Emailchemy 10.1 was released with these changes:
- Improved IMAP server performance – faster imports
- New Google Apps Uploader feature to fixes Gmail’s Sent folder for uploaded mail
- New option for better handling of international characters in folder names
The new Google Apps Uploader feature requires a bit of an explanation. In Gmail, there is no notion of a “Sent” folder. Yes, there is a link you can click that says “Sent Mail” which will show you mail that you sent, but it’s not a folder in the sense that there are specific messages put into a container (i.e. a folder) of messages. The subtle though important difference in how Gmail’s Sent Items link works is that it does a real-time search of all your email messages and shows you a list of all of the messages that have your gmail.com email address (or Google Apps address) in the “From: ” header. Effectively, this is the same as having a real “Sent” folder, but it breaks if you try to import messages into Gmail.
Why? Because if you are importing email into Gmail (or Google Apps), the email you have sent from your previous mail accounts will have your old email address in the “From:” header field of each sent message and they won’t show up in the search results you see when you click the “Sent Mail” link in Gmail. As far as Gmail is concerned, they just aren’t “sent” messages.
So, when you do see your old sent messages in Gmail, Gmail will think they are received messages and display them as such in the list, showing your old email address in the “name field of the message list (because you were the sender, remember).
Gmail only shows three fields in the message list: the sender, the subject and the date — and you can’t change this as you might be able to in Outlook or Thunderbird. Sure, Emailchemy can upload your sent messages into Gmail and then tag them with the name of the folder they came from, so these messages appear to be in a folder called “Sent Items” or “Sent”, but Gmail will still display these messages with the same 3 fields: sender (you), subject and date. Not helpful at all when you are trying to find an old email you sent to your boss.
In Emailchemy 10.1, we introduced a new option on the Google Apps Uploader tool: “Re-write sender of messages in ‘Sent’ folder to force them into Gmail ‘Sent Mail'”. When you check this box, Emailchemy will change the “From:” field of all your sent messages to contain your new Google Apps email address. Then, “Sent Mail” will work as it should, showing all your old sent messages too. This option has been added to the command line version of the Google Apps Uploader too.
Emailchemy 10.1 is a free update for all licensed users of Emailchemy 10.0.