workflow with gmail

[thoresson]

Hi,

I’m currently using IMAP to access mail stored at my web host. But since space is limited, I’m considering a move to Gmail. Up until now, I’ve once every three months or something moved all current mail from my IMAP server to an offline backup, maitained in EagleFiler. This download has been done with help of OS X’s Mail.app.

Now, one of the reasons switching to Gmail is that I can have more old mail available in the cloud. But I still want a local backup as well. As things were before, this was easy. I imported copied all mails online to EagleFiler and then deleted them off the server.

But what about my new scenario, where I want to add new mail to EagleFiler but leave them on my Gmail account as well? How to keep track on what’s in EagleFiler and what’s not?

Interested in OS X-based workflow for using Gmail together with EagleFiler. Thanks in advance.

[Michael_Tsai]

But what about my new scenario, where I want to add new mail to EagleFiler but leave them on my Gmail account as well? How to keep track on what’s in EagleFiler and what’s not?

Have you considered using Gmail labels to keep track?

[thoresson]

Yes. But I have no clear idea on how. A “eaglefiler” label attached to all imported mails is all I can think of. But I can’t figure the rest out: How to get Mail.app showing all messages without that label.

[Michael_Tsai]

Yes. But I have no clear idea on how. A “eaglefiler” label attached to all imported mails is all I can think of. But I can’t figure the rest out: How to get Mail.app showing all messages without that label.

From Mail, if you drag the imported messages into an EagleFiler mailbox (which Gmail will show as a label on the Web), all the other mailboxes (except All Mail) will only contain unimported messages.

[thoresson]

I don’t get that. How can Gmail “see” the folders in EagleFiler and create labels for them? Or - I think I got it! - do you mean that I should have an EagleFiler label in Gmail into which I drag messages after they are imported?

But since messages in Gmail can have many labels, how come all other labels only will contain un-imported messages?

[Michael_Tsai]

Or - I think I got it! - do you mean that I should have an EagleFiler label in Gmail into which I drag messages after they are imported?

Right.

But since messages in Gmail can have many labels, how come all other labels only will contain un-imported messages?

Well, the above won’t work if you apply multiple labels to a message. In that case, you would need to do the reverse: use a label to indicate the messages not yet imported into EagleFiler. You could create a Gmail filter that applies the label to all incoming messages (i.e. messages that do not contain a nonsense word that you know no messages will contain) and then remove the label after importing.