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

[Michael Hucka]

Did I do something in a past exchange to trigger this rather hostile 
reply?  I honestly don't remember, but if I did, I apologize.  I'm also 
not really sure why you presume to tell others on this list how they 
should manage their mail; you're free to do as you wish, but you should 
realize that others may have workflows that attempt to address other 
needs.  Some of those workflows may be based on even longer experiences 
than yours.  (My archives go back to 1987 and I currently have 1,412,484 
messages, as of a few moments ago, although to be fair, some the 1990's 
are probably Usenet postings due to using an Emacs-based mail & news 
reader for a long time.)  Maybe you're better than me at deciding what 
can really be "just deleted" on the spot, but after many years of 
trying, I've decided it's better for me to keep everything (yes, 
including what is clearly spam).

Anyway, I do appreciate the information about the nuance of an Archive 
in MM; this is something that is worth investigating.

MH

On 15 Jul 2018, at 19:46, Bill Cole wrote:

> 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
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