Deleting Gmail emails on your phone does NOT work

[MichaelBanning]

I posted a similar thread earlier this week, but whereas I originally thought this was a bug/mistake on my part, I now believe this is a major issue with Gmail accounts on Windows Phones. If I'm wrong, please correct me, and I apologize for the second thread if that's the case.


Gmail emails, when deleted on my Windows Phone, do NOT get deleted, but only get the "Inbox" label removed. As a result, my "All Mail" aka "Archives" folder in my actual Gmail account is full of emails I thought I have been deleting. After researching this, it appears this IS THE NORM for phones, at least when set up as IMAP, which I believe is the only setting for WP7: Deleting IMAP messages - Gmail Help

I invite EVERYONE to test this by deleting emails on their phone, and then checking their All Mail folder on their pc. I have even tried the "Advanced IMAP settings" in the Gmail Labs, but that seems to have no effect.

I think one of the problems is that the WP7 email sets itself up with a generic "deleted items" folder without syncing the Gmail trash folder - it isn't listed as a sync-able folder if I look at the folder list on my phone.

Therefore, it appears that there is NO WAY TO DELETE GMAIL EMAILS ON YOUR WP7. All it does is force you to go into your archives and delete them from there.

Again, if someone can get this to work properly, either by using the Advanced IMAP settings in Gmail, something on your phone, etc., PLEASE tell me, because this has me EXTREMELY frustrated.

Should I perhaps do the "Advanced Setup" on my phone instead of using their default settings for Google Mail accounts? Has anyone tried that?

 

[IamNabil]

It's been working fine for me. I just double checked. I am using a google apps account, but it should be the same as far as imap functionality.

 

[MichaelBanning]

I just tried it again - hitting the trash button, watching the email go to the phone's "deleted items" folder, and letting it sync, AND deleting the email, and emptying the deleted items folder BEFORE it could sync with my phone. Both times, I go to my pc, and find it in All Mail, NOT Trash.

Can you describe your settings, for the account and for the email on your phone? Maybe I'm missing something, but nothing's working. I thought the Advanced IMAP settings from the Labs were going to help, but they don't do anything.

 

[IamNabil]

Well, I have the account setup, on the phone, as a gmail account. Standard settings, but I changed the sync to "as items arrive."
In the gmail account, I have all of the standard settings. When I delete an email, it goes to deleted items.

 

[ninjaap]

What the OP is talking about is the "ALL MAIL" folder... just scroll down through all of your gmail folders on the PC and you will see an All Mail folder between Chats (Gtalk) and Trash.

 

[IamNabil]

All mail shows things in my trash. I must be missing the point, because if I delete something from the web client, it shows up in all mail, too.

 

[MichaelBanning]

Well, I have the account setup, on the phone, as a gmail account. Standard settings, but I changed the sync to "as items arrive."
In the gmail account, I have all of the standard settings. When I delete an email, it goes to deleted items.

That's the same as mine. What folders besides your inbox do you have syncing? WP7 default syncs only the inbox - should I sync my "Deleted Items" folder? It puts all the emails on my phone, and I didn't want to waste the space.

 

[MichaelBanning]

Per my previous post, I synced the Deleted Items folder on my phone, and after "deleting" 2 emails from my phone's inbox (email A and email B, let's say), they went into the phone's Deleted Items folder as usual, but now with the rest of the emails in my account's trash folder.

HOWEVER,

When I pressed the "SYNC" button for the Deleted Items folder, email A and email B STAYED in the Deleted Items folder on my PHONE, but MOVED into the All Mail folder and NOT the Trash in my ONLINE GMAIL when I checked with my pc. In other words, my phone is doing one thing with the emails, and my actual gmail account is doing another thing.

In case my email account is completely messed up, I added another gmail account to my phone and tried the same stuff - the same thing happened for that account too.

Thoughts?

 

[kthoag]

Google does not like the idea of deleting emails. That's why they give you so much space. The default on all mobile apps that ive tried (iOS, android 2.2, i've not tried wp7 yet) default to archiving your mail instead of deleting it. It's not technically a bug, since that's what they want you to do. It's just not what you want it to do.

 

[IamNabil]

It is google's modus operandi. Here is a link to show that it isn't your phone's fault:

Apple - Support - Discussions - GMail "Delete" button doesn't ...

 

[clemon79]

Except it is. Outlook 2010 on the desktop is capable of properly moving a deleted message to the Trash. I fail to see why this client is so incredibly bare-bones.

As it was, just to get it to work like a real IMAP account, I had to tell the actual Google accounts not to sync mail anymore and set up the mail using the Google IMAP settings. It's close but I still have to purge that stupid Deleted Items folder.

