Gmail offering IMAP support

[JR Ewing]

FINALLY!!!! :woot::woot:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202601159

[peoplessi]

Now I even might start using it :)

[JR Ewing]

What's really nice about this is now you can transfer all your archived mail to your Gmail account. I have emails that go back to 2001. While I've been going through and deleting emails I no longer need, the ones I do want to keep I would like to have on the Gmail server so I can access them anywhere. With IMAP support, this can be done very easily.

I know IMAP isn't anything new, but until recently, it hasn't been something I've needed. Now that I can use it, I don't know how I went this long without it.

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

I have ~4.5 gigs of storage space in my gmail account.

[Joe Siegler]

What's really nice about this is now you can transfer all your archived mail to your Gmail account. I have emails that go back to 2001. While I've been going through and deleting emails I no longer need, the ones I do want to keep I would like to have on the Gmail server so I can access them anywhere. With IMAP support, this can be done very easily.

I never thought of using it for that. That's a great idea - thanks!

[JR Ewing]

You might want to read "this" (http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/turn-thunderbird-into-the-ultimate-gmail-imap-client-314574.php) website if you're using Thunderbird. Even if you're not, this info could be useful.

One thing I'm having problems with since I started using IMAP is all my outgoing mail on the computer using IMAP isn't being downloaded on my computer using POP. The only way I've found to get around this is to load up my Gmail accounts via IMAP on my computer using POP and drag all my sent mail from that day over to my sent items in my POP accounts. It's really a pain though.

You might also want to turn off the drafts feature in your mail client. I found out that drafts were being saved on the server as sent mail. However, they were not actually sent. But when I was typing a long email, I found several rough draft copies of a single email in my Sent Items. I don't know if this happens in other mail clients, but it does happen in Thunderbird.

[Joe Siegler]

The moral of the story is don't use Thunderbird. I tried it, and it wasn't that great. It was the same slow mail client that Netscape Communicator used to have in the day. :) Even Mozilla cut it loose.

But this isn't a "bash an email" client. I'm using this to move archived mail into Gmail, and then when I'm finished, bye bye old mail archive in Pegasus Mail at home.

[JR Ewing]

Dang Joe, I think you're right. I just sent a test message from my Gmail account in Outlook 2007, set up as an IMAP account, to my Hotmail account. Then I went into Thunderbird and downloaded new mail and that test message showed up in my sent items just as it should.

I redid this same test again except I used Thunderbird rather than Outlook 2007. I sent the message and downloaded new mail via POP. The sent message was not downloaded at all.

So Thunderbird is not doing something right here.

[Joe Siegler]

Here's a related story about a guy with Gmail & IMAP.

http://apocryph.org/finally_moved_my_whole_lifes_email_google