Mar 27, 2020
IMAP inconsistency, "All Mail" vs. Inbox
When I drag a message from Inbox to (say) a folder in another account, it disappears from Inbox but stays in "All Mail". Gmail simply removes the Inbox label from the message in "All Mail". It makes sense.
If I drag a message from "All Mail", again into (say) a folder in another account, then it should either (i) disappear from all folders for which it has a label or (ii) remain in all folders for which it has a label. It would not make sense for the message to disappear from "All Mail" but remain in the other folders. This is because messages in other folders (say) "x", "y", and "z"are simply messages in "All Mail" with tags "x", "y", and "z".
I am seeing exactly the behaviour that I
shouldn't. In Outlook, if I drag a message away from "All Mail" into a
folder of another account, it disappears from "All Mail" but remains in
Inbox. This should be impossible, as message that is not in "All Mail"
is unavailable for tagging with "Inbox". In fact, the webmail interface
shows the message still in "All Mail" and tagged with "Inbox", which
makes more sense. Hence, the IMAP synchronization is failing to yield
an accurate Outlook folder view of Gmail's message tagging.
This asynchronicity is not fixed by Initiating a folder or server update/sync. Nor is it fixed by unsubscribing from the two asynchronous folders (Inbox and "All Mail") and resubscribing.
I have two questions. First, how do I get the IMAP client to build a correct view of the messages?
Second, how do I prevent this kind of inconsistency?
The second question is important because I intend to do a wholesale housecleaning of my email, separating my work and personal messages into different accounts. I have to triage the messages one-by-one. I was hoping that by dragging messages away from "All Mail", these messages would disappear from other folders. This triaging on the basis of individual messages would be impractical if I have to do even the smallest amount of resynchronization each time.
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Last edited Mar 27, 2020
Mar 27, 2020
Your solution of dragging a message from "All Mail" to Gmail's Trash folder does indeed remove the message from Inbox as well. That's the key to a solution. What I might do is to create a "work" folder and copy selected message to it in the process of vetting individual messages. All the carefully selected messages will thus be in one place, from where I can *copy* them to the work account. Since it is a copy operation, they should still be in the "work" folder, making it easy to drag them into Trash in one swoop.
Thank you!
Afternote: Egad. I just realized a fatal flaw in my plan. If I use another account for work, and tell everyone to use the new address, then appointments will go to the Outlook Calendar for the new address. Then I will be juggling two calendars, which inevitably leads to disaster....I have to think this through. For the time being, I can avoid cognitive noise from work emails by searching for "-label:work" in the webmail interface (without the quotes).
Solution to fatal flaw: The solution might be overlaying calendars: https://www.msoutlook.info/question/combine-and-sync-outlook-calendars.
Afternote: Better yet, Outlooks funnels appointments from all gmail
accounts to the one calendar in my local *.pst file. This might be
because I haven't created Outlook calendars for the Gmail accounts
(assuming that's even possible). Regardless of why, I am declaring
victory.
UPDATE: Unfortunately, the idea of copying messages from All Mail to the new account, then subsequently dragging them to Trash in the originating account, hasn't worked, at least not reliably en masse. A sea of the copied messages still exist in the originating account. I don't know if they all do. And based on re-copying one message, any further attempts will result in duplicates at the destination.
The only thing I can do to re-drag the messages to Trash and hope that all such messages exist in the destination account. Unfortunately, the results of searching for messages that should
have been removed from the originating account seems to be
non-repeatable and inconsistent depending on whether on searches on All
Mail, Inbox, Outlook, and Gmail's webmail. It seems to have become all
one big unreliable mess (and this is not meant as an expression of
unappreciation for the suggestion -- on the contrary, I appreciate it
alot). However, I believe that I should mark both answers as non-answers, but there don't seem to be forum controls for doing this.
Last edited Mar 30, 2020
Original Poster Andrew Hancock marked this as an answer
Mar 27, 2020
Do you have Auto-expunge disabled in the Gmail advanced IMAP settings? That would explain why the messages do not return to All Mail in IMAP.
