About a month ago, I made the switch from an email hosting service which I paid for to Google Apps, or GApps, as it’s often called. GApps is Google’s suite of web apps (including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, etc.) designed for use with your own custom domain name. There are two editions, the Standard Edition which is free, and the Premier Edition which includes support more storage space for email accounts.
The service actually premiered as “Google Apps For Your Domain” back in August of 2006, and I was an initial beta tester. I thought it was great, but the IMAP features that were added in June of 2007 (more on that later) weren’t yet built in, and as a result it wasn’t all that useful for me, so I shut it down.
Recently though, after I ran into some difficulties with the email hosting service I mentioned earlier, I’ve been back in the market for an email hosting service, so I decided to check out Gmail and GApps again, and signed up for new accounts.
Tweaking Gmail
At first, I started using a Gmail account to send and receive email for my various domains. It worked perfectly, and I really enjoyed the Advanced IMAP Controls feature made available through a Google Labs add-on. This tweak lets you decide which labels show up in IMAP, turn off message auto-expunging, or trash messages when they’re deleted from IMAP.
Being able to hide Gmail’s All Mail folder, where Gmail secretly stores all of your mail (read, unread, trashed, etc.), is a boon when using an IMAP email client such as Apple’s Mail.app.
But using Gmail in this way isn’t perfect. You have to forward all of the email accounts and aliases you’d like to use to your Gmail account. You then need to configure your Gmail account to receive and reply-from each of these email accounts.
That’s really not such a bad thing, but it requires that you configure your registrar with mail services in order to “host” your email and do the forwarding, use a third-party email hosting service (most are for-pay) to forward your mail to Gmail, or host the mail yourself at your hosting company or on your dedicated server.
You need to run through these steps for each of your domains (if you have more than one), and for each account and all of the aliases you use.
Enter Google Apps
GApps presented an excellent alternative to this approach. Instead of the forwarding and email hosting song and dance, GApps allows you to point your DNS MX records right at Google’s redundant mail servers so that Google is actually responsible for hosting all of the mail for your domains – especially useful if you have many of the same accounts on your domains and want only one email account. It’s also great for businesses (or families) with multiple email accounts.
Once setup, you can just check your email using IMAP (or even POP if you’re so inclined) as you would with any other hosted service. You also have the luxury of Gmail’s web interface for your email as well. It’s a seamless, perfect solution, except for one thing …
All Mail
Then there’s that pesky All Mail folder, where Gmail stores all of your email. That’s right, every email you receive, even after you’ve deleted it or moved it into another IMAP folder (actually mapped to a Gmail “Label”), actually lives in the All Mail folder, forever (unless you manually go in and remove it).
This is because with a few special exceptions, Gmail uses tags) in order to determine how and where to display your mail. New messages are tagged in a special way to appear in your Inbox, for example. When you drag an email into one of your IMAP folders in Gmail, you’re really just tagging it with a new label, and untagging it so it will no longer appear in your Inbox.
But no matter how you organize your mail or where you put your messages, behind the scenes, they’re all still in the All Mail folder.
This actually isn’t a bad thing – the All Mail folder is actually incredibly useful, allowing you to quickly search for and keep track of every email you’ve ever sent or received within Gmail’s fast web interface. Unfortunately, many IMAP email clients get hung up on folders with lots of messages in them.
The Google Labs Advanced IMAP Controls feature lets you control which Labels are visible to IMAP (as folders) and which ones aren’t. Preventing the display of the All Mail folder is as easy as checking a box.
No Labs for New Google Apps
After signing up and getting things configured, I went into the Domain Settings tab in your GApps control panel and checked the boxes next to Automatically add new Google services and Turn on new features. According to the Google Apps New Services and Features article, I learned that it may “take up to 24 hours for any changes to take effect in your users’ accounts.”
So I waited 24 hours, but Labs still hadn’t appeared in any of my GApps accounts. So I waited another 24 hours. And then another. Meanwhile, my All Mail folder was starting to collect more and more mail. A bit of searching revealed that many other people were having the exact same problem.
Unfortunately, it turns out that there are some issues with adding the Labs functionality to a GApps accounts.
For some users, especially those with older (like a year or more) GApps accounts, checking those two boxes actually does enable Labs functionality within GApps. I’m involved with a few projects that use GApps for their email, and in those accounts, I can enable the Labs features. But for those of us with newer accounts however, it’s not quite so easy.
