“Third, you’re right: you won’t be able to assign labels using the auto-forward, but if you setup your filters correctly on your mirror Gmail account, you can reapply those labels when it receives a forwarded email. So, on the mirror account, setup filters that check for keywords for each message to assign your labels to.”

When you manually apply a label, does that process actually create a key word in that message? i.e. If I manually apply the label “dog” to an email, then forward that e-mail to my secondary e-mail account (which has a filter set to look for the word “dog”), will the secondary account apply the label “dog” to the forwarded e-mail when received?

Thanks for you help thus far. I think I am close to being ready to give this a shot.

Regards.

Second, to create that mirror Gmail account, yes: you would need to (painstakingly) recreate each label and filter, which can be quite a bit of work.

Third, you’re right: you won’t be able to assign labels using the auto-forward, but if you setup your filters correctly on your mirror Gmail account, you can reapply those labels when it receives a forwarded email. So, on the mirror account, setup filters that check for keywords for each message to assign your labels to.

Fourth, you may not be able to just do the forward/filter tip I suggested, due to your setup (if you do a lot of manual labeling, for instance). In that case, you’re options are to either relabel each item in your mirror Gmail account, or “just live with it” as a collection of lots of emails forwarded.

And finally, for the process of copying, again: I don’t use Thunderbird and don’t know much about copying messages using it. But if it’s like Apple Mail, then you can do the following: select one or multiple messages, start dragging them to the destination Gmail folder, then press down the Command key (a green plus icon will appear, to indicate you’re COPYING, rather than MOVING, your messages), then drop those messages on that destination folder. I imagine Thunderbird is similar.

Anyway, like I said, try copying just one message to start and seeing what happens. Also, I suggest you check out the ThunderBird community support sites (http://www.mozilla.org/support/#forums) for better information than I can provide. Hope this helps!

I use my primary Gmail account as my Getting Things Done (GTD) workspace, so I rely heavily on Gmail labels and filters. To be effective for me, I will need to create and maintain the secondary Gmail account with *exactly* the same labels and filters for all messages, initial and new.

I understand that IMAP will allow me to initially create a second Gmail account that is a mirror image of my primary account. However I do not think the auto-forward process you suggest will allow me assign labels to a message before it is forwarded. The result of auto-forwarding messages therefore would not be consistent with the maintenance of a constantly mirrored site.

Due to my extensive use of labels and filters it may not be possible for me to “maintain” a mirrored site. If possible that would be ideal, but my *goal* is just to be able to create a mirrored site (using local data in TB) in the unlikely event I am unable to access my primary Gmail account. I have read where this has happened.

Finally, can you please explain in a little more detail the process of copying the folders from the primary Gmail account to the secondary Gmail account within TB? Do you “drag” the folders, c/p them … exactly how? Is this done in the “All Folders” panel of the TB main screen? Any chance we could exchange some “screen shots” to help me better understand how to actually do this task. I understand it, but not confident exactly how to do it.

Thanks for your patience. Jeff

What I suggest trying is to use your secondary account and copy over just one message. Start with that and see how it works. Consider sending yourself an email that you don’t care about, and experiment with it. Then, try dragging that email over to your secondary Gmail account, and see what happens. Did the email copy over? Did it get deleted from the first account? If you can answer those questions, then you’ll have a pretty good idea of what will happen when you actually copy over your real messages.

One other thing: to keep your emails in sync with both Gmail accounts, I imagine you’re going to setup an “auto-forwarder”? You can do this using Gmail, where it will automatically forward every email that comes in to your secondary Gmail account. Then you won’t have to worry about copying messages over like this again: they’ll already be there.

Should I ever be unable to access my primary Gmail account, I want to be able to immediately “upload” all primary Gmail account data stored in my local TB folders into my standby secondary Gmail account. This is my objective.

As I do not use TB as my email client I am not all that familiar with its folder structure. I can see that TB has created a set of folders that mirror my primary Gmail labels. I also know how to create an additional TB user account and link it to my secondary Gmail account. What I DON’T specifically know how to do is: (1) drag the correct folders from one account to the other in TB, and (2) most importantly, protect the data in my primary Gmail account as I upload the local TB data into the secondary Gmail account.

I have been studying this process for a while now, and the only think I lack is hands on experience with the folder copying step and the knowledge of how to make sure my primary Gmail data is preserved. Sorry to be so long winded. Thank you. Jeff

Sorry I can’t be more helpful, though, as I’m not using ThunderBird for email (just Apple Mail). Post any other questions you have though, as others may be able to help.