You can try checking the Gmail Settings (show all settings), Labels tab. All Mail remains assigned to the message. If you move a message from the inbox to another mailbox, the Inbox label is removed and the new mailbox name (label) will be assigned. All messages have the All Mail label assigned from the get-go. Any other labels remain assigned to that message. All that happens when you delete an email is the label of the folder it is in is removed. When you delete a message, it doesn't really get deleted. All Mail, by the way, is Gmail's repository to ensure they can monetize your life. It has Labels, and a message can have multiple labels-that's why you see messages in both Inbox and All Mail (Archive). Gmail is neither IMAP nor POP, though they pretend to emulate them. There are more problems you will find when you use it more. Unfortunately, unless I go through all the emails in the 'Archive' before deleting any, I may inadvertently delete emails that are in the 'Inbox' or 'Sent' box, which aren't duplicates and therefore also get deleted from the 'Inbox' or 'Sent' box.Īs you can imagine, it creates a significant amount of work, manually checking whether each email is also in the other folder, Inbox or Sent box, before deciding to delete them.Īll of the problems you listed are how Gmail works. Those in the 'other' folder are unnecessary duplicates, take up two lots of space, and aren't wanted. So, at any time, there may be some emails in the 'Archive' that are also in the 'Inbox' or 'Sent' box as the case may be and some that are also in the 'other' folder. After doing this, deleting emails from the 'other' folder doesn't delete them from the 'Archive' or vice versa. When I move emails in this way, they disappear from the 'Inbox' or 'Sent' box as the case may be, but not from the 'Archive'. However, the goofy part comes when you move emails from the 'Inbox' or 'Sent' box to 'another' folder. This isn't illogical, but it unnecessarily duplicates the 'Inbox' and 'Sent' boxes. If I delete an email from the 'Archive', it also gets deleted from the 'Inbox' or 'Sent' box, as the case may be.

If I delete an email from my 'Inbox' or 'Sent' box, it also gets removed from the 'Archive'. These folders appear to have copies of all mail sent or received from that particular email account. So now I have this 'Archive' folder on all my Macs and iOS devices, although the folder appears to be called 'All Mail' on the iOS devices. (Long story - I didn't want to, but Apple iCloud mail didn't seem to want me) I recently moved my email account to Gmail.

Google mail archive