Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

input on gmail vs AOL mail in Mail.app?

B

beethovengirl

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 15, 2004
150
1
Hi,

This is a follow-up on my previous thread. Thanks for all your suggestions in that thread.

I didn't realize when I started the previous thread that AOL mail offers free IMAP e-mail. Since IMAP is usually better than POP, why do so many prefer gmail [in the context of Mail.app, not their web interfaces]?

Also, how can I transfer my e-mail from my old inbox to either AOL and/or gmail?

I've used both gmail and AOL mail a little bit the past few days, and neither has been perfect. With AOL, I got a couple messages that say, "This message cannot be saved" when composing e-mail, and it put a non-spam e-mail into my spam folder. I could not figure out how to transfer it to my inbox from Mail.app, so I had to log onto aol.com. Have other people had these problems? As for gmail, it was down briefly.

I'd appreciate any of your input. thank you! :)
 
I use gmail in thunderbird, and my girlfriend in mail. It's great. never had any problems and have been using it for a year. Personally, I hate AOL, and only in my worst nightmare have I thought of the possibility of having an aol email account.

You said any input :p
 
I agree with 4nr.

I use Gmail with with Apple Mail, and it always works flawlessly. I have no experience with AOL email, but I like to stay as far away from anything affiliated with AOL as I possibly can.
 
I use both....

The big things to note...

1) AOL behaves like a proper IMAP server. Vs. Google having sort of wonky POP behavior (not letting you delete messages, etc).

2) Google has lots of other great services. Also a very clean, easy to use, simple web interface ... I like it better than any one I've ever used before.

3) AOL only very recently started offering big mailboxes and free IMAP.

4) The digerati traditionally hates AOL for complicated reasons that date back to the days of dial-up in the late 80s and early 90s.

I actually very rarely give out my AOL address and very rarely receive mail on it. Primarily because I made a "switch" to trying to get people to use my GMail, from my Yahoo. Although now that I have all my old Hotmail, GMail, Yahoo, NetZero, and AOL e-mail accounts being read by mail, it doesn't matter to me as much.
 
mkrishnan said:
1) AOL behaves like a proper IMAP server. Vs. Google having sort of wonky POP behavior (not letting you delete messages, etc).
Click to expand...

can you please explain what you mean by gmail not letting you delete messages?

also, do you know how I might be able to transfer my e-mail messages from my soon-to-be-deactivated school IMAP acct to my AOL and/or gmail acct?

4) The digerati traditionally hates AOL for complicated reasons that date back to the days of dial-up in the late 80s and early 90s.
Click to expand...

I remember how lame AOL was back then. I tried for years to get my mother to drop her AOL account, but this free IMAP thing seems pretty good...

thanks for your input :)
 
beethovengirl said:
can you please explain what you mean by gmail not letting you delete messages?

also, do you know how I might be able to transfer my e-mail messages from my soon-to-be-deactivated school IMAP acct to my AOL and/or gmail acct?



I remember how lame AOL was back then. I tried for years to get my mother to drop her AOL account, but this free IMAP thing seems pretty good...

thanks for your input :)
Click to expand...

Do you have you school mail setup in Mail. If you do create a new folder then move all the mail out of you imap folders into the new folder on your mac. Those messages will now be saved on your macintoh hard drive
 
I use AOL with mail.app and it works perfectly. Since I have two computers, any POP service was out of the question, and since I've had AOL for 10 years now, I decided to stick with it.

The only downside with AOL is that I can't keep all of my messages in my inbox - I have to move them to the 'saved' folder (that appears when you setup the account with mail.app). ...Other than that, no complaints. :)
 
beethovengirl said:
can you please explain what you mean by gmail not letting you delete messages?
Click to expand...

There are a couple of idiosyncracies...basically, Gmail completely ignores any information your computer tries to communicate about changes to messages on the server. As a result, you cannot mark messages read or unread on the server, you cannot delete them, and you can only read them by POP once per message (unless you reset the whole account), meaning that you cannot use POP to read GMail on more than one computer (you can do this with some POP providers). As long as you only have one computer using a mail program and everything else uses a web interface, you're golden. But all mail basically stays in the GMail inbox, whether you like it or not.

also, do you know how I might be able to transfer my e-mail messages from my soon-to-be-deactivated school IMAP acct to my AOL and/or gmail acct?
Click to expand...

I can check later if AOL has this feature. I don't think Google does. I'd recommend you just make a "Saved Messages" folder on your computer in Mail.app or whatever you're using with POP/IMAP and save all the mail there.
 
oceanmonster said:
Do you have you school mail setup in Mail. If you do create a new folder then move all the mail out of you imap folders into the new folder on your mac. Those messages will now be saved on your macintoh hard drive
Click to expand...

thanks for the suggestion, but is there a way to transfer my old inbox messages (set up in Mail) to my AOL inbox?

