Constantly redownloading with Mail 3.2 + Gmail IMAP

Hi all,
I have a huge email archive (30k+ emails >3Go) stored on a Gmail IMAP account.
I recently upgraded to a Macbook Air (fully updated 10.5.2) and was planning to use Mail 3.2 as my software client.
Unfortunately Mail seems to insist on frequently redownloading all emails even though I set my preferences to keep copies of messages for offline viewing on "All messages, but omit attachments".
As you can imagine, with such a large archive, this redownloading behavior is simply unacceptable. I've checked the forum and there seems to be a number of people having problems with redownloading, but I haven't found a clear pattern or solution.
So has anyone got an idea where it might come from, what to check or how to fix it?
Message was edited by: olejade

I have the same problem, with an imap account on a university server.

Similar Messages

  • Apple Mail vs. Gmail IMAP disagreeing counts

    A friend has two iMacs (10.6.5), iPad & iPhone (iOS 4.2) recently switched to gmail for his primary email service.
    The problem is that not all the devices “see” the same Sent, Drafts and Trash mailbox.
    Working with other IMAP services, I never see issues like this, so I know this is a gmail specific issue - there’s a disconnect between the way Gmail organizes it’s IMAP mailboxes vs. the way the Apple Mail does.
    For instance, when you configure Apple Mail for a gmail IMAP account, it assumes your Sent mailbox will be called “Sent Messages”. And on the gmail web side, a Label always gets created called “Sent Messages”. My experience is that without any intervention, when you send email, it shows up in Apple Mail in the proper “Sent” mailbox, but in gmail it shows up in “Sent Messages”, NOT gmail’s Sent mailbox.
    For some reason, with a gmail account, the old trick of Mailboxes > Use this Mailbox for doesn’t work because the options are grayed out.
    So, how I’ve improved this situation is to open up PropertyListEditor and edit com.apple.mail.plist. There is a key called ‘MailAccounts’ under which is an “item” representing the Gmail account. Underneath, there’s an entry for ‘SentMessagesMailboxName’. I’ve tried changing this to both “Sent Mail” or “[Gmail]/Sent Mail” and both work in the sense that any email sent from Apple Mail ends up in gmail’s Sent mailbox, and NOT in “Sent Messages”
    Here’s where the mystery deepens.
    In my friend’s situation, when I do this, when path is set to [Gmail]/Sent Mail, I see two Sent mailboxes
            in Apple Mail, I see 886 messages in the Sent under ‘Mailboxes’, and 823 in ‘Sent Mail’ under GMAIL section
            in gmail, the ‘Sent Mail’ mailbox has 651 items and there exists a “[Imap]/Sent Mail” mailbox which has 609 items
    When I edit the plist and change the path with PropertyListEditor to just “Sent Mail”, Apple Mail only shows one Sent mailbox with 823 messages items, but is missing the message sent within the past couple days.
    Any ideas how to make sense of this?

    No real answer to your problem, but I can confirm the problem exists...I've been chasing it forever. Another issue (that is equally as perplexing) is that no matter how you configure deleted message behavior in Apple Mail, when you delete a message it NEVER shows up in the Gmail TRASH folder. If someone would just create a definitive guide for using Gmail and Apple Mail they could probably sell it.

  • Confusion with mail.app and Gmail using imap

    I've had a yahoo.com email address for years, and pay for Mail Plus and POP3, which I frankly don't even use. Now that I've confirmed, however, that I can successfully forward emails from my yahoo box to my new gmail box, I'd like to look into setting up mail.app for the gmail account using imap. Like most people, I access my mail from several places (home & work computers, Touch, and others), and imap makes sense as the right way to go.
    Last night I tried to set things up on mail.app on the Mac, and boy was it confusing in terms of the folders, etc. Is there someplace someone can point me for a sort of "beginner's guide to setting up Gmail/imap with mail.app"? Hopefully this "guide" would give me some hints on setting up various rules, etc. that would allow me to have a setup that makes sense: only one copy of emails, sent items in the sent items folder, etc.
    One more thing: can I set up Gmail/imap with more than one email client? For example, can I use mail.app at home and Thunderbird on the Windows computer in my office? And how is the creation of new folders (or labels, I guess, as Gmail calls them) on the web handled by mail.app (or Thunderbird)? I'm guessing that a new label created on Gmail on the web doesn't automatically result in a folder being created in mail.app (or Thunderbird), or does it? If this is correct (no folder created in mail.app until I create it on the Mac), is the message that was moved to a folder on the web found in mail.app in the All Messages folder (or whatever it's called)?
    Sorry for the basic nature of these questions...this all seems pretty complicated, and I'd like to get it right the first time. Thanks.

