A Better Way to Set Up Gmail IMAP

If you've set up Gmail IMAP using Google's instructions, you may have noticed a couple of snags—namely that your Sent Mail, Drafts, and Deleted Mail aren't necessarily matching up as you'd expect between your email client and Gmail. To remedy this, you'll have to tweak a few advanced configuration settings in your client, and weblog 5ThirtyOne has the details. On the iPhone, for example:

  1. Open 'Settings' > 'Mail' > [Your Gmail IMAP account] > 'Advanced'
  2. Select 'Drafts Mailbox' > 'On the Server' > '[Gmail] Drafts'. Return to the 'Advanced' view.
  3. Select 'Sent Mailbox' > 'On the Server' > '[Gmail] Sent Mail'. Return to the 'Advanced' view.
  4. Select 'Deleted Mailbox' > 'On the Server' > '[Gmail] Trash'. Return to the 'Advanced' view.

If you prefer your deleted email client messages to archive in Gmail rather than go to the trash (which seems like a more Gmail-like solution), there's one change.

Rather than mapping your Trash folder to Gmail's Trash, you'll want to select the "All Mail" mailbox—effectively removing the email from your inbox but not deleting it from your Gmail account altogether.

Also, in order to apply multiple labels to a message from your email client, you'll need to copy the message to every folder corresponding to the Gmail label you want. The post details the improved methods for setting up Gmail IMAP on both Mail.app and the iPhone, but these same basic steps should work with any desktop email client of your choosing. That said, Google still hasn't enabled our IMAP access, so if you give this a try, let us know how it works for you in the comments.