I did this in UNIX a few years ago when I used PINE, but I forgot how I did it. :/
 
EricNau said:
The only downside with AOL is that I can't keep all of my messages in my inbox - I have to move them to the 'saved' folder (that appears when you setup the account with mail.app). ...Other than that, no complaints. :)
Click to expand...

why can't you keep all your messages in your inbox?
 
beethovengirl said:
thanks for the suggestion, but is there a way to transfer my old inbox messages (set up in Mail) to my AOL inbox?

I did this in UNIX a few years ago when I used PINE, but I forgot how I did it. :/
Click to expand...

Yeah set you AOL up in MAIL.app and move the messages from the School IMAP folder to the AOL IMAP folder.
 
EricNau said:
At one point in time Apple would delete messages 27 days old (read or unread) unless they were stored in your "saved" folder. I suspect this is still true, but I'm not certain.
Click to expand...

yikes! I keep most of my e-mail in my inbox, so this would be really bad for me. I searched AOL help, and this is what I found:
http://help.aol.com/help/dynamickc....p--helpchannelsaolcom-kjumpadparticleId222088

"You may not be able to locate an e-mail using AOL® Mail on the Web for any one of several reasons....
If you read the e-mail, please check the Old Mailbox for the e-mail...
Note: Read e-mail remains on the service for 1 to 7 days."

Does this mean that my e-mails in my inbox [not moved to saved messages] will be deleted within 7 days? I already find it a bit odd that the web AOL mail has separate old and new mail folders. In Mail.app, they're both in my inbox -- the format to which I'm accustomed.

I've tried contacting AOL support, but I don't think they offer any assistance if you don't have a paying account. [I don't expect it, but I wish there were some way to get clarification on this issue]

thanks for your help! if it turns out to be true that my e-mail would've been deleted within 7 days, you have saved me from an imminent disaster :)
 
beethovengirl said:
yikes! I keep most of my e-mail in my inbox, so this would be really bad for me. I searched AOL help, and this is what I found:
http://help.aol.com/help/dynamickc....p--helpchannelsaolcom-kjumpadparticleId222088

"You may not be able to locate an e-mail using AOL® Mail on the Web for any one of several reasons....
If you read the e-mail, please check the Old Mailbox for the e-mail...
Note: Read e-mail remains on the service for 1 to 7 days."

Does this mean that my e-mails in my inbox [not moved to saved messages] will be deleted within 7 days? I already find it a bit odd that the web AOL mail has separate old and new mail folders. In Mail.app, they're both in my inbox -- the format to which I'm accustomed.

I've tried contacting AOL support, but I don't think they offer any assistance if you don't have a paying account. [I don't expect it, but I wish there were some way to get clarification on this issue]

thanks for your help! if it turns out to be true that my e-mail would've been deleted within 7 days, you have saved me from an imminent disaster :)
Click to expand...

That is true. My first email was an AOL mail account and i remember that if you did not put it in a saved folder or mark it unread AOL would delete it
 
beethovengirl said:
yikes! I keep most of my e-mail in my inbox, so this would be really bad for me. I searched AOL help, and this is what I found:
http://help.aol.com/help/dynamickc....p--helpchannelsaolcom-kjumpadparticleId222088

"You may not be able to locate an e-mail using AOL® Mail on the Web for any one of several reasons....
If you read the e-mail, please check the Old Mailbox for the e-mail...
Note: Read e-mail remains on the service for 1 to 7 days."

Does this mean that my e-mails in my inbox [not moved to saved messages] will be deleted within 7 days? I already find it a bit odd that the web AOL mail has separate old and new mail folders. In Mail.app, they're both in my inbox -- the format to which I'm accustomed.

I've tried contacting AOL support, but I don't think they offer any assistance if you don't have a paying account. [I don't expect it, but I wish there were some way to get clarification on this issue]

thanks for your help! if it turns out to be true that my e-mail would've been deleted within 7 days, you have saved me from an imminent disaster :)
Click to expand...
Well, lucky for you, I'm one of those paying customers (don't ask me why, as I have no idea).

After a live chat with an AOL representative, she confirmed that unread (new) emails will automatically be deleted after 27 days and read (old) emails are deleted after 7.

If you want to keep you emails, you must move them to your "saved" folder. (I also move my sent emails into this folder, too keep the complete conversation.)
 
EricNau, thanks so much for asking AOL Live Help. I really appreciate it. :)

Mac.com sounds ideal except I'm not willing to pay the price.

so, gmail it is...

now I just have to figure out if there's any way to upload my old inbox messages to the gmail server. probably not, but oh well...
 
beethovengirl said:
EricNau, thanks so much for asking AOL Live Help. I really appreciate it. :)

Mac.com sounds ideal except I'm not willing to pay the price.

so, gmail it is...

now I just have to figure out if there's any way to upload my old inbox messages to the gmail server. probably not, but oh well...
Click to expand...
Using a rule in mail, you can automatically move all mail from your inbox to the saved folder. This way, you can treat the "saved" folder just like your inbox (and thus ignoring your inbox).

In mail, go to preferences > rules > edit, and set up a rule to do this:
 

Attachments

  • Picture 1 14-36-22.png
    Picture 1 14-36-22.png
    31.1 KB · Views: 125
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back