Outlook + IMAP + Gmail: Remove duplicated e-mails

Question

I've got a Gmail account with a lot of filters, that sort incoming e-mails by adding labels to them. All of my e-mails have at least one label.

When I try to synchronize my Outlook 2010 client with Gmail account via IMAP it stores every e-mail in INBOX folder, THE SAME e-mails are also in Gmail/All_messages AND also in every LABEL folder that corresponds to each LABEL added to e-mail. This way I have a lot of e-mail duplicates and after a few months my IMAP file has a few GB.

Is there a way to completely disable Outlook's INBOX folder, Gmail/All_messages and have the e-mails only in corresponding LABEL folders? Will any Outlook rule help for this case?

Something like:

If ( e-mail_has_a_label() ) { dont_store_in_INBOX(); store_in_label_folder_only(); }

Solution

In the end I solved the problem by unsubscribing from IMAP folders I didn't want to use. In my case it was: - Gmail/All_messages - Gmail (Gmail - Inbox)

To do it, you just go to Folder => IMAP Folders => and deselect those you don't want to download to Outlook.

Another option is to go to Gmail web mail (gmail.com) => Settings => Labels => And set labels you don't want to synchronize with Outlook to not show in IMAP access

Comments

[Admin]

This should probably be at superuser.

[Admin]

Also, IMAP has no concept of labels: this is how Google exports labels: as fake folders.

[Joudicek Jouda]

Thank you for moving the question. I didn't know about SuperUser.com Yep, I know, I was thinking about some workaround - like creating some rule in Outlook to remove incoming e-mails from Inbox folder, and to not synchronize Inbox folder with Gmail, just the other folders (label folders). Is it possible?

[Harrison Smith]

To help future people: I had this problem also happen with the automatic 'Important' label in Gmail. Outlook sees that label as a separate folder, which means that any emails that Gmail auto-magically deems as 'important' will also be duplicated in Outlook. In this case I just disabled the feature in Gmail, and re-synced the folder structure in Outlook to remove the folder locally.