Converting POP to IMAP for Gmail

I've been using the Apple Mail app for many years, to access gmail. I almost never access gmail with a browser. But the gmail account is a POP account, which, now that I have an iPhone, is pretty frustrating.
I understand how to convert the gmail account (disable account on Mac, change account type at Google website, create new IMAP account on Mac). But this will sync my Mac to the mail Google now has. And since I've been managing the whole account from the Mac, and email deletions on the Mac have no effect on Gmail, Gmail has vast amounts of mail that I've deleted from the Mac.
How do I switch to IMAP and get the server to match what's on my Mac?
Many thanks to anyone who can help --

Thanks, guys, that's very helpful, but discouraging.
I found this article:
How to convert a POP email account to IMAP
The basic idea in the article is that you take your whole inbox, drag it to a folder "On My Mac", then switch the account type and set up the IMAP account on the Mac. Then drag all the messages from the folder you created back into your new inbox. You do the same for your sent folder and drafts folder.
It seems that the article implies that when you put the mail back into the new IMAP account in Mac Mail, that the server will sync with it.
Or … I could drag everything into folders "On My Mac" as an archive, delete everything from gmail (is there a way to do that?), then switch and essentially start over.
Or … I could start forwarding all the Gmail POP mail to my icloud mail account and stop checking gmail.
Does any of that make sense? Any other ideas? The idea of going through 4 1/2 years (and 2.5 GB) of mail via googles web interface and making sense of it seems pretty daunting to me.
Thanks again --

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