Venkat’s Views

Gmail, IMAP and Thunderbird - Some observations

Google announced recently that Gmail will now support IMAP for free and that it will be rolled out over the next couple of days. I was able to setup IMAP for my Gmail account in Thunderbird using the instructions provided by Google. Upon actually using Thunderbird for accessing Gmail over IMAP, I found that there were a few quirks in how IMAP has been implemented (the IMAP Access section under Gmail Help has more details about these quirks, under the FAQ and Troubleshooting sections).

Some of my observations on the IMAP interface include:

• All of the custom labels from the Gmail web interface appear as IMAP folders with the same names, except when they have a forward slash (”/”) in them in which case Thunderbird translates them to folders that contain sub-folders.
• The special folder called “[Gmail]” has sub-folders that correspond to the default views that are available on the Gmail web interface. Exceptions are “Inbox” which appears outside this special folder hierarchy and also “Chats” which has not been implemented yet as a folder in IMAP.
• The special “[Gmail]” folder is grayed out in Thunderbird probably because it is defined on the IMAP server as a folder that can contain only other sub-folders and not messages. This can be verified by the fact that one will not be able to drag-and-drop an individual email message into this “[Gmail]” folder using Thunderbird.
• Any message that has labels will appear in the folder associated with that label and also in the”[Gmail]/All Mail” folder. The “[Gmail]/All Mail” folder will contain all of your email irrespective of the fact that they have labels or not.
• If a message has multiple labels, copies of it will appear in all the corresponding IMAP folders (associated with those labels).
• The conversation threads from Gmail web interface will disappear in Thunderbird’s IMAP interface and instead each email will appear on its own in Thunderbird. Enabling the thread view in Thunderbird (View -> Sort by -> Threaded) will bring back this functionality, although sometimes, Thunderbird threads do not necessarily equate to Gmail threads.
• Thunderbird creates a separate “Trash” folder (with the Trash icon) under the main folder hierarchy.

Some of my observations on the IMAP actions (and their corresponding Gmail web interface end results) include:

• Any new incoming email that is not filtered (using filters setup on the Gmail web interface) will appear in both the Inbox and the “[Gmail]/All Mail” folder as new (unread) email. The exception is if it has been detected to be a spam, in which case, it will directly go to the “[Gmail]/Spam” folder and will not show up anywhere else.
• Any new incoming email that is filtered (using filters setup on the Gmail web interface) will appear in the folders that correspond to the filter’s actions as well as in the “[Gmail]/All Mail” folder as new (unread) email.
• Any stored chats gets delivered to the “[Gmail]/All Mail” folder as already read messages. These chats have a time stamp of when they were fetched from the IMAP server (and not when they actually occured as indicated by the “Date: ” header inside those chat messages).
• When an email message is opened for reading in Thunderbird, it is marked as read in all folders (i.e., in the folders that correspond to that email’s labels as well as in the “[Gmail]/All Mail” folder).
• When an email message is moved to a folder (that corresponds to a label in the Gmail web interface), it is assigned that label in the Gmail web interface.
• When an email message is copied to a folder (that corresponds to a label in the Gmail web interface), it is assigned an additional label in the Gmail web interface (that corresponds to the folder it has been copied to).
• When an email message is “starred” (or “flagged”) in Thunderbird, all copies of the message (including ones in other IMAP folders that correspond to the same message but with additional labels) is also starred and additionally, the message is also copied to the “[Gmail]/Starred” folder.
• Creating a folder (except as a sub-folder under the “[Gmail]” special folder) creates a label in the Gmail web interface (that corresponds to the folder being created).
• Deleting an email message from Inbox removes the message only from the Inbox and a copy of it still lives in the “[Gmail]/All Mail” folder.
• Deleting an email message from a folder that corresponds to a label in the Gmail web interface removes the message only from that folder (and removes the corresponding label in the Gmail web interface). A copy of the message still lives in the “[Gmail]/All Mail” folder.
• Both the above delete actions result in the email message being either marked for deletion, or moved to the “Trash” folder or removed immediately (depending on how Thunderbird is setup to handle message deletion). The master copy of the message that lives in the “[Gmail]/All Mail” folder is not deleted or moved to the “Trash” folder by both of the above delete actions.
• If an email message is moved to the “[Gmail]/Trash” folder, all copies of it (including the ones with additional labels that are filed in the corresponding folders) are moved to the Trash folder in the Gmail web interface. Removing the message from the “[Gmail]/Trash” folder will delete it permanently.
• If an email message is moved to the “[Gmail]/Spam” folder, all copies of it (including the ones with additional labels that are filed in the corresponding sub-folders) are moved to the Spam folder in the Gmail web interface (with additional reporting of the message as being spam). Removing the message from the “[Gmail]/Spam” folder will delete it permanently.

Overall, except for a few minor Gmail specific quirks and adjustments that I needed to make (or understand), the IMAP implementation has been a very positive experience for me so far.

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Tags: gmail, google, IMAP, thunderbird

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.