Does using IMAP in Mail defeat the purpose of archiving email in Eaglefiler?
I use IMAP so that if I read an email on my Palm, and delete it, it will still exist on the Gmail server. But I notice that if you use IMAP, Mail maintains a complete collection of all your mail in addition to the mailboxes that one uses daily to winnow and sort. (The larger collection of mail appears low on the left rail of mail under the rubric MYNAME@GMAIL.COM, with a whole set of sub-folders. It’s a subject of discussion on the Apple forums, as this complicates searching.)
Eaglefiler is billed as speeding up Mail by freeing it of old messages. But doesn’t the way it handles IMAP mean it will still have a huge, onerous number of emails no matter how much archiving you do?
Have a local backup that’s independent of your IMAP mail server.
Speed up Mail, Spotlight, and your backups—if you delete the messages from the server or have them not show up in Mail.
Search and organize the messages using an interface that you may find more convenient than Mail or Gmail.
Personally, I only keep recent messages on the IMAP server. I delete them after archiving them in EagleFiler. Otherwise Mail becomes unbearable slow to sync with the server and just to browse and search the messages.
If you want to keep a complete archive of your mail on the IMAP server, you could configure Mail to only show/store a subset of the mailboxes.
With some IMAP servers, Mail lets you control which mailboxes to subscribe to.
Gmail lets you control which mailboxes are visible to IMAP clients.
You can set the IMAP path prefix in Mail so that it only shows a particular subtree of mailboxes.
Using IMAP in Mail does not necessarily defeat the purpose of archiving emails in EagleFiler, but it does introduce some complexities. Here’s why:
Understanding IMAP and Local Mail Storage
IMAP synchronizes your email across multiple devices, meaning that changes (such as deletions or folder movements) made on one device reflect everywhere. Apple Mail, when using IMAP, maintains a local cache of all messages from the server, which can lead to a large number of stored emails, even if you archive messages elsewhere.
How EagleFiler Helps
EagleFiler is designed to offload old messages from Mail, improving performance by reducing the number of emails Mail has to handle. When you archive emails to EagleFiler:
They are removed from Mail (if you choose to delete them from the mailbox after archiving).
They are stored locally in EagleFiler’s library, separate from Mail’s IMAP system.
They no longer contribute to Mail’s local database, potentially speeding up Mail.
The Potential Issue
If you use IMAP and don’t delete emails from Gmail after archiving them in EagleFiler, Mail will continue syncing those messages, keeping them locally. This means:
Mail’s database remains large.
Searching in Mail may still be slow.
The benefits of archiving are reduced.
How to Make Archiving Effective
To truly benefit from EagleFiler:
Archive & Delete from Mail – After archiving messages in EagleFiler, delete them from Gmail so they no longer sync to Mail.
Disable Mail’s Local Storage (Optional) – Some users configure Mail to store only recent messages offline, reducing its local footprint.
Use EagleFiler for Searching Instead of relying on Mail’s search, use EagleFiler to quickly find older messages.