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It seems to me that if a message in Gmail has a label, the imap client will download it at least twice: once for the label, once for "all mail". Even worse if it has more than one label.

I'd like to use IMAP to backup gmail messages, but downloading and storing the same message more than once is so sub-optimal I'd rather lose the label.

So, is subscribing IMAP only to the "all mail" folder the only non-redundant way of backupping it, or are there better methods or plugins that allow both saving all messages and preserving the labels without stupid redundancy?

Currently I'm using Thunderbird, and OS is OSX 10.6.

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Does TB really download the "All Mail" folder by default? On mine it doesn't load until I click on it, and even then it only fetches the headers. – sep332 Feb 23 '12 at 17:40
@sep332: by default I've no idea, I've set it to download from them, including the whole mail, not only the headers. Dunno why it doesn't do that for you. – Lohoris Feb 23 '12 at 18:44
I did find this tool for Windows. gmail-backup.com/faq#n72 It's not supported (but kind-of works) on OS X. – sep332 Feb 23 '12 at 22:36

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