I am struggling to connect Thunderbird to my Gmail account and get all the labels/folders consistent over all the mail clients I use. I use several mail clients and usual… (read more)
I am struggling to connect Thunderbird to my Gmail account and get all the labels/folders consistent over all the mail clients I use. I use several mail clients and usually end up with a bunch of labels that duplicate another one, so I am trying to clean it up. I should add that what is below is my best interpretation of what is happening, but it may not be correct.
I have been following the advice here:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-and-gmail#w_understanding-gmail-labels-and-thunderbird-folders
and here:
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/78892#zippy=%2Cthunderbird
This is Thunderbird 128.5.0esr (64-bit) on Mac Monterey.
Ok, so I have a Gmail account set up to use UK English. I get labels Spam and Bin.
(If I have a Gmail account set up to use US English, I get Junk and Trash. Got to wonder what Google was thinking in making them different! Oddly enough, US English gets Vacation Responder while UK English gets Out-of-office Autoreply.)
Thunderbird seems to sometimes want to use Junk and Trash, whether set to US English or GB English (=UK). This appears to be tied to the Junk Settings for the account in Thunderbird. If I disable adaptive junk mail controls, I get a new folder called Junk, and the Bin folder seems to be renamed to Trash. If I had not disabled it, presumably TB would have been happy to use Bin and Spam, but the link above suggests disabling it and letting Gmail handle spam. While it is good, it is nowhere near perfect. (If I then re-enable adaptive junk mail controls, nothing changes. It does not go back to what it was. I still have Spam, Trash and Junk.)
However, Gmail itself is still showing labels Spam and Bin and no Junk. In Junk Settings for the account, Destination & Retention, it is possible to tell TB where to put junk messages. In particular, I can sometimes tell it to put the messages in Spam. But not always. Sometimes Spam is not visible as an option but Junk is.
So then I go to Synchronization & Storage, the Advanced button. This shows that Spam and Trash are not checked so will not be downloaded (or uploaded). Junk, however, is checked and will be downloaded.
I think this means that any messages sent to Spam or Trash in TB will not be reflected on Gmail. I guess they will disappear from the original label on Gmail, but will not be visible on any other device accessing the Gmail account. Re-enabling adaptive junk mail controls does not change what is being synchronized.
It all seems a bit flakey. I suspect both links above need updating. In particular, the reference to [Gmail] folder seems out of date since setting up a new account has no references to a folder of that name. All the folders appear at the top level.
And there are definitely some inconsistencies in what TB does.
