Gmail and IMAP

[Jane]

So, I bit the bullet and changed from POP3 to IMAP for my email.  I use Gmail.

Turns out I had 3000+ emails in my Gmail inbox and then I imported all my existing emails in their obsessively neat and tidy folders into Gmail.  Some of those folders contained 3000+ emails in layers and layers of neatly labelled folders, and some of them were the same emails that were in my gmail inbox.

So now I'm learning about using gmail's labels and it is not going well.

Has anybody ever done anything like this and do they have any suggestions?  I am a hoarder but also have to have everything neat and tidy, so am pretty much headed for a nervous breakdown right now.

Suggestions?  Sympathy?

[Suzee]

I do have some experience with it Jane.  Remember you can put labels within labels so they almost 'feel' like subfolders. then You can use 'rules" to put things where you want them. I'm happy to answer if you have any specific questions.

[Jane]

Thanks Suzee.  Well the stuff I imported came in with labels for every folder, so I can see that they nest like folders and I know in principle that Gmail doesn't have folder just a whole lot of mail in All Mail and labels which make it appear in sub-sets but does that apply to the stuff I dragged-and-dropped into the IMAP folder on my computer?

For instance, a Triad Roleplay email I got a month ago must be in All Mail with no label (because I never labelled anything in Gmail) but it would also have been in my folder that I added manually with about 7 levels of labelling!  Will Gmail have discarded one of them or are they both living in All Mail now?

I'm going to break out in hives just thinking about it.

[Jane]

Thank you so much for your advice in chat Suzee.  I have now cleared everything out of my inbox other than my unread messages and now feel like a have a clear area I can work from!

[Suzee]

No problem

[Jane]

In the middle of the night I realised what I had done wrong!  Since I had all the mail I wanted to keep in my POP3-based folders on my computer I should have emptied my Gmail account completely before starting this process!  Then when I brought my old folders across into Gmail each email would have been the only copy - and it would have been where I was used to it being.

Perhaps I needed to give it more thought before deciding to make the change!  :geek:

[Suzee]

Awww!  I know there are times when I seem to 'dream' the answers to things like that! Maybe its just you getting out of the way of your brain noodling through the problem.

Anyway,  

 

[Jane]

The email is functional now.  Not exactly up and running ... more like up and staggering around.