[Users] Crowded Inbox

[J.D. Ackle]

On Wed, 24 Jul 2013 16:36:25 -0700
Freeman <hewho7 at gmail.com> wrote:

Im' not sure I can help much, but here are some thoughts:

> I am trying to move primarily to Claws from mutt. I had Gmail set up for
> POP3 download by fetchmail.
> 
> My Imap acct for Gmail imitates the folder tree exactly. (Attachment
> inline below extracted from folderlist.xml.) I see this draft in
> [Imap]/Drafts as I type.
Honestly, I find it a bit odd that you are accessing your Gmail account both through POP3 and IMAP. It's true you can enable both protocols on your Gmail account settings. But as you're using IMAP, the Inbox folder on Claws-Mail will (in principle) always show the messages on your Gmail Inbox.

> However, on Google I have got filtered/labeled mail completely into
> categories other than "Primary." I get triplicate listings in Gmail, in
> the subfolder corresponding to the label, in Inbox and in "All Mail," a
> top level folder. I assume the triplicate has something to do with
> POP3 access.  
As I said before, with IMAP access, your Claws Inbox will always show your Google Inbox when you open the Claws Inbox folder, even if the messages are not saved locally on your computer.
Breaking it down:
+++ *Saving* your Gmail Inbox contents to your computer is optional: Right-click your INBOX folder in Claws -> "Subscriptions" and choose "Subscribe" to download the messages to your computer and always have them available, even when not connected to the Internet. Choose "Unsubscribe" to not have the messages downloaded to, and stored on, your computer.
+++ *Displaying* your Gmail Inbox contents when you open the folder in Claws (left-click) will (in principle) always happen with IMAP: The list of messages in your Google Inbox will be fetched but not the messages themselves; these will only be retrieved, individually, when you select the message (left-click).
On the "in principle" parentesis I talked about earlier: When you access the "Subscriptions" menu, you also get the option to "Only show subscribed folders". This would in effect prevent the INBOX folder to be shown at all (I did not test this with INBOX, it is a special, dunfamental folder, but I assume it will work as with other folders).

The paragraph above might actually get you the result you want, given as you get your Inbox messages through POP3. The IMAP Inbox would then not be shown, only the POP3 folder. But I'm not sure that would work, given that your Gmail account is setup on Claws as IMAP.

> However, I can't find a way to keep labeled/filtered mail from being
> listed in Inbox under Claws.
I'm not sure you are aware of this, but I might as well say it: Google mail *labels* are IMAP *folders*, but with a twist: the IMAP protocol provides folder synchronisation; these folders are treated as labels by Gmail. Hence if you have two or more Google labels on a message, you will have the same amount of copies on the IMAP folders (one copy on each IMAP folder / Gmail label).

> Folder list (Commerce, Debian, DebianForums, Ham & List are my
> labels/folders. The rest is default Gmail with POP3 and Imap access.)
I noticed you have some "duplicate" folders, such as "Sent" and "Sent mail". You might be interested to have a look at this page to learn how to setup Claws to make its "Sent" folder the same as the Google "Sent mail" one (same for Trash, Drafts, ...), amongst other tips on configuring a Gmail account on Claws:
http://www.claws-mail.org/faq/index.php?title=Using_Claws_with_Gmail