No choice on which IMAP folders to subscribe

Mail
1

eM Client shows the All Mail folder for Gmail. How can I eliminate eM Client from showing that folder?

I can log into my Gmail account using their webmail client and deselect “Show in IMAP” for the All Mail folder, but I suspect I need to refresh the list of folders to which eM Client subscribes at the server.

Under Account settings, and the IMAP tab, there is the option to automatically detect special folder names. All Mail is not listed yet eM Client included that pseudo-folder when it added its folders to which it subscribes. No option there to refresh or re-subscribe to folders reported by the IMAP server.

Other IMAP clients not only let you re-subscribe to IMAP folders, but also let you select to which you want to subscribe. Just because the server doles out a list of all folders does not mandate an IMAP client must subscribe to them all. I also tried right-clicking on an account in the tree pane, but neither Account Settings nor Properties give me the option to refresh the subscribed folders, or to choose which folders to subscribe.

Did eM Client figure automatic subscription was the only available method and wrest control away from its users? This would be the first e-mail client I’ve used in 30 years that does not let me decide to which IMAP folders I want the client to subscribe. No, I have not tested every IMAP client that has or does exist, but I’ve trialed dozens, and this is the only one that doesn’t let me decide to which folders it will subscribe. Back when I first started using Thunderbird, it let me choose to which folders it would subscribe. MS Outlook always let me choose to which folders to subscribe. Bad enough that Gmail’s IMAP is not really IMAP, but sufficiently different to label it as gIMAP, to only find out my client really is not a robust IMAP client that is outstripped in ancient IMAP functionality that extremely old and even new IMAP clients can perform.

2

Unfortunately that won’t work. All Mail is where all your messages are stored, and what it synced from the server. If you disable it in webmail, you will get a notification when you start eM Client that it can’t sync that account because you disabled it.

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If you don’t want a folder other than All Mail to sync from the server, untick the option in Gmail webmail to Show in IMAP.

3

I had to use Gmail’s webmail client to deselect “Show in IMAP” for the All Mail folder (which is not really a folder as none of them are since Gmail lies to IMAP clients that flags are folders). The All Mail pseudo-folder is a view of all e-mails in all folders (except Trash and Junk). There is no All Mail folder on the server. E-mails shown in All Mail are actually in a different folder (um, have a different label, like Inbox, Sent, Archive, etc). All Mail is an aggregate view of all e-mails regardless of which folder (label) they are assigned.

Yet, after disabling IMAP access to the Gmail All Mail folder, eM Client complains “For Gmail and Google Apps account, eM Client synchronizes the ‘All Mail’ folder.” Why would eM Client mandate access to the All Mail folder (i.e., e-mails with ANY label assigned)? One, none of the folders reported by Gmail are folders, but labels some of which are system labels versus user-defined labels. Two, the All Mail folder is a view showing all e-mails in all folders, not of e-mails in that particular folder. An IMAP client that subscribes to the Inbox, Sent, Trash, Junk, and other folders should present what e-mails are found in those folders using the LIST command. Since IMAP is employed (not Gmail’s Mail API), labels on e-mails is not accessible to clients. There is no reason to be listing the All Mail folder to then determine within which folder an e-mail should be presented. The IMAP client does a LIST command to have the server send a list of folders, SELECT to select a folder, and a FETCH (preferrably on UIDs) to get e-mails in that folder. Fetching on e-mails in the selected Inbox folder does not involve fetching from any other folder, including not fetching from All Mail.

There is something definitely non-standard in eM Client’s IMAP access to Gmail that mandates the All Mail folder must be subscribed, but only a requirement to eM Client. I prefer an IMAP client that behaves as an IMAP client, not some frankenjob to adapt to Gmail’s non-standard IMAP access.

Why would any IMAP client need to subscribe to the All Mail folder? That shows e-mails in ALL folders, not in whatever folder (um, by any server-side label) an e-mail actually resides. Gmail’s IMAP is non-standard. Apparently so is eM Client’s IMAP access to Gmail, but without good reason for the requirement.

Having to enable “Show in IMAP” in the server-side settings also means that aggregate folder is accessible to all IMAP clients, not just eM Client.

4

Yes, I already said you can’t disable that.

Actually it is the only real folder on the server. All your messages are in the All Mail folder and have labels (tags) that sort them into virtual folders you see as Inbox, Sent etc.

5

When an IMAP clients issues the LIST command is when the server reports what “folders” are available. All e-mails in the All Mail folder have flags for other pseudo folders (Inbox, Sent, Archive, etc). When an IMAP client wants to look at e-mails in a folder, it issues a SELECT on the folder (returned via LIST) and issues a FETCH on the e-mails in that folder.

Regardless of how Gmail uses labels, it has to lie to IMAP clients that flags are folders. Just how is an IMAP client going to get labels on e-mails in the All Mail folder? It can’t. There are no IMAP commands to get labels on e-mails. The IMAP client selects a folder from where it gets e-mails. Getting an e-mail from All Mail won’t tell the IMAP client under which folder (e.g., Inbox) to show an e-mail.

