Mavericks Mail App and Gmail folders

Gmail in Mavericks is not working properly for me, either. It is crucially losing or missing certain messages. No idea why. I am going to have to assume that Apple is aware of this issue and -- hopefully! -- will fix bugs soon. Until then, I appreciate hearing about ideas for workarounds.

If your email is IMAP (Gmail or any other service that supports IMAP) then for just $1.99 in the App store how about trying Airmail. I am using that for now and it runs fine. That would be one work-around.

The nice thing about IMAP is that you can easily switch clients or computers and still retain all your email.

doug

I am using AirMail now and loving it. I’m done with MacMail until Apple fixes this. It is hard to believe they would screw up something that is so fundamental.

I have identical problems with Airmail (just installed it because of the recommendations on this thread). In short, if I move any message from my inbox to the gmail folders it goes and them reappears seconds later. Same in the standard Apple Mail app.

Weird. I am moving messages in Airmail from my inbox to gmail folders zillions of times a day and none of them reappear in the inbox.

However, Airmail support is quite good. Why don't you open a support ticket (via Help in the application) and somebody is sure to get back to you. You can make your support request private, or you can make it public and get help from others in their support forums.

doug

Thanks.

Yes, I have posted on their support forum too. It's Sunday so I don't expect a reply today. One thing - do you have "All Mail" showing or hidden in your Gmail lables settings? Showing appears to be the work-around but that means zillions of emails are downloaded to the Mac. I have very limited space on my Airbook SSD.

I've never hidden it before. And I looked and All Mail is showing in Airmail with email messages going back 10 years. I don't think it makes duplicates though. I think it intelligently labels.

I have 4 Gmail accounts and 2 Hostgator accounts with email in some accounts going back to the last century, The entire size of my Airmail folder in Application Support is just 4.2 GB.

I don't know if it would have been any less if I hid All Mail. I'm using IMAP, so I do want to be able to see everything. I'm not sure if it actually downloaded everything to my iMac or just headers initially or what. But it's not taking up enormous amounts of space.

doug

I read this article:

http://tidbits.com/article/14219

Read from the paragraph starting with "Unfortunately, if you hide the All Mail label from Mail in Mavericks, then any messages you move from your Inbox (by filing or deleting) magically reappear back in the Inbox later"

I don't have an Airmail folder in Application Support. I have a Mail folder in ~\Library\Applications which is 1.18 GB.

Sorry, I need to get out of the Windows backslashes habit.

Same issue here. Also, ever since this "upgrade" to mavericks, I've lost access to iLife and numerous other critical components. 250k HD pics and videos, and a dozen TeraBytes of music being lost is no big deal.

/sarcasm.

I highly recommend calling Apple instead of trying to use a fix that worked for someone else who more than likely is running at least slightly, if not very differen't hardware/software/OS/versions-of-apps, etc.

Don't forget to religiously use Time Machine for backups for situations like these!

Hi Doug,

Yes, you are right, the website doesn't say anything about it, but I found this tweet where they say that no issues were found with Mavericks.

https://twitter.com/postbox_support/status/347751961065578498

So far it is working perfectly on my mac. Actually I found the focus pane being really useful and even better than Mail.

I think both Airmail and Postbox are doing their job. Airmail is cheaper $1.99, Postbox is $9.99.

Personally I'm choosing Postbox because it really looks like Mail, and I can work faster.

Airmail looks more like Sparrow instead.

It's just a matter of personal preference, and price.

Patrix

After more testing, unfortunately I have nothing but more problems to report:

• Creating a GMail account as an "Other" IMAP account only works temporarily. Upon restart of the Mail program, it realizes you tried to trick it and changes all the settings on the account back to "Google IMAP". Of particular annoyance is the storing of Drafts on the server, which causes a large number of entries to be put there (as you edit your mail, it stores a copy periodically) and moved to the Trash folder. Sure, Apple could say "What do you care? They're in the Trash anyway?" But that's not the point.
• When viewing in "Organize by Conversation" mode, the labels on the right of the messages are sometimes odd choices (e.g., Archive) even when the message is in the Inbox. [These labels are to let you know which mailbox each message is in (if not in the currently selected mailbox). A likely example would be "Sent Messages" if you're having a back-and-forth email with someone and you're viewing your Inbox.] I can somewhat forgive this because a message can be in multiple folders, but still it is making odd choices.
• Sometimes the Delete key will delete a message instantly, even though the (unchangeable) settings tell it to move the message to the Trash mailbox and only delete messages after one month. (This is particularly bad given that I'm in the habit of hitting delete and expecting it to archive.) I don't know exactly what triggers this bad behavior yet.

On an unrelated note (I will probably open a separate discussion but I thought you guys might be interested), I have found another bug which shows (humorously) when I get an update to this discussion. When viewed in "Organize by Conversation" mode and the Conversations are collapsed, each message is shown in the thread twice. It doesn't exist twice, and all operations on it act normally. It's just displayed twice in the thread. Turn off "Organize by Conversation" or expand the thread and the view is correct. I think the bug is triggered by the "In-Reply-To:" and "References:" headers not being understood. Very strange.

Bark!

tsd707 wrote:

"I do now have a working email client in Mavericks. I paid the $2 in the OS App store & purchased Airmail, and you know what? It works great with Gmail! I've setup 3 Gmail accounts in it and all of them are working fine. No missing mail, no problems deleting, no missing folders, no need to make any changes in my Gmail account settings. Was it worth paying $2 to have a working email client? Aboslutely. If & when Apple ever figures out what they're doing & fixes their own OS Mail app, I'll consider trying it again. Until then, I've removed it from the dock and put Airmail in its place."

Thank you tsd707, you saved my life.

virtualAThome wrote:

tsd707 wrote:

"I do now have a working email client in Mavericks. I paid the $2 in the OS App store & purchased Airmail, and you know what? It works great with Gmail! I've setup 3 Gmail accounts in it and all of them are working fine. No missing mail, no problems deleting, no missing folders, no need to make any changes in my Gmail account settings. Was it worth paying $2 to have a working email client? Aboslutely. If & when Apple ever figures out what they're doing & fixes their own OS Mail app, I'll consider trying it again. Until then, I've removed it from the dock and put Airmail in its place."

Thank you tsd707, you saved my life.

Glad I could help!

Hi Patrix,

Postbox also looks intriguing. Since the accounts are IMAP and since postbox has a 30 day free trial it certainly couldn't hurt to try it out.

The things that put me off personally were the lack of one-to-one support, the lack of support forums, and also I started reading about having to set things up special in the case of Gmail, which I didn't want to get into. With Airmail there was nothing special to set up.

Doug

Hi Doug,

I understand your concern, and I agree that Airmail seems to have a better support, community and frequent updates.

I'm personally looking to a substitute till Apple fixes Mail, then I'll go back to that.

The thing I don't like about Airmail, is the interface, and the filtering system, which in my case (and it's just a personal preference) slowes down my daily work routine.

I liked Postbox more just because it looks like Mail, and more or less has the same features. Also I appreciated the fact that it imported all my email accounts and settings from Mail automatically, which means it was ready to go right away.

On a long term, probably Airmail, is going to be more stable (updates and support), and if you have just one or 2 email accounts will be more than enough.

If you prefer a more essential design, using multiple accounts, with several subfolders, high usage of filters and labels, then I think Postbox is the winner.

Patrix