Apple Mail: G-mail e-mails reappear in inbox after moving them to folders (PART II)

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Level 1

15 points

Apple Mail: G-mail e-mails reappear in inbox after moving them to folders (PART II)

The five year battle: Mac Mail & G-mail

Words cannot express the level of time, effort, research, and sweat that I've put into trying to solve this issue. I've even considered requesting my medical records to say "Cause of Death: Reappearing E-mails"...this is my last ditch effort before dropping Apple Mail and/or G-mail all together. For the love of all things good and decent in this world - HELP ME!

Basics:

I have (5) gmail accounts & (1) iCloud (me.com) Account.
I have (3) devices: An iPhone 8, iMac Pro, and MacBook Air (all updated to the newest iOS & OS X)
I use Apple Mail as my e-mail client to control all of them and rarely use the browsers to access them.
I use Mail's flags to organize my e-mails.
I often move e-mails into folders (under it's respective account) for better organization.
All my accounts are set up more or less normally.

Problem:

For the last FIVE YEARS I have had issues with e-mails returning to my inbox AFTER moving them to folders.
This has resulted in - and I'm not kidding here - HUNDREDS of hours over the years moving (already moved) e-mails back into their correct folders.

Solutions I've tried:

Rebuilding all of my inboxs 35+ times (seems to help initially, but then same issue)
Removing and re-adding my e-mail accounts
Messing around with Smart Folders.

Does anyone else have this problem? Is this an apple mail problem? Is this a gmail problem?

I'm at my wits end here.

Best,

Alex

Posted on Oct 19, 2020 7:26 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 20, 2020 12:03 AM in response to IndianaPwns

Ok. Maybe there is an explanation for this.

Background

For GMail, a message folder is just a set of messages with the same label label.

This is how you can have the same message in more than one "folder".

The Inbox is a label as any other label. If you open a message in the browser, on the top of the message you can see the labels applied for this message.

When you see the message in the "folder" it is in fact only a set of messages with a label applied to it and having the label "Inbox" removed from it.

Apple Mail

So, when using Mail, moving the message will not remove the "Inbox" label.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,210 points

Oct 19, 2020 8:03 PM in response to IndianaPwns

For the last FIVE YEARS I have had issues with e-mails returning to my inbox AFTER moving them to folders.

• This has resulted in - and I'm not kidding here - HUNDREDS of hours over the years moving (already moved) e-mails back into their correct folders.

So, why are you still using Mail with Gmail.

Mail is an IMAP/POP email client.

Gmail isn't either of those, though it purports to play them on TV. It also hasn't stayed in a Holliday Inn Express, so expecting it to work in a standard email client is insanity.

Use the web portal or find an email client that caters to Gmail's idiosyncrasies.

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Answer 3

IndianaPwns Author

Level 1

15 points

Oct 25, 2020 1:23 PM in response to afberendsen

Ok...ok...so why, when I move it twice to the same folder does it finally disappear from the inbox?

You'd think millions of people using G-mail with Apple Mail would have this same problem. Any reason you can imagine I'd be different.

(appreciate your response)

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Answer 4

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,210 points

Nov 2, 2020 8:19 PM in response to IndianaPwns

You'd think millions of people using G-mail with Apple Mail would have this same problem. Any reason you can imagine I'd be different.

I doubt your experience is unique. Your usage may be different from the vast majority of users. The vast majority of people whom I have knowledge of their email habits is they never move messages from the inbox.

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