    BTW Thanks for the "head's up" that GMail now supports IMAP (I've been waiting for it!)
    I'm not sure what your confusion is, other than maybe the confusion between how folders and messages work in Outlook versus Apple Mail and IMAP. I've used both, and several other mail programs over the years.
    IMAP permits you to have directories which contain message folders. I make the distinction, because Outlook allows you to message folders which contain messages AND other message folders. I believe most implementations of IMAP do not allow messages inside of directories. Thus, a directory looks like a message folder, but it may only contain message folders, and not individual messages.
    Now, GMail appears to create message folders for each label you define in GMail, and messages which have several labels appear in each folder. If you copy the folders to your computer, you WILL have multiple copies of those messages, however if you leave them on the server, GMAIL does all the work and you only have one copy of each message.
    Special folders in GMail are all located in the directory [Gmail] and include the message folders "All Mail", "Drafts", "Sent Mail", "Spam", "Starred" and "Trash". Notice I say "directory" and not "message folder" for "[Gmail]". That is important.
    I cannot attest as to what GMail does when you create a folder from your mail.app client, as I have not done that yet. I would venture a guess that it will define a GMail label and mark any messages you "move" to that folder with that label. The GMail special folder "All Mail" contains all of your mail messages, and is equivalent to selecting "All Mail" when using the web interface.
    Your inbox messages will appear in the section with all of your inboxes at the top of your mailbox list. Make sure that you set your preferences to match the recommended preferences for Apple Mail when setting up your GMail account. Otherwise you will end up with duplicates and/or a lot of unnecessary data transfers to your Mac.
    Hope this helps. If not, please give a more explicit example of something that doesn't work the way you expect.

  • Mail vs. Gmail IMAP Junk Filtering?

    The IMAP setup instructions for Gmail say that it is best to turn off any filtering in the Mail program, as the latter will attempt to download a lot of other stuff and create unwanted traffic.
    However, I find that when I turn off junk filtering on Mail, the Gmail junk filter misses a lot of things the Mail junk filter seemed to catch before I went to Gmail IMAP. And, with Mail junk filtering turned off, I can't "train" it to catch junk mail that gets through the Gmail filter.
    Is there any way to avoid the increased traffic I get from IMAP Gmail if I turn on my Mail junk filter?

    Turn off junk mail filtering on GMail, don't use Mail and use the browser interface to GMail, get another email ISP, configure your own incoming rules for Mail to catch specific junk that GMail's filters miss.

  • Turning on "Junk Mail Filtering" Crashes Mail when using GMAIL IMAP

    So I thought I had my Gmail IMAP satisfactorily set up through Mail, then I turned on Junk Mail filtering through preferences. Immedaitely Gmail stopped synchronizing (I still can't get it to sync) and Mail starts hanging on basic tasks and will not quit properly. In fact, I have had to "Force Quit" the application ever since changing this status.
    Anyone else having this issue?

    I have now confirmed that when I turn Junk Mail filtering off via preferences, Gmail will start syncing again and the application will quit properly.

  • Mail 4.1 + Gmail IMAP not working anymore

    Hello all,
    All of a sudden I cannot recieve emails via IMAP gmail anymore. It was working fine till, a few days back when Mail stopped fetching new emails. The gears just keep spilling.
    I can send emails via SMTP gmail.
    The connectivity doctor shows that everything is ok for IMAP and SMTP.
    Googling shows me a lot of people are facing this problem of late.
    Anyone here know whats going on?

    My Gmail IMAP Account has also stopped working. It continually searches for mail, and if I try to access any of my mail then the Mail program crashes. My wife's Gmail IMAP program is working fine. I have tried setting up another account, and it just keeps searching. Entourage works fine.
    How did you remove the account??

  • Mac Mail Constantly Downloading thousands of messages from Gmail IMAP

    Hello,
    I have seen similar problems posted, but no real solutions.  I use Google apps +(and regular gmail) and like to keep copies of my messages saved locally on my Macbook.  When I setup an IMAP account in Mac Mail ver 4.6, it downloads the messages fine, but then constantly keeps 'updating' and downloading more messages - the status indicates x number of messages out of 20,000+
    This eats up my hard drive space very quickly! 
    Any solutions? 
    Much appreciated!
    /M

    MateoV wrote:
    Ok - maybe I am confusing my 'All Mail' folders with my acutal memory.  But here is why I think there is a problem:
    My google apps says:
    Using 3.7 GB of your 25 GB
    and
    My gmail says:
    Using 7.5 GB of your 10.1 GB
    The storage referred to is the amount in your Gmail or G.Apps account, not Ram or HD space on your Mac FYI

  • Problem with Mail app for Gmail account!