And despite trying every hack I’ve read about (like adding ?labs=1 to the URL when viewing settings), Labs just won’t appear for my GApps. People I’ve told about seem to think I just don’t know where the Labs tab actually lives, so I’ve included the following screenshots to show that, no really, Labs just isn’t there for my GApps account the way it is for my Gmail account. Here’s a screenshot to prove it:
A (Possible) Answer
After some more searching, I found a thread in Google’s discussion groups that seemed to contain some feedback from actual Google employees (vs. the normal banter between users). There were problems enabling Labs with GApps accounts, and Google was aware of it. They’d tried to roll out a fix, but according to the users in the group (and from my own experience), it didn’t take.
And then, on October 30th, just when we were starting to give up home, this update:
Hi Everyone,
Here’s the skinny, the low-down, the bottom line:
We are about 2-3 weeks away from a permanent solution, and we are looking to get a fix in in the short term. The story is that the whole code which is responsible for enabling Labs needs to be re-written so it can be integrated into the current backend code structure.
That of course takes time, and with the slew of exciting things that we’re working on to make Google Apps even better, it’s been hard to get resources dedicated to this Labs issue.
However, it is being worked on and an Advisor will drop in again when we have an update. Again, 2-3 weeks is the current ETA on this, but unforeseen issues (hurricanes, burnt pizza mouths, firedrills, etc) can of course potentially delay us again. The entire team is aware of this issue and it has been moved up higher on the “we need to get this done” list.
A good, positive response from Google. The potential for a happy future exists.
The Whole Code
As a software developer, the most interesting part of the response I’ve quoted above is this line:
[The] whole code which is responsible for enabling Labs needs to be re-written so it can be integrated into the current backend code structure
This statement makes it sound like the mechanism they use to integrate Labs into GApps is different from the one they’re using to integrate it into their “normal” apps, like Gmail.
I just wonder why the existing mechanism, the code responsible for enabling Labs, does work for some GApps accounts and not others. Again, many people I know with slightly older accounts were able to enable Labs with a single click and to then start using those features immediately.
In any case, those of us with newer GApps accounts can hope to have Labs enabled in 2 to 3 weeks.
In the meantime, feel free to share your experiences here, and I’ll follow-up if and when Labs suddenly appears in my account. Please do the same.
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.












josue salazar
02 November 2008 at 4:23 pm
I’m in the same boat. Waiting for this to be enabled is a drag, but it’s good knowing it’s coming.
MrDarcy
02 November 2008 at 4:40 pm
So I guess, you basically assign a label to *all* your mails? Otherwise how will you archive them via IMAP if “All Mails” is no longer visible?
Another problem I had with Gmail IMAP and Apple Mail: Drafts are multiplying like rats and don’t get properly deleted upon sending. Basically when using Apple Mail with Gmail IMAP I can’t store the drafts on the server (despite the drafts folder being set properly!) … (Anyone else?)
In the end I got fed up and switched to Mailplane. %-)
By the way, internationalized Gmail doesn’t “Labs Love” either. You have to switch back to English to get it.
Virginia Murdoch
02 November 2008 at 4:46 pm
My own detective work on the subject didn’t reveal this relieving piece of information - thanks for tracking it down. It’s been driving me MAD that I can’t turn on Labs for my Google Apps domains. Hooray for a pretty-soon fix.
RubyGrrl42
02 November 2008 at 5:21 pm
MrDarcy: Email still gets archived in the usual way, in that all mail that comes to you stays in the “All Mail” folder. I just don’t need to see the “All Mail” folder in my IMAP.
Although, I also have the multiplying drafts problem. I just can’t store drafts on the server, I store them on my Mac. Less than ideal, but until Apple and Google get their groove on, we do what we can with what we have.
Dan: THANK YOU for staying on top of this. Fortunately, I don’t get a lot of email in GApps, but that’s starting to change, and that “All Mail” needs to not be delivered to me!
Brian Christiansen
02 November 2008 at 5:24 pm
I use GApps for my personal domain (linked above, free membership) and for my business (paid premier). Last week I deployed a Google Lab app, “Shortlinks” on Friday. So it’s interesting that some labs stuff is deployed in GApps and your Advanced IMAP is not available. Is it just a IMAP-lab app thing, perhaps?
