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soethe6's avatar

A couple questions about using Mail.app with IMAP/Gmail on my iPhone...

Asked by soethe6 (537points) November 21st, 2007
2 responses
“Great Question” (0points)

I’m currently using Apple’s Mail program to check two email accounts—one a Gmail POP account, the other a university IMAP account. I’m planning to get an iPhone for Christmas, so ahead of that I’d like to change the Gmail to IMAP—which they recently launched—so that my computer’s Mail program and the iPhone mail program stay on the same page.

First question: if I switch Gmail to using IMAP (presumably by making a change through their Web site, then changing the settings in the Apple Mail program), is there going to be chaos in my computer’s mail program? E.g., will the computer get confused and download every undeleted message as new or something crazy like that? Or delete previously sent messages, etc? Or has the transition to Gmail’s IMAP been pretty smooth for people?

Question two: what’s going to happen when I introduce my iPhone to these two IMAP accounts? Will every undeleted message appear as new (unread) in my iPhone inbox? Will I be able to view messages in my “Sent” folder on the iPhone, even if they were sent from my computer, before I even got the iPhone?

Thanks for any tips or descriptions of how these two transitions (Gmail to IMAP, then the iPhone) work!

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bob's avatar

I just switched to Gmail IMAP on Mail.app. It was easy. You should definitely take a look at this page for explicit instructions on how to set up email for Mail.app, Gmail, and the iPhone. It works great—and their instructions let you map all the gmail folders to Mail.app. I guess clearing out your inbox beforehand will mean that Mail.app won’t have to download as many messages. But it should work just fine.

The iPhone should also work just fine. That’s the magic of IMAP, I think. Follow the instructions in that link and you should be fine. If you experience any particular problems then you can deal with them, but I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble.

bob (3223points)“Great Answer” (2points)
hearkat's avatar

I switched to IMAP GMail as soon as it became available to me, and have been able to retrieve Sent messages from my Mac on the iPhone, it just took a little longer to download it from the server. While GMail was still POP I didn’t even bother viewing it through Mail.app, so if your messages are marked unread on the server, you may want to change that on the GMail site prior to switching it. Enjoy your iPhone!!

hearkat (22922points)“Great Answer” (0points)

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