[MlMt] Tags / Label funkyness with Gmail

Benny Kjær Nielsen mailinglist at freron.com
Mon Jan 6 04:21:36 EST 2014


On 6 Jan 2014, at 6:05, Joshua Kehn wrote:

> I'm having an issue creating new tags or labels. Currently my gmail 
> accounts return this:
>
> S: H11 BAD Invalid Arguments: Label name is not allowed: todos
> Error: Server response: “H11 BAD Invalid Arguments: Label name is 
> not allowed: todos”.
>
> Here's how I've setup tags: http://l.kehn.io/image/031o0k112x0i
>
> That \ before the IMAP keyword is something I tried because I saw 
> other keywords had that. I'm not exactly a power IMAP user yet so I 
> will be making some mistakes here.

Don't use the `\`. This is reserved for standard-defined IMAP keywords.

> Question is, why is that label name not allowed, why isn't it using 
> the Gmail label instead, and what can I do to fix this?

I just tried with a label named “todomail” and that was not a 
problem. Then I tried “todos” and that failed just like it did for 
you. Apparently Gmail disallows certain label names. It would be nice if 
that was documented somewhere...

Ah, Google to the rescue (kind of ironic). I found this 
[link](http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-11-01-n68.html). Apparently 
“todos” means “All Mail” in Spanish/Portuguese... I guess that 
provides an implicit list of all illegal Gmail label names: Any standard 
Gmail mailbox name in any language supported by Gmail. Theoretically, 
this means they cannot add any new languages without making some 
existing mailbox names illegal. I'm sure someone at Google has regretted 
this design decision (although I understand their reasoning).

The best way to create a label might be to create it using Gmail on the 
web. I assume any illegal label names are then immediately rejected.

You may want to enable the “Raw Flags” column in the messages 
outline to see what has been assigned to your messages while 
experimenting.

-- 
Benny
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