Looking quickly at my premier account, I do have a “Labs” tab listed in my webmail settings, and Advanced IMAP is listed. Maybe I didn’t read some particular you listed above?
(feel free to email me if you have a question about my setup)
Dan Benjamin
02 November 2008 at 5:36 pm
@Brian - Those of us waiting don’t have *any* Labs, not just the IMAP stuff.
I too have seen the “multiplying drafts” issue. I’ll have to see if it happens with my friend’s GApps account that has Labs.
Josh
02 November 2008 at 6:19 pm
I setup our domain on GApps about a year ago. I have full labs support on my domain. Perhaps its limited to newly registered domains?
Dan Benjamin
02 November 2008 at 6:45 pm
@Josh - It seems to work for older accounts - I actually mention that above, “For some users, especially those with older (like a year or more) GApps accounts, checking those two boxes actually does enable Labs functionality within GApps.”
Jim Mcnelis
02 November 2008 at 9:10 pm
Working fine on my older Google Apps account. Hope it shows up for you soon!
Michael Camilleri
02 November 2008 at 9:29 pm
Thank you so much for staying on top of this, Dan. I was in the same boat as Virginia (I’d done a bit of detective work but hadn’t seen this nugget). Fingers crossed it gets sorted out in 2-3 weeks!
James Duncan Davidson
02 November 2008 at 9:43 pm
As far as I’m concerned, the presence or not of labs on GApps is secondary to just having the IMAP lab. In fact, if all they turned on for GApps was the ability to hide/show IMAP folders, that would be gold. Liquid gold. In a handbasket.
Jeff Adams
02 November 2008 at 10:32 pm
I thought I was going crazy. I seem to be the only one I know that didn’t have Labs available. Thanks for the update. I’m itching to use the advanced IMAP options.
Dan Benjamin
03 November 2008 at 8:39 am
@James Duncan Davidson - you’re absolutely right! I could actually care less about Labs itself, but it’s currently the only way to get those Advanced IMAP features.
Brad Koehn
03 November 2008 at 9:43 am
I have two Google Apps domains, one for my family and another for my business. The former I’ve had for several years, the latter for under a year.
While both domains have access to the labs functionality, but recently my family domain has a new checkbox in the domain management app: “Enable SSL: Automatically enforce Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connections when your users access Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and Sites.” I don’t know when this appeared (it’s under “Domain Settings -> General”).
Oddly, my business domain doesn’t have this checkbox yet.
MrDarcy
03 November 2008 at 9:48 am
@RubyGrrl42 I understand that, of course … ;-) I was wondering how you get mails you *don’t* want to assign a label out of of the inbox in Apple Mail—because you can’t drag and drop them onto the (no longer visible) “All Mails” folder … %-)
John Conners
03 November 2008 at 9:52 am
I switched to GApps about 6 weeks ago (so a new account, not an old one) and I initially couldn’t get GMail labs to appear either despite having enabled the ‘Turn on new features’ option and waiting a few days.
Then on a whim I appended ?labs=1 onto the end of my GMail URL (since I knew that appending ?labs=0 switches labs off on regular GMail), like so:
https://mail.google.com/a/example.com/?labs=1
I tried it a couple of times and then whether it was a coincidence or not I found the Labs tab appeared on the Settings section. YMMV.
Adrian Sutton
03 November 2008 at 10:00 am
One important thing to note is that Labs not only requires English, it requires English (US). If you select English (UK) labs won’t be available. Of course, none of this helps if you’re one of the newer accounts that won’t get labs anyway but it’s one more thing to try. You may find it helps to choose the next generation control panel in your domain settings too.
In general, features in GApps appear at largely random times. For example, I don’t have the enforce SSL connections option mentioned above, but I do have the advanced IMAP controls. When IMAP support was first released it gradually filtered through normal GMail accounts and then gradually through GApps accounts too. That just seems to be the way that Google release upgrades…
Sounds like in general they have a fair mess in their code though that they need to sort out and it’s starting to bite. In theory GMail and GApps email should be pretty much identical bar the URL, but the back end seems to treat them completely differently. I can easily imagine how it got like that, but I can easily imagine how much pain that must cause as well.
gaba
03 November 2008 at 10:02 am
The “All Mail” folder is quite handy as it is the only way to archive a message via IMAP, and also a place where I can look for any new messages (which are filtered to different labels/folders otherwise, skipping the inbox). I definitely would not hide it.
