentionally access this “All Mail” folder, Mail.app is instructed by Gmail to copy of every message in your Gmail based account to your computer twice, and sometimes three times.

By following the steps below, your computer will only keep one copy of each message on your computer, preventing you from seeing extra copies of your messages when you are searching your email.

We will also make some changes to the Sent and Trash folders, so that you see the same messages in your Sent folder no matter how you access your email.

Start by clicking this link, which will take you to your Google mail preferences:

https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#settings/labels (opens in a new window)

Remove duplicate messages by disabling excess “Labels”

look to the right of  ”All Mail” and uncheck “Show in IMAP”. This will prevent your mail program from keeping an extra copy of all mail.

Also uncheck the  ”Important, Starred and Drafts” Labels.

Have Mail.app use the proper Google “Labels” for certain Mailboxes:

Click on Mail.app’s postage stamp icon in your Dock, and look in your list of Mailboxes for  ”[Gmail]”

Select the “Sent” mailbox, then go to the Mailboxes menu and choose “Use this mailbox for” -> Sent.

Do the same for the “[Gmail] Trash” folder, this time selecting choosing “Trash” from the Mailboxes menu -> “Use this mailbox for” -> Trash

Get rid of Drafts of messages you’ve already sent:

This is a bug which is not directly related to Gmail, and the result is that copies of some messages are left in the Drafts folder even after being sent.

The solution is to go into your account within Mail.app’s Preferences, and click on the “Mailbox Behaviors” tab.

Uncheck the box next to “Store draft messages on the server”.  A Drafts mailbox may show up in your list of Mailboxes, and it may be deleted.