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Why do I have to archive gmail emails twice?

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  • آخر ردّ كتبه Toad-Hall

Jasper Notwell
Jasper Notwell
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I use IMAP with my gMail account. I have a folder called "Work", which corresponds to a "Work" tag in gMail. The problems is, if I "Archive" a message in Work, the message still remains in my Inbox folder. I have to go to the Inbox and "Archive" it again to get it to actually move to the gMail archive folder.

The reverse is true, too: if I "Archive" a message in the Inbox, it remains in my Work folder. I have to go to the Inbox folder, and "Archive" it a second time to, you know, actually archive it and get it out of my Inbox.

I recently switched to using IMAP with my gMail account, so it's still all new. I imagine I'm missing something really obviouis.

I'm using 78.12.0 on MacOS 10.15.07, because the 91 upgrade didn't play well with my work server.

Any advice appreciated. Thanks!

Jason

I use IMAP with my gMail account. I have a folder called "Work", which corresponds to a "Work" tag in gMail. The problems is, if I "Archive" a message in Work, the message still remains in my Inbox folder. I have to go to the Inbox and "Archive" it again to get it to actually move to the gMail archive folder. The reverse is true, too: if I "Archive" a message in the Inbox, it remains in my Work folder. I have to go to the Inbox folder, and "Archive" it a second time to, you know, actually archive it and get it out of my Inbox. I recently switched to using IMAP with my gMail account, so it's still all new. I imagine I'm missing something really obviouis. I'm using 78.12.0 on MacOS 10.15.07, because the 91 upgrade didn't play well with my work server. Any advice appreciated. Thanks! Jason

All Replies (1)

Toad-Hall
Toad-Hall
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Gmail stores all emails in the 'All Mail' folder. You only see emails in other folders eg: 'Inbox' because it has a label called 'Inbox' applied to it by gmail.

In your case, you have an email which you have stored in two different imap folders - 'Inbox' and 'Work'. From gmail server/webmail perpective the email stored in 'All Mail' has two labels - 'Inbox' and '[Gmail]/Work'.

Gmail archives emails in the 'All Mail' folder - basically these are emails with no labels.

When you click on 'Archive', gmail removes the 'label' which was applied eg: 'Inbox' So the email is removed from the 'Inbox' folder in the imap account.

Gmail does not remove all the labels, so the '[Gmail]/Work' label still exists, hence you still see an email in the imap 'Work' folder.

If you logged on to webmail account and checked the 'All Mail' folder, you would see that email has two labels. If you then 'archived' the Inbox copy, you would see the 'All Mail' folder now shows the 'Inbox' label removed, but the 'Work' label would still exist. So email still visible in 'Work'.

According to gmail, 'Archive' means remove label and store in 'All Mail'. It does not mean remove all labels and store in 'All Mail'.