Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Networking Telus, anyone?

This is for western Canadian Telus customers who use the Telus Google mail service, combined with Apple Mail.

Since the last Google update, a few months back, I have found that incoming mail goes to a folder called "Important" rather than to my "Inbox". It started with some incoming mail going to "Important" and some to "Inbox", but now it's everything to the "Important" folder. If you have figured out a cure, I'd like to hear.

Thanks

And now, it has decided to put the incoming mail in both the "In Box" folder and the "Important" folder. It's good to see mail going to the tight folder for incoming but a bit disconcerting that this happens at all.

I have a Google email account linked to a domain I am seeing the same behavior in Apple Mail and Airmail. Thanks to your post I discovered a few emails in the Important folder on the Google account that had not made it into the Inbox.

Airmail has a feature, not found in Apple Mail, that permits mapping account folders to other folders on the account, or local Airmail folders which works on every email account except Google mail. I have not absolutely validated this yet, but since Apple Mail rules apply only to the Inbox that precludes any Rule you set up to manage or re-direct messages in the Important folder. Fortunately Airmail has a far more robust set of rule functions than Apple Mail so I have been able to create a rule there that will move any message that appears in Google's Important folder to Google's Inbox folder. Thus salvaging my use of the Google Mail account.

Aside from my four @verizon.net email accounts, I've got a single Gmail account which I share with my daughter which exclusively receives mail from Amazon relating to our shared Prime account. In addition to the aforementioned "Important" and "Inbox," its got an "Archive," and while I've never figured out how emails are directed between the three, I don't think I've ever missed one because of its not having gone to Inbox, even if it's also wound up in one/both of the others.

It's an awfully confusing setup, though, which seems like it ought to be user, rather than Google directed. (I wonder if there's a pref pane on Google that covers that?)

Since we're on the subject of Gmail, though, I'll mention that Carbon Copy Cloner sends event confirmation emails from one of my Verizon accounts to the same account from which it was sent, and out of the blue, they've been appearing in my inbox as having ben sent from Amazon rather than me, as is expected, although there's no mention of Amazon in the headers, and furthermore, if I drag one of them to my desktop, three identical copies appear. Also, if I send a help request to CCC from the same account, the acknowledgement shows up as being from Amazon, although further responses do not.

This is disconcerting at the worst, and isn't worth any troubleshooting time, but any educated - even ignorant - guesses will be appreciated.

This is my opinion and not based on factual knowledge, but for what it is worth...
Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet Inc, Google's parent corporation, is under fire. In addition to all the furor surrounding Google's AI, profits are less than expected. Among other things, improvements in browsers, privacy tools, and user awareness are cutting into Google's income stream. Google's on-line email portal and office suite are a good end-around that permits Google to collect even more data and avoids any interference in their income stream from privacy protections on the user's computer/device. (Have you noticed Apple removed Chrome from the App Store because of hidden data collection?) Google's application offerings are attractive to less sophisticated institutional users, so Google is targeting that audience by adding features such as detection of what Google deems important email. (Maybe senders can pay Google for their email to be Important just as they can pay for placement in search results? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) If these changes make it less attractive to use an email client on their local device, so much the better.

When I discovered the issue, some stuff was going to Important but not Inbox. This evolved to everything to Important, nothing to Inbox. Now I have all incoming mail going to both.

I have a feeling that everything goes to Archive. I just checked mine and it has 1,000s of emails, most of which I would never consider archiving.

That is equally sensible and scary. Telus uses a version of Google Suite and, when they implemented it, they assured everyone that privacy protection was one of the things they insisted upon, in their deal with Google. To that I say: "Wait a minute. You're talking about Google so you'd better read the fine print". One thing I really didn't like was their statement that you can use Google's service for managing your mail or you can use your own application e.g. Apple Mail. However, if you don't use the Google service, you're on your own for getting problems solved.

"Archive" really sounds like it should be a user option mailbox. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My Gmail account is exclusively for tracking Amazon purchases/deliveries/returns, and, too, any mail that comes in to it shows in both in my Mail.app and Gmail inboxes, so I don't have to pay attention to Google's machinations.

Or not exist at all, because Google's idea of 'archive' doesn't make any sense. Anyone archiving correspondence does so because they know they believe they will want to retrieve it in future. Ergo, they would never put everything into one giant, unsorted folder. They want to file in a way that makes retrieval easy. That's why we use software like Apple Mail.

Which causes my suspicious mind now to wonder: "Does Google want all mail in one place for easier snooping?"

Something I just noticed on my Gmail account in the Airmail client. The icon for the inbox is a mailbox, while Important and Archive have folder icons. This appears to imply Important and Archive are "smart" folders. But typically smart folders allow the user to define the criteria for their content. This feels like an Orwellian Big Brother move on Google's part. However, it may be possible to set the criteria for Important and Archive if you are logged onto Google's online email portal.

I see a folder for Important, but I don't recognize the Archive icon I see.

I made the point about those folders maybe being customizable if you log into Google in an earlier post, but it's not near important enough to get me to log in just to find out.

Filing cabinet? That's the same symbol I have for Archive.

I see it as a file storage box and yes the same icon is used for archives.

That's it! It's a classic Transfile box.