riverboat2001

Whilst not truly an Android app, the question involves my Android devices.
I also use Thunderbird as my pc email client and these questions sort of apply here too

Samsung Galaxy Tab 7Plus
Samsung Galaxy Nexus

I'm using the standard Android email app NOT the Gmail app.
I like the preview mode on the standard app, which gmail app doesn't seem to have.

I've tried to read up and research, but still don't quite "get it"

Gmail uses labels (like tags? - i get that, easier for organising and searching)

I've set up filters and they are working fine,
but what i don't "get" is why, if an email is correctly filtered into "Family" folder, why does it still show in Inbox?
Also if i delete emails from the inbox, will they also be deleted from there filtered places?

Why do i have Two draft folders, two sent folders, a recycle bin, a junk folder, and a spam folder and a Bin?

It seems as if each email client creates it's own standard un-deletable "special" folders, but also adds the necessary Gmail folders.
Why are the Gmail folders shown separately?

Why the suffix [imap]

I've gone over to gmail as i like the fact that any change is reflected everywhere, but it's all a bit confusing!

amlothi

Labels are one of those killer features in Gmail that I wish had become mainstream. They are so much more powerful than folders. Unfortunately, the masses are used to their folders and it takes time to make people change. First, a little primer to make sure you truly "get that".

Let's see how a traditional email box with folders fails. Let's say I set up 3 folders to sort my emails (e.g., one for emails from your mother, one for photos, and one for porn). You might think that this is fine and works well, and for 99% of people it might be just dandy. However, what happens when your mother sends me dirty pictures? Suddenly, I'm confused. I don't know which folder to put this message in, as it really could go in all three. See the problem?

Gmail solves this by eliminating folders and using labels that "tag" your messages with a category. Think of your Gmail messages as being in one big folder called "All Mail". When you click on your labels, all it is really doing is filtering your All Mail messages to show only the ones that have been "tagged" with that label.

The beauty of Gmail is that one message can have multiple labels. Therefore, I can tag an email as "Your Mom" plus "Photos" plus "Porn" and it will show up under any of those three labels. When I view the Your Mom label, I get all the messages from your mother. When I view the Photos label, I see all the emails with photos, including the dirty photos from your mother. When I view the Porn label, I see all the dirty photos from your mother as well as some emails that the young boys in my church sent me. See, labels are awesome!

Got it? Good, let's go...

As you can see, the way you ask the question shows that you don't understand that labels are not folders.

The Inbox in Gmail is also a label! New messages are automatically tagged with the "Inbox" label.There is no Inbox folder, and there is no Family folder. You can see this if you click on All Mail using Gmail on your computer. You'll see that some messages are labeled with the "Inbox" label, and these are the ones that show up in your Inbox.

If your filter only has a single action (Apply "Family" label) then your message ends up having 2 labels (Inbox and Family). It will be displayed in the Inbox, but also when you choose to view the Family label. Note: Archiving a message removes the Inbox label.

What you want your filter to do is both Apply "Family" Label and also Skip Inbox.

Deleting the message removes the Inbox label and moves the message to trash. It will retain other labels until the time your trash is emptied.

The bigger questions is, why are you deleting anything in Gmail? Unless something is obviously spam (like those viagra ads that I no longer need... thanks mom!), you should be archiving and not deleting. Archiving simply removes the Inbox label, but keeps the other labels intact so you can find the message easily.

Not sure. Probably because you are using a traditional email app for Gmail. As you can see, Gmail works differently. There's probably some incompatibility. I personally use the Gmail app.

Probably something like this. They don't work well together.

I think you should use the standard Gmail app. The new version actually has the message preview that you like, as you can see here: [Getting To Know Android 4.0, Part 1] Gmail: Android's Most Important App

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riverboat2001

You're absolutely right, the newest Gmail app, is excellent, even showing the filter colours I've applied.
I have got rid of the imap folders by setting Thunderbird to use the online google folders i was then able to delete them.
And, as i read each email, i remove the inbox filter from them and they disappear from the inbox, but stay in there filtered location.

How often is the bin actually emptied?
I think the reason for deletion, actually goes back to my early email days using yahoo mail.
I have a feeling that this goes back to Thunderbird (or any email client really) setting, being set to delete stuff at certain triggers.

I have a very bad internet connection at home, that often drops out, so downloading and keeping messages on my desktop is still very important, so i guess i should have another look at the options within Thunderbird.