[MlMt] Best way to auto-archive trash in gmail?

[Bill Cole]

On 15 Jul 2018, at 15:30 (-0400), Michael Hucka wrote:

> I recently had to switch to Gmail as my imap server [1].  It seems 
> that Gmail auto-deletes mail from the trash after 30 days.

<MINOR RANT>
This is a good policy which benefits the community of people running and 
using mail systems with fewer resources than Google by encouraging basic 
email hygiene. The Trash mailbox exists to reduce accidental 
unrecoverable deletions, which would otherwise be common. It probably 
doesn't matter with GMail, but many less huge mail systems  
differentiate storage models between different special-purpose mailbox 
types, optimizing INBOX and Trash for heavy churn of relatively few 
messages and others for many messages that are rarely deleted. Using 
Trash as a temporary holding area is a good habit to have.

I am not an archive-hater: I have live access to half a million messages 
in my personal archives accumulated over 25 years. Trash is not an 
archive: it is TRASH. MailMate has built-in support for that 
distinction.
</MINOR RANT>


> I'm looking for a way to preserve all my mail.  Does anyone have a 
> scheme to preserve mail permanently rather than let it be deleted?  
> For example, is there a way to have MailMate (or another piece of 
> software) periodically and automatically move mail out of the Trash 
> into a folder (or even another imap server) for archiving?

Create an IMAP mailbox and tell MailMate that it is your Archive 
mailbox. Archive is a special-purpose mailbox type like Deleted 
Messages, Sent Messages, and Junk.  Train yourself to use "Delete" and 
"Archive" selectively. Don't delete messages yo want to archive, don't 
archive messages that really should just be deleted.

There are some things you can do with Smart Mailboxes and Rules to 
automate archives but they are limited by MM not having automated 
mailbox creation.

> I'm a long-time unix & mac user and a software developer too, so I'm 
> not afraid of command lines or daemons or writing some software 
> myself.  If someone has already done this or can advise about 
> dead-ends to avoid, I'd appreciate the tips.

If you retain backups of ~/Library/Application 
Support/MailMate/Messages/IMAP then you are retaining recoverable copies 
of all mail. If you don't want to keep your archives on the IMAP server, 
you can keep them in whatever repository you use for your backups.


>
> Best regards,
> MH
>
> [1] To avoid the inevitable snarky "don't use gmail" comments, let me 
> just say I don't have a choice in the matter for the time being.
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-- 
Bill Cole
bill at scconsult.com or billcole at apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Currently Seeking Steadier Work: https://linkedin.com/in/billcole