The Gmail (update)

I’ve been having a problem using the Mozilla Thunderbird (“Tb”) email client to access Gmail via IMAP. I don’t want to delete a message and sent it to [Gmail]\Trash, because any message in there will be deleted after 30 days. Instead, I want to archive deleted messages in another folder, [Imap]\WebTrash but this hasn’t been working. I can set Tb to do this correctly, but after a restart, deleted messages will end up in [Gmail]\Trash. Grr! Turns out this is because Tb has a bug.

Tb bug 533140: “Cannot specify custom trash folder using Gmail IMAP ([Gmail]/Trash is always used regardless of trash folder selection at Server Settings, because Tb currently ignores trash folder selection if Gmail IMAP in order to avoid unwanted problems)” since 2009-12-05.

Here’s a solution from Gmail engineer RyanTaylor:

The first step is to create your own Trash folder:
1, In your Thunderbird, create a new folder under your GMail account for your own Trash, let's call it "MyTrash" for now.
2, Go to your account settings (Right click on the account / Settings...) and then select Server Settings.
3, Set the "When I delete a message", "Move it to this folder:" and select your MyTrash folder.
4, Click OK.

Then make sure that you unsubscribe the GMail Trash folder:
1, Go to your subscription settings (Right click on the account / Subscribe...)
2, Find the Trash folder under [GMail], select it and click on "unsubscribe".
3, Click OK.

At the last step, you need to restart Thunderbird. When the trash icon is appearing in your newly created label, then it should to be working.

It works for me now, yay! (AICT sent me the fix, but HT to Dr Connie Varnhagen for finding it first and telling me about it!)

Finally, here’s one more resource from the MozillaZine Knowledge Base on “Using Gmail with Thunderbird and Mozilla Suite (Troubleshooting and Gmail Quirks)”. That's right: "Gmail Quirks"!

Why aren’t you studying?