    Hi all,
    I have a Gmail account synced to my Mail app, I have the latest software version: OS X Mavericks 10.9.2.
    The problem started couple of weeks ago, when a new folder under the name "Archive" showed up in the left bar of my Mail app. Thereafter, coming messages started to go there instead of coming to my "inbox" folder. This created quite few issues with new coming messages. Can anyone know how to solve that?
    Thank you in advance.
    p.s. I tried to uncheck the box " Gmail.com > settings > Labels > All mail - show in IMAP", this has solved the "archive" issue, as it has disappeared from my Mail right bar. But This has created further issues with coming messages, as I stopped receiving messages at all to my Mail.

    Try another e-mail program.
    Airmail is selling pretty well in the App Store and has been reported to work better with G-mail..
    Mail Alternatives – 9 Free Email Programs
    Mail Alternatives Review
    Mail Alternatives Review (2)

  • Garbled messages in Mail.app (using Gmail IMAP)

    Several of my archived messages in Gmail are displaying with garbled headers in Mail.app, which is configured to access my Gmail account via IMAP. Here's what the headers look like:
    ------=NextPart_000_001601CA70CE.4D0AAE80
    +Content-Type: text/plain;+
    charset="us-ascii"
    +Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit+
    And here's an excerpt from the body:
    /9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEBLAEsAAD/4Q1RRXhpZgAASUkqAAgAAAACABJQBAABAAAAAQAAAGmHBAAB
    AAAAJgAAAFIAAAABAIaSAgAaAAAAOAAAAAAAAABDcmVhdGVkIGJ5IEFjY3VTb2Z0IENvcnAuAAMA
    KAEDAAEAAAACAAAAAQIEAAEAAAB8AAAAAgIEAAEAAADNDAAAAAAAAP/Y/+AAEEpGSUYAAQEBAAcA
    BwAA/9sAQwAIBgYHBgUIBwcHCQkICgwUDQwLCwwZEhMPFB0aHx4dGhwcICQuJyAiLCMcHCg3KSww
    MTQ0NB8nOT04MjwuMzQy/9sAQwEJCQkMCwwYDQ0YMiEcITIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIy
    MjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIy/8AAEQgAYABdAwEiAAIRAQMRAf/EAB8AAAEFAQEB
    Note that the message displays perfectly in Gmail on the web.

    Yesterday I tried to move all my messages from Gmail to MobileMe to work around this. I created a new label "Archive" in Gmail web and marked all my mail in "All Mail" with this label so they would show up in IMAP. In Mail.app I disabled "Move messages to Trash" to avoid having them deleted.
    Unfortunately I could not move my messages, around 1 out of 50 had the problem described above, so MobileMe did not allow me to upload them because of the missing headers. These were old messages, never opened by Mail.app earlier, and it was true that they missed some headers: they were exported from Outlook and Opera Mail years ago. But still they had all the header fields a mailer would display (To, From, Cc, Subject). Anyway the fact Mail.app cannot display these properly is perhaps acceptable in this case.
    However the problem being unable to display certain recently received, archived messages on my Gmail account still applies. Those messages were not modified in any way, only Gmail and Mail.app were used to access them.
    Needless to say, the old messages mentioned above that went through Outlook and Opera Mail look OK both on the web and in Thunderbird, too. At least I knew that I realized early that I could not move all messages this way to MobileMe. I am going to try moving my messages again with Thunderbird now.

  • Delete Mail From Server Gmail-Imap-Account

    Hi,
    My problem is that when I delete email from the z10 it Doesnt delete it from the server
    1. I am use to read my mails from some devices (web,macbook,mobile)
    2. had an ios device before and use to have mails automaticly deletes from the server as well
    3. If its not possible I beleive it will be available on the next release (10.1.2 ?)
    4. If someone know how to solve this issue it will be nice (not a fan of pop3 )
    Thanks 
    Solved!
    Go to Solution.

    hollywoodhenry wrote:
    Hello,
    Has there been a solotion to this?? 
    My blackberry 9900 would allow me to delete an email on my phone and it would also be deleted on GMAIL. 
    Now with the new Blackberry OS,  I delete an email on my phone and the only action it does on GMAIL is removing it from the inbox, but it still appears in ALL MAIL, so after weeeks of this, there are litreally hundres of emails still in ALL EMAIL that i thought I had deleted already. 
    It's a matter of tweaking your Gmail settings to have the email go to Gmail Trash instead of All Mail.  The article at this link has the clearest desription I've seen..  This is working for me.
    http://crackberry.com/how-get-gmail-delete-hub-without-archiving

