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GMAIL IMAP vs. POP

So I had to do an Erase & install on my HD yesterday, which turned out well.
What I want to do differently in Mail (using GMAIL) is have less of my old messages and sent mail on my computer, rather than gmail's webmail. I see for POP options you can do this by selecting an option that Enables POP for mail that arrives from now on. Is there any downside to using POP over IMAP other than it working with other applications (phones, etc)?

Powermac G5 dual 2GHZ/ Macbook Pro 2.16 Intel Core Duo, Mac OS X (10.5.4)

Posted on Aug 21, 2008 12:25 PM

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9 replies

Aug 21, 2008 12:35 PM in response to Crystal I

What you're describing will actually do the opposite of what you stated you want: to have less email on your computer.

If you use a Gmail IMAP account now, then all your mail is stored on the Gmail server, as well as on your computer when you send a message or download a received message using Mail. Unless you truly need to access and synchronize all your email between multiple Macs that you own, using IMAP is a mistake.

POP accounts are much easier to work with, and don't confuse you with multiple folders in Mail that are unrelated to the folders you already have in Mail. All your messages are on your computer, and when you receive a message using Mail, you can set your preferences to delete the copy from the server after Mail retrieves it, so it doesn't clutter your Gmail account or confuse you into thinking it's new mail that was never downloaded.

Mulder

Aug 21, 2008 1:05 PM in response to Mulder

With GMail providing about 7GB of storage for your mail account at the moment, I barely see a reason to store local copies of messages at all (except for easy access when offline).
I recommend you set up an IMAP account, keep messages on the server and set Mail to not store local copies of messages that are on the server. For that open up Mail's Preferences > Accounts, select your GMail IMAP account, switch to the Advanced Settings tab and select "Keep no copies of messages" or maybe "Keep messages without attachments".

floba

(MN411)

Aug 21, 2008 3:20 PM in response to floba

I rather trust Mail.app and not Google with my emails. I have never lost any locally stored emails in over ten years. I've lost a lot of emails from servers because they keep changing their software and protocols. I have several backups of my local files and I know how to access them. If your mail server decides to move, archive or whatever do with your emails and things go wrong, good luck with accessing the server's backups (if there are any).

Aug 21, 2008 6:24 PM in response to floba

The setup is an Inbox category with Gmail and Yahoo being subcategories.
Then there is a Gmail category with All Mail, Sent, Drafts, subcategories.
My question is, are all of the emails in the Gmail category stored on my computer, or just in Gmail's server? I thought that only what I keep in the Inbox category stays on my machine.
Thanks

Aug 22, 2008 5:41 AM in response to Crystal I

Crystal I wrote:
So if I stick with the IMAP option, is there a setting so that when I delete a message in the Inbox from my Gmail account, that it will also be deleted from my Gmail web account?

Yep. Despite what [Google recommends|http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=78892&topic=1281 4] I generally found the following setting to work best for me:
1) If you see the folder "Trash" in the GoogleMail IMAP section of Apple Mail's sidebar rather than as a subfolder of the generel Trash folder (the one with the trash-bin icon), then select it and click Mailbox > Use this mailbox for... > Trash.
2) In Mail's Preferences > Accounts select your GoogleMail account and set the options to
-> Move deleted messages to trash = YES
-> Keep deleted messages on server = YES
That way a message that is deleted in Apple Mail will be moved to the trash folder on GoogleMail's server. If you empty the trash, those messages will be removed from the server.

floba

(MN413)

Aug 22, 2008 5:55 AM in response to Crystal I

You can check which messages are actually stored locally on your machine by opening the Finder and navigating to <your-home-folder>/Library/Mail. There you'll find subfolders labeled after your accounts which in turn contain subfolders with stored emails. You can read the emlx-files with Quicklook.

floba

PS; You said
Then there is a Gmail category with All Mail, Sent, Drafts, subcategories.

I recommend you do with Sent and Drafts what I suggested in my earlier post for trash, i.e. Mailbox > Use this mailbox for... > Sent/Drafts respectively.

(MN414)

GMAIL IMAP vs. POP

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