One way to avoid the confusion, and remove the messages from the Gmail server, would be to copy, not move, the messages to the outside folders, then, when they are still selected in Gmail, copy or move them to the [Gmail]/Trash folder.
Original Poster Andrew Hancock marked this as an answer
All Replies (5)
Mar 27, 2020
Mar 27, 2020
When dragging a message out of the account folders, Outlook does a copy, followed by a "mark deleted". Gmail's IMAP service maps "mark deleted" to "remove label", so you would not expect the message to lose any other labels when it is dragged out of one folder. Normally, marking a message as deleted in "All Mail" does nothing on the server, as there is no "All Mail" label. Some clients will hide the message, but it should come back when you refresh the folder view. The only way to make the message disappear from all folders is to copy or move it to the [Gmail]/Trash folder.
This can be modified a little with the advanced IMAP settings in Gmail, but there is no option to make it delete messages that still contain other labels, other than the copy to Trash mentioned above.
You can send your suggestion to the Gmail team by using the feedback option in the web app.
Mar 27, 2020
The problem is the persistent discrepancy between Outlook's "All Mail" folder and what is shown in "All Mail" using Gmail's webmail interface. The message still *is* in "All Mail" according to the webmail interface, and the problem is getting the Outlook IMAP client to correctly show this. Currently, the message is missing from Outlook's "All Mail" folder despite the synchronization attempts described in the original question, even though it shows in the Inbox folder.
Eliminating the discrepancy is a small step, but avoiding the discrepancy is the real challenge. I need to avoid it in triaging a high volume of messages one-by-one.
Last edited Mar 27, 2020
Do you have Auto-expunge disabled in the Gmail advanced IMAP settings? That would explain why the messages do not return to All Mail in IMAP.
One way to avoid the confusion, and remove the messages from the Gmail server, would be to copy, not move, the messages to the outside folders, then, when they are still selected in Gmail, copy or move them to the [Gmail]/Trash folder.
Original Poster Andrew Hancock marked this as an answer
Your solution of dragging a message from "All Mail" to Gmail's Trash folder does indeed remove the message from Inbox as well. That's the key to a solution. What I might do is to create a "work" folder and copy selected message to it in the process of vetting individual messages. All the carefully selected messages will thus be in one place, from where I can *copy* them to the work account. Since it is a copy operation, they should still be in the "work" folder, making it easy to drag them into Trash in one swoop.
Thank you!
Afternote: Egad. I just realized a fatal flaw in my plan. If I use another account for work, and tell everyone to use the new address, then appointments will go to the Outlook Calendar for the new address. Then I will be juggling two calendars, which inevitably leads to disaster....I have to think this through. For the time being, I can avoid cognitive noise from work emails by searching for "-label:work" in the webmail interface (without the quotes).
Solution to fatal flaw: The solution might be overlaying calendars: https://www.msoutlook.info/question/combine-and-sync-outlook-calendars.
Afternote: Better yet, Outlooks funnels appointments from all gmail
accounts to the one calendar in my local *.pst file. This might be
because I haven't created Outlook calendars for the Gmail accounts
(assuming that's even possible). Regardless of why, I am declaring
victory.
UPDATE: Unfortunately, the idea of copying messages from All Mail to the new account, then subsequently dragging them to Trash in the originating account, hasn't worked, at least not reliably en masse. A sea of the copied messages still exist in the originating account. I don't know if they all do. And based on re-copying one message, any further attempts will result in duplicates at the destination.
The only thing I can do to re-drag the messages to Trash and hope that all such messages exist in the destination account. Unfortunately, the results of searching for messages that should
have been removed from the originating account seems to be
non-repeatable and inconsistent depending on whether on searches on All
Mail, Inbox, Outlook, and Gmail's webmail. It seems to have become all
one big unreliable mess (and this is not meant as an expression of
unappreciation for the suggestion -- on the contrary, I appreciate it
alot). However, I believe that I should mark both answers as non-answers, but there don't seem to be forum controls for doing this.
Last edited Mar 30, 2020
Original Poster Andrew Hancock marked this as an answer