Josh
03 November 2008 at 10:31 am
I switched to GApps about 2 months ago and got Labs as soon as I turned it on. Been happily enjoying the advance IMAP control and some other labs since day 2. Maybe some of the newer accounts are being tested with the rewritten code?
Thomas
03 November 2008 at 11:46 am
Labs won’t appear for me, and my Apps for Domain account is pretty old (could it be two years already?). On the upside, I find that mail.app works flawlessly with the 10,000+ messages stored there.
Like iTunes, it works best if you drink the kool-aid and do it the way it wants. Which means only three ‘labels’: All Mail, Spam and Starred. And search for everything else…
Dan Benjamin
03 November 2008 at 11:59 am
@MrDarcy - You just move them into any archive folder (aka Label) or delete them. The All Mail stuff happens behind the scenes.
@John Conners - I mention that in the article where I say “And despite trying every hack I’ve read about (like adding ?labs=1 to the URL when viewing settings), Labs just won’t appear for my GApps.”
@gaba - actually it’s not the only way to archive a folder - you can just put the message into any folder (aka Label) you want. It will actually be in both places from the GApps standpoint, but you’ll only see it where you really want it.
@Josh - interesting theory. I know many people who signed up over the last year and don’t have it - you’re the first to tell me the opposite, but that’s great for you - you’re lucky!
Robb
03 November 2008 at 11:59 am
I don’t think it’s related to when you got your GApps account. I have labs access on all of my more recent accounts, but not on the first account I set up well over a year ago.
John Conners
03 November 2008 at 12:18 pm
Dan: D’Oh! Failed the observation test (must have been looking at those red arrows in the screenshot when reading that paragraph). I guess it must be relatively random since some old GA accounts don’t have labs and some new ones (like mine and Josh’s) do.
Dan
03 November 2008 at 12:18 pm
Dan,
It should be known the premium accounts get these new features faster than the standard versions.
I was able to get labs within a few days on my premium accounts, one of which I opened approx. 30 days ago. I opened a new standard edition just before and it still doesn’t have the labs functionality.
Seems like they’re slow to roll out these new features to the non-paying customers of apps and the users of gmail.com.
Khürt
03 November 2008 at 1:25 pm
I switched all my domains to Google Apps when it launched so I have never experienced this issue. I see how it could be very annoying. You certainly did a lot of work getting to the root cause.
Joseph Scott
03 November 2008 at 2:10 pm
This is good to hear. I’ve wondered why none of my Google Apps powered Gmail accounts had support the Labs features.
Rafal
03 November 2008 at 4:47 pm
I just switched from Gmail to Google Apps email less than two weeks ago.
The main reason I did it wasn’t the additional email service needed for Gmail forwarding. I had that included in my domain hosting service. The actual reason was that sending emails from multiple domains using Gmail wasn’t exactly what it seemed to be.
When using Gmail’s “Send mail as” feature you actually send it out from gmail.com domain. The only difference is, the “From” field is set as your domain’s email.
This gets unnoticed by most of your recipients who don’t study email headers, but the outgoing domain mismatch might trigger a spam catcher resulting in your email being thrown to the addressee’s spam box.
Another problem is that when using popular email clients (Mail.app, Thunderbird) with regular Gmail account, they don’t let you set a custom “From” field like Gmail web client does. Instead, you have an option to use “Reply-To” field. This is a much less elegant solution than setting “From” - both of your emails are visible by the recipient. This also might be prone to being marked as spam on the recipient side - please someone correct me if I’m wrong on this.
Regarding Labs - nada, no matter how many times I add ?labs=1 to the URL.
* shaking fist at John Conners who got us all pasting ?labs=1 repeatedly for hours.. ;)
Paul Ingraham
03 November 2008 at 4:48 pm
I don’t understand why the “All Mail” folder bothers so many people. I actually want it. I search in it constantly. I want a folder what has ALL my mail in it. Mail seems to be okay with the 10s of 1000s of messages in there, and it’s dang handy.
Adam
03 November 2008 at 4:50 pm
Maybe they will roll out the Force SSL to all accounts to with this Labs code rewrite.
