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Moving a message from IMAP folder to a local folder works - unless it's from GMail

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Mark Hill
Mark Hill
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For 15 years or so, I have used Thunderbird to move messages from one folder to another, say from an IMAP folder to a local folder, even between different IMAP accounts. The message is removed from the folder you drag it from, added to the folder you drag it to. Dragging a message out of an IMAP account and putting it in a local folder or another IMAP account removes it from the original account. This follows the desktop metaphor we've been using ever since the dawn of graphical user interfaces.

When I moved my mailbox to GMail, I continued to use Thunderbird manage it, connected by IMAP as before. Everything appeared to work the same way. Dragging a message out of my GMail Inbox to a local folder made it disappear from the Inbox and appear in the local folder. Many many years and hundreds of thousands of messages later, I realize that this has not been happening as I thought. My GMail account is nearly full of messages I thought I moved off GMail but actually only copied out while removing the Inbox tag and leaving them in All Mail. It's so bad that I believe I can write a tool to purge my All Mail of messages that have no tags faster than I can delete them by hand.

I read https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1130010 and was surprised that, at least 3 years ago, the consensus was that you have to delete the message separately, either on the GMail web interface, or by finding the message and deleting it from All Mail.

Has there been any update in the last 3 years? How do other people deal with this problem?

I would argue that the principle of least astonishment requires that a message moved out of GMail needs to be deleted - tagged as Trash, I suppose - whatever is required to remove it from the GMail account. While as a developer myself, I can understand the point of view that "if running the same IMAP commands on Google as on any other IMAP server doesn't have the same effect, that's Google's problem," I would argue that, no, it's not - Thunderbird needs to present the same effect to the user, even if special case code is required for GMail.

Thoughts? Recommendations?

For 15 years or so, I have used Thunderbird to move messages from one folder to another, say from an IMAP folder to a local folder, even between different IMAP accounts. The message is removed from the folder you drag it from, added to the folder you drag it to. Dragging a message out of an IMAP account and putting it in a local folder or another IMAP account removes it from the original account. This follows the desktop metaphor we've been using ever since the dawn of graphical user interfaces. When I moved my mailbox to GMail, I continued to use Thunderbird manage it, connected by IMAP as before. Everything appeared to work the same way. Dragging a message out of my GMail Inbox to a local folder made it disappear from the Inbox and appear in the local folder. Many many years and hundreds of thousands of messages later, I realize that this has not been happening as I thought. My GMail account is nearly full of messages I thought I moved off GMail but actually only copied out while removing the Inbox tag and leaving them in All Mail. It's so bad that I believe I can write a tool to purge my All Mail of messages that have no tags faster than I can delete them by hand. I read https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1130010 and was surprised that, at least 3 years ago, the consensus was that you have to delete the message separately, either on the GMail web interface, or by finding the message and deleting it from All Mail. Has there been any update in the last 3 years? How do other people deal with this problem? I would argue that the principle of least astonishment requires that a message moved out of GMail needs to be deleted - tagged as Trash, I suppose - whatever is required to remove it from the GMail account. While as a developer myself, I can understand the point of view that "if running the same IMAP commands on Google as on any other IMAP server doesn't have the same effect, that's Google's problem," I would argue that, no, it's not - Thunderbird needs to present the same effect to the user, even if special case code is required for GMail. Thoughts? Recommendations?

Изменено Mark Hill