  • HT1338 problem with Mail app and Gmail

    In various occasions the Mail App freezes and the only way to close it is to go to the activity monitor en force quit the program cause it makes the CPU work at 100% without any results. Aditionally I setup my Gmail account in the Mail program according to the instructions and when I delete messages from the all mail folder after a while the appear again after a while.
    Any solutions to my problems?
    Thank you very much

    Try another e-mail program.
    Airmail is selling pretty well in the App Store and has been reported to work better with G-mail..
    Mail Alternatives – 9 Free Email Programs
    Mail Alternatives Review
    Mail Alternatives Review (2)

  • Apple Mail not sending Gmail Imap

    Hey I have Gmail on my Apple Mail using Imap and it was working fine until about a week ago when it stopped sending so I tried re-adding an Imap account but cant even create one
    Anyone else had this problem, any ideas?

    Hello,
    What size are these attachments & what extention/file type are they?
    gMail has been known to refuse say .zip files, & of course attachments over a certain size.
    One big drawback on Apple Mail is that if you have a malformed or non compliant eMail, it'll prevent anything beyond that, just keeps trying & failing to progress to the next one.
    Not certain, but this can fix myriad Mail problems...
    Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup),  it will try to repair your Disk Directory while the spinning radian is happening, so let it go, run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, then move this folder & file to the Desktop.
    Move this Folder to the Desktop...
    /Users/YourUserName/Library/Caches/Mail/
    Move this file to the Desktop...
    /Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/Envelope Index
    Reboot.
    If that doesn't do it and you can afford to redo all your Rules, try these & reboot...
    /Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist
    /Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist.backup
    Note, in 10.5 & up /Users/YourUserName/Library/Caches/Mail/ may or may not exist.

  • Problems with Mail and Outlook after IMAP attempt.

    I tried to set up an IMAP on Mail on my MacBook Pro, so I could have my Outlook Web Access emails relayed through my mac.  I got it to where I could receive email on Mail from my OWA account, but could not send. (had something to do with not having the proper outgoing web server name.) So I just wanted to scrap the whole plan.  I deleted my OWA account from Mail and it currently shows nothing there.  However, now my OWA account isn't working properly.  It will send emails just fine, but will not receive them. I think those messages are still being routed to Mail somehow.
    Please Help, I need my OWA account for work.  Thank You

    I have followed the steps outlined to uninstall Office 2011, but when I try to reinstall the software I get an "installation failure" error. I'm still in limbo without access to necessary applications.
    I've been reading the Microsoft forum for Office 2011 for Mac but haven't found anything helpful yet.
    Thanks for any other suggestions you might have.

  • Sync with Mail on Ovi - POP / IMAP

    Hello there,I have a Mail on Ovi e-mail account, and I would like to have access to it in several programs like Digsby, and some others, but to do so, they ask me POP and IMAP details. I have read somewhere that Mail on Ovi doesn't require that so we can have access to it in other services, but Digsby asks for it.Best regards,Carlos Silva
    S60blog.com
    Nokia-blog.net 
    Carlos Silva
    http://s60blog.com
    http://nokia-blog.net

    it says on my hotmail account while im connecting my nokia mail account:
    "There's a problem connecting to the POP mail server. Make sure that the server name and port you entered are correct. The best way to do this is to check with your other email provider. You're looking for the "incoming mail server", which is probably listed under something like "POP access settings". on 
    imap.mail.ovi.com
    smtp.mail.ovi.com
    Incoming security port SSL/TLS: 993
    Outgoing security port SSL/TLS: 465 - settings
    and
    "The other POP3 server didn't recognize you. Make sure you've entered the user name and password that you use to sign in to the other email service." on
    POP server: ovi.pop.mail.yahoo.com SSL port 995
    SMTP server: ovi.smtp.mail.yahoo.com SSL port 465  - settings

  • Mail with Gmail IMAP: All mail getting marked as read

    So other than being painfully slow, and just plain irritating, I have one huge problem with Mail (Tiger) and Gmail IMAP. All incoming mail is marked as read. The mail downloads, gets sorted into folders by the various rules, but the folders never show up with a number showing new messages. I have missed so many emails lately, I think I will have to go back to POP...or add a line to every single rule saying "mark as unread".
    Is there a simple solution to this problem I am overlooking?
    Thanks...Sam

    Yeah, the stupid part is that all SPAM comes marked as unread. So I get to see that I have spam, just not legitimate mail. Ugh.

Maybe you are looking for