Getting an e-mail from All Mail to then determine what is its flag to decide in which folder to present the e-mail is ass backwards. Not how IMAP works. Do you know of an IMAP extension that lets IMAP clients retrieve the labels on e-mails? IMAP supports flags (\Answered \Flagged \Draft \Deleted \Seen \Recent) on e-mails, but not server-side defined labels.

Using the Gmail API likely exposes the labels on e-mails, but I’m talking about IMAP. Had to give up on using the Gmail Mail API with eM Client due to “exceeded quota threshold” errors that have already been reported here. eM Client tried to up their quota, but was quickly consumed in a few days due to the number of users of eM Client. The only solution was to revert from the Mail API access method to IMAP to continue using Gmail.

Why is it only eM Client is the only IMAP client that needs the All Mail folder? After retrieving e-mails from All Mail, and without access to server-side labels assigned to e-mails, just how would eM Client know in which folder to present the e-mails? Why wouldn’t eM Client using IMAP use the standard IMAP commands to list e-mails within a selected folder?

Please cite the standards RFC that defines how IMAP clients will retrieve server-side labels on e-mails. No, I’m not talking about Gmail’s perversion of IMAP that adds X-GM-LABELS to the FETCH command as noted at IMAP Extensions  |  Gmail  |  Google for Developers. I’m talking about non-proprietary IMAP standards. Imagine the mess if every IMAP service had their own perverted variation of IMAP. There would be no IMAP standard.

As I’ve noted to others, there is IMAP, and there is gIMAP. Okay, so why not have MSIMAP, and YahooIMAP, and someoneElseIMAP to fully mess up the IMAP standards. That Google came up with their perversion of IMAP doesn’t mean anyone should use it.

Why bother using Google’s gIMAP with its X-GM-LABELS extension to FETCH from All Mail when IMAP’s SELECT folder and FETCH work for IMAP (which Gmail is supposed to emulate)? Other IMAP clients manage to work with gIMAP and IMAP using standard IMAP commands.

Since multiple labels can be assigned to an e-mail, will eM Client when using Google’s proprietary gIMAP show the e-mail in multiple folders? What a mess.

6

In trying to get eM Client to operate at a standards compliant IMAP client (no support of Google’s perverted gIMAP extension using X-GM-LABELS), I tried to create a new account in eM Client without using its automatic setup wizard. The hope was that I could get eM Client to operate as a standards compliant IMAP client. No Google proprietary extensions. Just standard IMAP. I tried the hostnames and ports mentioned at:

While I can enter the hostnames for Google’s IMAP and SMTP servers, I’m not allowed to specify the ports, or what encryption gets used, nor specify OAUTH2 for authentication. Even when creating an Other account, way too many settings are hidden from the user. The result is eM Client claims I used the wrong login credentials. They are the same ones that work when using Gmail’s webmail client.

Besides specifying imap.gmail.com for the IMAP server, and smtp.gmail.com for the SMTP server, I tried imap.gmail.com:993 and smtp.gmail.com:587 to include the port number that eM Client’s never presents for manual config. Nope, still got credentials were rejected. In fact, assuming eM Client should use OAUTH2 to Gmail, it never presented the web page at Gmail that has me okay access to eM Client (to get the OAUTH2 token sent to eM Client). Once the client gets the OAUTH2 tokens, it doesn’t even present login credential fields (for username and password) since it will thereafter use the tokens. There is no OAUTH2 option during manual config or afterward for an “Other” IMAP account. There are many settings missing when manually defining an Other account.

During Other account setup when doing manual configuration, eM Client doesn’t present most of the settings for IMAP and SMTP. Instead the manual config still runs an automated wizard to detect the server and on which port using which encryption, and no option to use OAUTH2 (probably something else automatically detected, or maybe not since Gmail demands OAUTH2 but I never see the web pages letting me grant eM Client’s access). Clicking “Fix” has the manual config wander through some more automated tests for setup instead of letting me define those settings. Geez, give me an IMAP client with manual configuration that lets me specify the settings!

I skipped past the errors to complete defining the account (which continues to bitch the login credentials are wrong which is untrue). I then reviewed the account settings. No option to specify OAUTH2 for login, and very likely why the login fails when using just username and password as login credentials. So much for trying to use eM Client as a standards compliant IMAP client to access Gmail.

Time to trial other IMAP clients again.

7

Unfortunately you can no longer use username/password logins for Google accounts. That has been phased out over the past couple of years. See: Google ‘less secure apps’ access and what it means for eM Client | eM Client

To add a Gmail or Google Workspace account to eM Client, go to Menu > Accounts > Add Account. Enter the email address in the automatic setup and it will be setup correctly with oAuth. The steps are described here.