I have 2 Standard Edition GApps accounts. One for work, the other for home. My home GApps account has the Force SSL option, while my work GApps account does not.
According to the help knowledge base, Force SSL is a Premier Edition-only feature. Not sure why my Standard Edition GApps account has it.
Rob
03 November 2008 at 5:41 pm
Odd. It works for me. I’ve been using Google Apps for my email for a few months and set up that feature as soon as it appeared (in regular Gmail as well). Never had a problem.
Rafal
03 November 2008 at 5:53 pm
@Paul Ingraham
“I don’t understand why the “All Mail” folder bothers so many people.”
Maybe because Google doesn’t use IMAP folders, but tags instead which causes the messages to have copies under each tag? This results in gigabytes of duplicates for some.
John Conners
03 November 2008 at 6:09 pm
Rafal: Sorry about that! I just wanted to disprove the ?labs=1 thing as being an urban legend since it worked for me. I’m guessing I must have used up all my luck for the year. ;)
T
04 November 2008 at 5:13 am
Thanks a lot for the hint to the statement of October 30th. I am keen on trying labs, whereas I have the same problem with my apps account (tab does not appear within the settings). painful to that effect, that there have been announced some really good labs issues within the last weeks.
Simon
04 November 2008 at 11:15 am
Sorry it doesn’t work for you, but thanks for turning me on to the fact that this option is available within labs - my Mail.app was absolutely creaking under the load of trying to keep those 50k+ emails in sync. I’ve hidden that folder and suddenly Mail is SO much more useable.
Added benefit: I’d given up full-content search within Mail many months ago as it never seemed to respond; now that’s viable again too!
For the record, had the Apps account for just over a year now.
Thanks again
User of gapp
07 November 2008 at 11:42 am
I just didnt see it in the setting where you have the picture. but now I figured it out and it is working great.
Eddie WIlson
09 November 2008 at 4:55 pm
Anyone using gapps+osx mail over imap have this problem? Sometimes, in the sent or trash an email’s header info will not show in the list. The entry is there, and you can double-click on it to show the whole email, its just that the info is missing (screenshot: http://eddit.com/misc/gmail_imap_issues.jpg)
Sorry to ask for support on your blog, but I have posted this almost everywhere with no response. Read this post and figured there would be a good share of mail+gapps users here including yourself.
eddie wilson
09 November 2008 at 4:58 pm
Added the parentheses to the link in the previous post:
http://eddit.com/misc/gmail_imap_issues.jpg
J
12 November 2008 at 9:26 am
Hi there,
I’m still not seeing any Labs in GApps :(
I thought it’s supposed to be fixed alright already!?
Anyone else noticed anything?
ta
MacDork
12 November 2008 at 10:04 am
Oh man…. thanks for this article. I thought I was going crazy. One of my domains has the Labs tab, but another of my domains doesn’t.
It’s been 2-3 weeks, though—still no love :(
T
14 November 2008 at 4:41 am
Yiihaaa, today the missing labs tab has been activated for my Google Apps Standard! I kept looking for it every day. :-)
tsing
14 November 2008 at 9:22 am
I upgrade my google apps account to premier edition free trial, then after 48 hours, my google apps mail got gmail labs.
you guys can have a try.
T
14 November 2008 at 10:09 am
@tsing That’s what I’ve done, too (even when I’ve downgraded a few hours later). Do you think, there is a connection? Just wondering, because my second apps accout (standard, NO upgrade) is NOT working with labs yet.
Itai
17 November 2008 at 4:23 am
even wierder -
Some of my users have the labs tab. The others don’t.
Debbie
17 November 2008 at 3:15 pm
I can’t get the Google labs so I can have it my work account be the same as my home account.
What’s up with that?
Josh
18 November 2008 at 5:19 pm
I still don’t have the Labs tab…is anyone else still missing it?
Rony
19 November 2008 at 4:57 am
Same here. Labs tab still missing in my work account.
slavka
19 November 2008 at 11:12 pm
No labs still.
Anyone got it?
Ryan Bergeman
20 November 2008 at 9:49 am
I have Labs enabled this morning. I just signed up for GApps yesterday. Here’s my story.
I signed up for GApps yesterday morning. I had created a standard account first (because I bought a domain name through Google/enom). I actually had Labs enabled when I got the standard edition up and running. However, once I changed enom’s DNS settings to point to my hosting provider and enabled GApps hosting from my hosting provider, I no longer had Labs.
