AllMail Folder

If you delete it from the Inbox using the web interface, it will be deleted. This is how I handle it. Every single day. Depending on your mail client, you can generally configure that to delete as well. I use Spark on my iPhone and it is set to delete email. In both cases, I have to tap a different button to archive (send to All Mail) anything I want to save.

You will have to go back and delete what is currently in the All Mail folder.

Again, that’s how Gmail works.

It is not Mail doing that.

I tried to offer a fox by changing the Gmail settings, but apparently you don’t have that option. I don’t know why. I posted a s red shot of where to find the settings in case you went to the wrong place.

You must go to Settings in Gmail and click “Show all settings.”

Nothing you change in Mail will alter Gmail’s behavior. You have to make all changes on the Gmail web portal.

Dick Kolb wrote:

What is the purpose of a mail folder like that? If I wanted to keep all my mail I would do so. Why does GOOGLE think I want all those old emails; so they can spy on me?

Well, there is that. But, also, as so much of the daily business of living is conducted through email now, lots of people keep extensive archives. When Google first released Gmail, the ability to store that much email was a huge selling point. Prior to that, email providers allowed very little storage space and the email protocols pretty much required that you download it to your one computer.

If you don't want to keep all the old stuff, don't save it. Read it in your Inbox and then send it to the trash. I find this easiest to do using Gmail's web interface.

The problem is that even if you hit DELETE it just delete's it from your INBOX; a copy is still kept in the ALL MAIL folder.

That is by design. How do you expect Goolag to exploit you if they just let you delete everything.

In Gmail settings, Forwarding and POP/IMAP, IMAP access section,

turn Auto-Expunge off

Set “When a message is as deleted…” to immediately delete the message forever.

Then, while there, go to All Mail and delete what you don’t want to keep.

I don’t know if that eWorld in Mail ( it used to). I no longer access Gmail from Mail.

I reviewed those settings and I think they only affect when the email is deleted, not if. Also, they are only relevant if you are using a client (e.g. Apple Mail). I don't see that they have anything to do with what happens when you are working directly from Gmail.com. So, as long as you go to gmail.com and work from the Inbox there, things should delete if you select the "trash" icon.

IdrisSeabright wrote:

I reviewed those settings and I think they only affect when the email is deleted, not if. Also, they are only relevant if you are using a client (e.g. Apple Mail). I don't see that they have anything to do with what happens when you are working directly from Gmail.com. So, as long as you go to gmail.com and work from the Inbox there, things should delete if you select the "trash" icon.

I thought it was about working from within Mail?

Dick Kolb wrote:

Maybe I'm not being clear enough; let me try again. I am currently NOT doing email on my iPhone or on the web.

I understand that. I am suggesting that you should use the web interface as for Gmail, it works better than using Mail.

When I'm on my iMac using MAIL for my gmail account I have no problem with mail deleting messages from the TRASH(Google) mailbox when I close the Mail app. My problem is that even though it gets deleted from the TRASH mailbox, it stays in the All Mail mailbox and I currently have about 22000 emails in that mailbox.

And Barney-15E has described how you need to change the settings so that it doesn't do that.

When I try and delete the All Mail mailbox it says that I can't delete it. The only way I can get rid of all those emails is to selectively move them to the TRASH mailbox which gets cleared when I shut down Mail; so I have been moving them in batches of a couple hundred at a time to the TRASH. I have sent an email to GOOGLE complaining about this but have not heard anything back as of yet.

Again, it's very easy to delete things from any mailbox if you use the web interface.

I may end up doing that just so I can get rid of all those unwanted emails.

That won’t change anything. It will still store them in All Mail. It has nothing to do with Mail or any other client. It is how Gmail works. However, Gmail is neither POP nor IMAP, so using the web portal is best.

You have to disable it in IMAP in Gmail’s Settings, Advanced, Labels.

Barney-15E wrote:

I thought it was about working from within Mail?

All of my advice was about the web interface.

Now that I look more closely, I did miss your mention of the setting just under "When I mark a message in IMAP as deleted" which is, I think the really important one for the behavior of a third-party app. And yes, setting that to either of the second two options should solve the problem in Mail (Move the message to the Trash or Immediately delete the message forever). Mine is set to Option 2 because sometimes I make mistakes.

Do you mean the Gmail label mapped to Archive?