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How is spam handled?

Gmail’s spam filters also work in your IMAP client by automatically diverting messages that are suspected of being unwanted messages into ‘[Gmail]/Spam’ and keeping them out of your inbox.

If you find a message that should be marked as spam, just move it to ‘[Gmail]/Spam.’ This is just like clicking ‘Report Spam’ in the Gmail web interface and helps us to improve our spam filters.

If you find a message wrongly classified as spam, you can move the message out of ‘[Gmail]/Spam’ to the appropriate folder in your client.

Note that your client may have its own junk mail filtering technology, which is separate from Gmail’s spam filtering. We recommend using only Gmail’s spam filtering and turning off any additional anti-spam or junk mail filters within your client. If you still decide to enable client side spam filtering, your client will download an extra copy of every message.

Will using IMAP download all my mail?

Not unless your client is set to do so. Most IMAP clients will download only the headers of your Gmail messages while you’re connected to the Internet. However, a few clients will download all of your mail by default.

Your messages will download completely when you select your client’s option to work offline. You’ll be able to read, sort, and compose replies to your messages while you’re working offline. Once you’re connected to the Internet again, you’ll be able to sync your client with the Gmail interface on the web.

Deleting IMAP messages

If you delete a message from your inbox or one of your custom folders in your IMAP client, it will still appear in [Gmail]/All Mail.

Here’s why: in most folders, deleting a message simply removes that folder’s label from the message, including the label identifying the message as being in your inbox. [Gmail]/All Mail shows all of your messages, whether or not they have labels attached to them. If you want to delete a message from all folders, move it to the [Gmail]/Trash folder.

If you delete a message from [Gmail]/Spam or [Gmail]/Trash, it will be deleted permanently.

For client-specific settings that affect deleting and storing messages and drafts, please see our Recommended IMAP client settings.

Important: Please note that if you’re using an iPhone with software update 1.1.3 and you automatically configured IMAP by clicking on the large Gmail icon, messages trashed from your iPhone will be moved to the [Gmail]/Trash folder rather than the [Gmail]/All Mail folder, causing these messages to be permanently deleted after 30 days. For more information, please see our article on deleting and archiving on iPhones or visit Apple Support.

To avoid this type of deletion behavior, please manually configure your iPhone