Really, if I could figure out how to set something up in Gmail that says "when you see a message in Deleted Items, move it to the Trash", I'd be good to go. But that's unlikely.

 

[Rich Edmonds]

I gave up on GMail in the end and ended up setting up Exchange and using WP7 Outlook. Even on Android I felt as though there was something shady going on with my GMail account.

 

[kalldrexx]

I personally like this feature, but I randomly find times where I want to find an old email that I discarded at one time. I rarely ever deleted an email when using the web based system and just archived it instead. You never know when you might need another email. I was actually hesitant about using WP7 with gmail at first until I realized I wouldn't lose my archiving ability.

 

[cdook]

I thought I replied to this thread, but maybe Board Express didn't post it.

Is it possible to create some kind of Filter to move messages in the trash? Are you setting your Windows Phone to sync as new messages come in, or at set intervals? If you're not using realtime sync, I'd disable IMAP and use POP. I believe there's an option to move new messages to trash after they've been downloaded.

 

[clemon79]

Is it possible to create some kind of Filter to move messages in the trash? Are you setting your Windows Phone to sync as new messages come in, or at set intervals? If you're not using realtime sync, I'd disable IMAP and use POP. I believe there's an option to move new messages to trash after they've been downloaded.

Yuck. One of the big reasons I moved to Gmail is so I could use IMAP and my email didn't get segmented.

So what I've done is: set up my mail as separate IMAP accounts from the regular Google Account entries in my phone. (I tried playing with Advanced IMAP in Labs, turning off Auto-Expunge, and setting to Move To Trash, but this had no effect since the Deleted Items label is being set, which seems to foil it.) What this ends up doing is moving a message to Deleted Items when I Delete it from the phone, but that is at least better than just archiving it in All Mail, 'cuz then later on when I'm at my desktop I can go into Deleted Items and just trash the contents wholesale every so often.

At least it calls out the emails I know I want rid of. It's not the ideal solution, but it's workable until someone figures out a better one.

So, not optimal, but until they fix this, passable.

 

[cdook]

It looks like it's the way that Gmail implemented IMAP that's throwing everything off. It looks like iPhone had the same issue until they moved the message to Trash (rather than deleting it from the Inbox).

I ended up creating a Live/Hotmail account and you've got the option in there to retrieve email from other services via POP. So in Gmail I made it so it trashes messages after downloaded via POP and I use the Hotmail account as the true inbox. Things seem to work well with WP7 and Hotmail too. I delete something on my phone, it'll remove it from the Inbox.

 

[clemon79]

I ended up creating a Live/Hotmail account and you've got the option in there to retrieve email from other services via POP. So in Gmail I made it so it trashes messages after downloaded via POP and I use the Hotmail account as the true inbox. Things seem to work well with WP7 and Hotmail too. I delete something on my phone, it'll remove it from the Inbox.

That's interesting to think about, especially since I have two live.com addresses that I don't use and have to remember to log into every couple of months to make sure I don't lose them. I'm not sure I like having that many moving parts in the equation, or the confusion mailing from a live.com while still telling people to send to a gmail.com would create, but other'n that, it would sure work...

EDIT: Found what I think is a dealbreaker with this cunning plan: it sounds like the Hotmail POP functionality is limited to every-half-hour checks, and a maximum of 50 messages per, scheduling anything more than that for the next half-hour. The latter isn't a major deal (once everything is transferred), but the former is. If there's more than 5 minutes of lag, that's not gonna work. I fully realize that it's fine for some people though.

 

[cdook]

Yea I'm the type of person where if my phone only checks for new messages every half hour and I'm only getting Gmail messages every half hour then it doesn't really matter. It'd be nice if it could check more or used IMAP, but honestly I haven't really had problems with it. I'm also slowly migrating away from Gmail too back to Live.

 

[CJ Thunder]

My issue is when I open an email its not showing up as read online.

 

[xtrcentral]

Yuck. One of the big reasons I moved to Gmail is so I could use IMAP and my email didn't get segmented.

So what I've done is: set up my mail as separate IMAP accounts from the regular Google Account entries in my phone. (I tried playing with Advanced IMAP in Labs, turning off Auto-Expunge, and setting to Move To Trash, but this had no effect since the Deleted Items label is being set, which seems to foil it.) What this ends up doing is moving a message to Deleted Items when I Delete it from the phone, but that is at least better than just archiving it in All Mail, 'cuz then later on when I'm at my desktop I can go into Deleted Items and just trash the contents wholesale every so often.

At least it calls out the emails I know I want rid of. It's not the ideal solution, but it's workable until someone figures out a better one.

So, not optimal, but until they fix this, passable.

Any update on this one?

Thanks for the temp solution!