How to stop auto-archive in Mail

Seems we are trapped in a political fight between Google & Apple. Consumer's will have to wait.
Most probobly until a third party comes with a mail app that deals with the problem. Then Apple will have to react.

As stated by Csound Gmail automatically moves all your mail to the All Mail folder, it does this if you use their web application or Apple Mail. The only thing that changed is Apple Mail now puts your All Mail foler under the archive sine for all purposes that's what it is. Gmail even keeps your deleted messages in All Mail unless you go into your settings and change the settings. If you are using imap the archive is not on your mac but the index file is and since you have tens of thousands of emails its going to get rather large. I barley use my Gmail and there 64000 emails in my Archive (All Mail).

Ro33y wrote:

Seems we are trapped in a political fight between Google & Apple. Consumer's will have to wait.

Seems you have completely failed to understand what is going on.

It happens in Gmail, at the website, long before the emails get anywhere near a mail client, any mail client.

Google make money by selling the content of your emails to interested parties, you're just an income stream.

I am trying something different.
I have gone to Gmail's Setting and make it to forward any mail to my iCloud account.

Then I deactivated GMail in Mail.
Hopefuly I will be able to handle new mail this way. For my old mails I will have to go to GMail.

Ro33y wrote:

I am trying something different.
I have gone to Gmail's Setting and make it to forward any mail to my iCloud account.

Then I deactivated GMail in Mail.
Hopefuly I will be able to handle new mail this way. For my old mails I will have to go to GMail.

You haven't change a thing except your perception of what is going on.

Gmail doesn't have folders. It has Labels, much like the new Tags in Finder, but for email. Every email that comes through Gmail's system gets initially tagged with two Labels, "Inbox" and "All Mail". Since Mail uses Folders, it appears that the message is inside two different folders. It is not.

When you move an email out of the inbox in Gmail (including trashing it), all that happens is the Inbox label is removed and a new label for the destination is added. The "All Mail" label is still intact and the email still "resides" in "All Mail" along with wherever else it has been Labeled.

Hi Barney:
Thanks. I understand this process is still going inside GMail.
This is not a fix, just a different approach to keep using my GMail account in Mail, without all the auto-archiving anoying issues.

And it is working fine! Mail feels much lighter in my Mac, iPhone and iPad, and the eternal sinching process with Gmail has vanished.

Setting aside the whole Google conspiracy theory issue...

I upgraded to Mavericks and mail started acting strange, with only those tagged "Important" as making it to the Inbox with the rest going to Archive.

I followed Melinda's instructions and nothing happened. Until I shut down Mail and re-started. Then things are back to normal. So, thank you Melinda.

Melinda, your suggestion doesn't seem to work for me. Apple Mail is still archiving deleted gmail messages instead of deleting them. I do not care if they are archived on the gmail site. I would just like to be able to delete gmail messages and have them leave my hard drive.

I'm using a 2012 Mac mini with Mavericks.

Hi,

I use @virginmedia.com (plus an @gmail.com account) which reportedly uses gmail's servers (don't understand the tech, maybe you do?). But since everything else - landline, mobile, TV and broadband works well with Virgin, I would prefer not to change.

I thought the problem with the Archive appeared with Yosemite, but it might well be that it has been there even earlier, but not as obvious as after my upgrade to Yosemite.

If not gmail - what should I use???

Best

Nina

Thanks, Melinda

I have this problem too, and most obviously since the upgrade to Yosemite.

My problem is that I understand so little of all these settings. Any other setting, do you reckon, that should be checked?

Best regards

Nina

The instructions were for getting rid of the Archive folder entirely in Mac Mail, not changing how the Mail program treats deleted messages. This article should help for that: http://jeffschuette.com/2012/03/07/setting-up-apple-mail-to-rock-and-roll-with-g mail/

If you don't want or need to keep the emails in Archive, yes, you can delete them. But don't delete them if you'd like to be able to refer to them later.

As for settings to check, it depends on what you're trying to do.

Thank you, Melinda.

It seems the Archive mailbox for Gmail has disappeared! The strange thing is that my main email account is with Virginmedia.com, and as far as I've understood it, they use Google's servers. When I changed the settings for this account but put Virginmedia as IMAP Path Prefix, the Sent folder disappeared! So I removed that, and it seems that the Archive for Virginmedia.com has also disappeared. How did this come about, I wonder!

Oh dear, this is Greek to me.

Best

Nina

Thanks for your advice - very helpful!! I had both a Gmail and Yahoo accounts set up. I made the changes in Gmail and it worked... but am still having similar problems with Yahoo (i.e. everything is automatically going to the Archive folder in Mac Mail). Do you know where the setting are in Yahoo to do the same thing?

Hello All,

Melinda thank you for your help and knowledge. I have several gmail accounts that I access in Mac Mail. I often move the emails from one one inbox to another and then from an inbox to iCloud folders once I am done with them. Whenever I move mail to/from any folders I often find that the mail goes to an archive folder. Often mail that has been in a particular box will just move itself to archive. Any ideas? Any other info I need to provide?