Last night, I upgraded my standard GApps account to a premier GApps account (something I had planned on doing from the beginning). I checked this morning, and I now have Labs enabled. In fact, it said I had 1 Labs feature enabled already (Advanced IMAP, of course) - because I had it yesterday before customizing my DNS records @ enom.
Maybe it’s just coincidence that I have it this morning - maybe everyone has it now. If not, it seems what worked for me was upgrading my standard account to premier.
Hope this is of help to someone. Maybe I was just lucky. :)
Ryan Bergeman
20 November 2008 at 9:53 am
Also, FWIW, I had both “Automatically add new Google services” and “Turn on new features” checked. Before upgrading my account yesterday, I just had “Turn on new features” checked. After upgrading and not seeing Labs enabled, I checked “Automatically add new Google services” as well. Woke up this morning, and Labs is on.
Jason P
21 November 2008 at 6:38 am
On standard edition here, still not seeing it :(
Nancy | Cheap Nintendo DS Games
24 November 2008 at 1:55 am
“Automatically add new Google services” worked for me as well. Thanks for sharing that Ryan. I went crazy for a good couple of hours trying to find it when it first disappeared. :)
Scott | Stereo Interactive
24 November 2008 at 12:34 pm
We’ve had standard edition for at least 6 months, and we’ve had the options under “New Services and Features” checked since the beginning, but still have no “Labs” tab. I’m tempted to upgrade to Premier edition for a few days and then cancel to see if that works, but seems like overkill at the moment.
Rick Cogley
25 November 2008 at 9:22 pm
This worked for me in Premier:
https://mail.google.com/a/your-gape-domain.com/?labs=1#settings/labs
Rick Cogley
Clifton
01 December 2008 at 5:32 pm
So here we are, almost 5 weeks in to the “2-3 weeks” and I still don’t see Labs stuff in my accounts (everything is enabled in the control panel).
Anyone heard any news from Google? There must have been some major burnt pizza mouths. :)
Shane Birley
02 December 2008 at 5:45 pm
I manage about 20-30 Google Apps installs and the Labs feature is available in some and not available in others.
In other words, it looks like they have fixed it and are currently in the “roll it out” stage. Normally, this would be done in stages, so, I suspect you’ll get it soon.
Mike
03 December 2008 at 11:40 pm
THANKS Rick! It works for Standard edition also.
https://mail.google.com/a/your-gape-domain.com/?labs=1#settings/labs
Richard
04 December 2008 at 8:37 am
Labs finally showed up in my Google Apps mail account, and I enabled the Advanced IMAP Controls. But the feature I really wanted doesn’t seem to work. Under “When a message is expunged from the last visible IMAP folder”, I checked “Move the message to the Gmail Trash”. However, when I delete mail from my inbox, it doesn’t move to the Trash folder. Instead, it still appears in All Mail with no label as before.
Have I missed something? Or is this feature just broken for Google Apps?
Michael Camilleri
04 December 2008 at 9:14 am
Labs is now enabled on my account. I turned on ‘Automatically add new Google services’ about a week ago (I’ve had ‘Turn on new features’ enabled forever) and I got some Labs love today. Hooray!
Kevin Rodgers
04 December 2008 at 2:17 pm
I’m trying to understand why I would need to enable the advanced IMAP features. I have two Gmail accounts, one regular and one domain style. I setup OS X mail to use an IMAP prefix and named it IMAP. I then created labels in Gmail named IMAP/Sent and IMAP/Trash and mapped them to OS X mail by selecting them and choosing Mailbox > Use This Mailbox For > Sent (Trash). I don’t have duplicate Drafts or the All Mail folder listed in OS X mail. Here is what my mailboxes look like: http://flickr.com/photos/kevrodg/3057950390/.
Is there some benefit I’m not getting by having it setup this way?
Richard
05 December 2008 at 11:04 am
Ok, I figured this out.
The “All Mail” folder was still “visible”, so the messages weren’t being deleted from the last visible folder. I went into the Gmail web interface and set “All Mail” to not display in IMAP. In Outlook, I unchecked “display only subscribed folders” so that I would see all my folders (except “All Mail”, of course), but that unsubscribed ones would not sync on Send/Receive”.
I think it’s working the way I want now.