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SG8765 Author

Level 2

192 points

Gmail IMAP does not sync

I've had my IMAP gmail account set up in mail.app for a few months. At first, it worked perfectly -- the two would sync up relatively quickly, both in terms of labeling/deleting email, and noting whether they were read or unread. About a week ago, mail.app started synching right after I would open it -- and then it would eventually label/delete email correctly, but would not change an unread message to read if I left it in my gmail inbox. Now, it isn't even labeling/deleting email -- it won't do anything except right after it is first opened. Manually telling it to synchronize has no effect -- the little clock icon in the account list doesn't even appear. I'm wondering if this has something to do with the 10.5.6 update -- after which, I did run the stand alone Mail update, hoping it would resolve this behavior (even though I wasn't having stability problems) -- but it didn't. Any ideas?

Late 2008 MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Jan 10, 2009 12:35 PM

56 replies

mhb

Level 1

98 points

Mar 26, 2009 9:15 AM in response to coreyehlert

This fix worked for me as well. To clarify, when you go into Preferences, select your Gmail account/Advanced and deselect "enable this account," then click Save. When I did that I saw all the messages behind the Preferences dialog window correct themselves. I then rechecked "enable this account" and clicked Save. All of a sudden it reverted to the unsynched state it was in before, but several moments later it corrected again. I closed the Preferences window. Now is working smoothly.

mhb

Level 1

98 points

Mar 26, 2009 9:18 AM in response to coreyehlert

Apr 14, 2009 8:47 PM in response to mhb

Re-Enabling doesn't do anything for me.

This issue has driven me crazy for months now. Gmail IMAP used to work beautifully with mail.app and my iPhone. Now it's just a huge pain.

Mail.app not syncing properly with Gmail isn't acceptable. What's baffling is that the CEO of Google sits on Apple's board. Do they not use their own products? How has this not been fixed yet?

Ceres1

Level 1

75 points

Apr 16, 2009 5:21 AM in response to SG8765

Hi there!

Just wanted to add my voice to the growing list of confused/frustrated.

Interesting thing is that I have literally just moved my mail hosting over to Google in the past week. Obviously, before moving from my previous hosting company, I did a fair bit of testing to ensure that Google could provide the solution I needed, namely IMAP access to my mail via 2 Macs and an iPhone. My testing showed this would work with Google.

So I changed over about a week ago. At first, everything was working brilliantly - my mails would appear instantly on my Macs and would come in to my iPhone on the scheduled Fetch every 15mins (Push not being supported on the iPhone for Gmail). Cool.

When I read a message, no matter where I read that message, both the Macs would update their unread marks, again almost instantly. The unread marks on my iPhone would update as expected on the scheduled Fetch cycle.

THEN something happened...! I don't know what has happened but only a few days into this perfect solution, suddenly my unread marks are no longer updating on the Macs. If I read a mail on a Mac then the unread marks sync fine with my iPhone on the scheduled Fetch cycle.

Aaaaarrrrrgggggghhhhh!

All I can say is feedback, feedback, feedback:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/mail.html

C.

dai.hop

Level 1

0 points

Apr 28, 2009 3:05 AM in response to SG8765

Does anyone have any new information on this as the problem still persists for me? It must be a Mail.app problem as my Gmail IMAP accounts sync perfectly when I first launch the app. I'm hoping 10.5.7 will provide the fix. It seems like I've been waiting for it to appear in Software Update forever!

Apr 28, 2009 4:42 AM in response to dai.hop

I just set up my gmail account with mail.app and have the exact same sync issue as everyone else. I don't have an iPhone, but see the same issue with my Blackberry Curve. Mail read on gmail doesn't update the mail.app or the Blackberry Curve. Everything syncs (except the curve) if I restart mail.app. The mail does update in the Gmail all mail folder but not the inbox. VERY FRUSTRATING as I am a recent Mac convert so I was expecting issues like this to be non existent.

Looking forward to a solution.

David N

Level 1

8 points

May 3, 2009 9:53 AM in response to SG8765

The read/unread status does not sync interactively with the IMAP server on one of my three Macs. I am using Gmail.

Has the problem: iMac OS X 10.5.6 (it worked for at least a year before the problem appeared)
Does not have the problem: MacBook Pro OS X 10.5.6, iPhone

Seems to me that the problem is on the client side, or else I would have issues with all three computers?

cshamis

Level 1

13 points

May 5, 2009 7:36 AM in response to David N

I'm having this problem too. If I read or delete a message from the GMail web interface, or my iPhone, I have to completely quit and restart the Mail.app to get it to resync.

"Get new Mail" and "Synchronize Account" do nothing.

-C.

JonoH

Level 1

1 points

May 7, 2009 8:27 AM in response to SG8765

I'm having the same problem.

Syncs fine between my iPhone & Gmail (web), but doesn't sync on my Mac's Mail unless I click on a different folder & then click back on the inbox, or restart Mail.
Hope this is fixed soon.

May 8, 2009 7:20 AM in response to JonoH

I have a Blackberry Curve which also doesn't two-way sync with Gmail, so between mail.app, Gmail, and my phone I don't get anywhere close to decent syncing. You would think in 2009 with common, leading edge products/services they would have it working well. I've had full two way syncing 2007 with a Palm Treo, Outlook and Yahoo, but not Google and Apple in 2009?!!??